breaks Archives : Conferences That Work

Lessons learned from online meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic

Monday, August 30th, 2021 by Adrian Segar

The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) has published some useful lessons learned from organizing six online scientific meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is my summary of what I think are the most interesting findings, plus some commentary. All quotes are from the article “Virtual Growing Pains: Initial Lessons Learned from Organizing Virtual Workshops, Summits, Conferences, and Networking Events during a Global Pandemic“ in the Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin. Check it out for full details!

Online meetings improve access and attendance

Clearly, online conferences can make it easier for people to attend who might otherwise not be able to do so:

…participation [at in-person meetings] can favor more privileged scientists (e.g., well-funded, connected, established) while excluding talented but less privileged scientists who may not have available funds or flexible schedules to overcome barriers such as financial resources, travel time, disabilities (De Picker 2020), dependent care responsibilities (Calisi and A Working Group of Mothers in Science 2018), or visa acquisition (Matthews et al. 2020)

Conferences are an important learning and support resource for early career scientists. Online events make it easier for them to attend.

“…a hiatus from scientific meetings would also have come at a cost, especially for early career researchers (ECRs) who rely on scientific meetings to share their work, find career opportunities, and establish a peer cohort that provides emotional, mental, and personal support in addition to professional support.”

But barriers to attending online conferences still remain:

“…the online format removed potential barriers and likely increased participation by peers unable to participate in previous years. Still, some barriers remained, and new barriers arose, such as access to a reliable computer and internet connection, time zone management for conferences with a globally distributed audience, the unexpected energy demand of sustaining online attentiveness (the newly coined term “Zoom fatigue”), and finding time for dependent care as many schools, nurseries, eldercare services, and similar facilities enacted restrictions or limited services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Nevertheless, attendance at three of the meetings was significantly higher than when previously held in-person. (The three other meetings did not share historical attendance data.)

“Attendance increased 50% over previous successful conferences with a significant portion (40%) of first-time symposium attendees.”

“The in-person meeting was space-limited to 65 participants. The virtual format opened registration to anyone. In total, 205 people had registered to access the workshop materials, with 150 individuals and 110 individuals consistently joining on days 1 and 2, respectively. Instead of the original limit of 15 in-person graduate students, the conference welcomed over 50 graduate and undergraduate students.”

“Initially planned as an in-person, ~ 50-person workshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A., the inaugural workshop took place 18–20 August 2020, virtually over Zoom … In total, 1038 registrants from over 30 countries participated, with individual session attendance in the low-hundreds.”

The full article also describes an overall increase in the diversity of attendees at their online conferences. However, expanding presenter diversity wasn’t successful at one of the meetings.

Online platforms and tools used

The six meetings used a variety of online platforms and tools: Zoom (used in every meeting), webex, Voice Thread (used for poster sessions), Slack, Whova, Poll Everywhere, QUBES Hub (an online community for STEM activities), Slido, and Google Forms. Attendees were largely happy with these tools, with only a few problems reported. Read the article for details.

There was a general consensus that socializing opportunities online were inferior to in-person meetings. This was despite the use of backchannel communication platforms such as Slack during several of the events.

“Communication software, such as Slack, could not really replace the casual “hallway chats,” but did provide more complete documentation of conversations and a forum that could continue following the meeting.”

None of the meetings used one of the online social platforms I’ve described on this blog (1, 2, 3). I suspect that incorporating such platforms into future conferences would provide a better social experience for participants.

Online program fatigue

Several meetings reported their attendees experienced fatigue:

“Aside from programmatic needs, the community learned that mental and physical fatigue are inherent to both in-person and virtual formats. Much like an in-person, session-packed meeting, virtual meetings occurring for long hours, across multiple time zones can drain energy. Although a virtual format may more easily afford attendees the chance to “log-off” from the meeting, building in diverse events, such as social hours, breakout or working group sessions, and mixed presentation formats are crucial to prevent attendees from logging off too often or feeling drained by a meeting.”

I’ve written about how frequent scheduled breaks will help minimize online meeting fatigue. Some of the meetings reported that distributing their typical in-person program over a longer time period (e.g., a few hours per day over several days) helped reduce fatigue and maintain attendance.

Closed-captioning content

Three of the meetings added closed-captioning to pre-recorded talks, and attendees found this helpful. One of the report’s conclusions:

“Closed-captioning content benefits many, especially non-native English speakers.”

When online meetings use prerecorded videos, adding closed-captioning is an easy way to improve the viewing experience. Hopefully, real-time closed-captioning will become more accurate, affordable, and common in the future.

Hybrid meetings in the future

Several of the meeting groups expect to hold hybrid meetings in the future:

“GLEON is increasingly aware of barriers for meeting attendance, despite a long running sponsorship program. Hence, some form of a hybrid style meeting may offer the best way forward.”

“Hybrid models tailored to a specific society’s resources and needs could incorporate components of both the in-person and virtual experiences. One variant could be offering both the in-person and virtual components simultaneously, allowing attendees, who are not able or willing to travel, to partake in in-person sessions and panels through video-conferencing software. Here, an alternative hybrid form could consist of regional in-person meetings, to minimize travel, while still being connected to other regional meeting hubs via a shared online program. Another hybrid model could be re-envisioning the in-person conference altogether, where traditional presentation and poster sessions are conducted virtually, and a companion, asynchronous in-person conference parallels the themes of the virtual meeting but with a focus on working groups, networking, and research products.”

Although many attendees hoped to return to in-person conferences, they generally agreed that online meetings have shown their value and will remain an important option for future meetings.

Conclusion

Some of these insights may be familiar, some less so. Let’s thank the numerous scientists who took the time to share lessons learned from holding online meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic! Such information is helpful to everyone working to make meetings better.

Image attribution: composite image created from images in Volume 30, Issue 1 of the Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin.

Tags: breaks, closed-captioning, fatigue, hybrid events, in-person meetings, online conference, scientific conference| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Six ways to keep attendees comfortable and improve your event

Monday, May 29th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

Here are six ways to keep attendees comfortable and improve your event. While stuck in cramped seats during a six-hour Boston to San Francisco flight, my wife gently pointed out that I had become quite grumpy. She helped me notice that my lack of body comfort was affecting my mood. Luckily for me, Celia remained solicitous and supportive, reducing my grouchiness. Once we were off the plane my spirits lightened further.

Unfortunately, I tend to be oblivious for a while to the effects of physical discomfort on my feelings. Until I notice what’s really upsetting me, I typically and unfairly blame my irritability on innocent culprits, for example:

The tediousness of gardening because insects are swarming around my head.
The delay in waiting for my food to arrive in a noisy restaurant.
A presenter’s inability to capture my full attention while I’m sitting with my neck twisted permanently towards them in an auditorium.

I suspect I’m not alone in these errors of judgment. Pivoting to the world of events, this means if we want to give attendees the best possible experience, we need to minimize the quantity and severity of physical comfort issues that are under our control.

Here are six ways to keep attendees comfortable and improve your event. I’ll share common mistakes you’ve probably experienced, together with suggestions for mitigating their impact.

1 — Room temperature

It surprises me that many venues still can’t get this right. While I know that there’s no such animal as an ideal room temperature for everyone, the fluctuations I’ve routinely seen when rooms empty and fill during an event are often extreme and unacceptable.

There are two issues here.

First, sweltering or freezing rooms make it almost impossible for attendees to concentrate on what’s happening in the session. This is a fixable venue issue; an adequately sized and controlled HVAC plant will maintain the temperature in an acceptable range during normal changes in occupancy.

Second, if the room occupants decide that the temperature should be raised or lowered, the organizers and venue should have procedures in place to make this happen quickly. Why venues continue to distrust their customers and lock up thermostats so only hard-to-summon staff can make an adjustment (and then disappear again) baffles me. If they’re worried that clients will turn the temperature way up or down and leave the room, wasting energy, they should invest in motion detector technology that resets the room temperature when no one is in it.

2 — Noise

Along with 20% of the U.S. population, I have some hearing loss; background noise makes it challenging to hear what’s going on. As a result, playing house music during conference breaks and socials is more than a distraction; it actively impedes the utility of the event for me. (If I want to listen to music, I’ll pick my own and listen elsewhere, thank you very much.) At traditional events where most of the networking occurs outside the meeting sessions, unnecessary noise is at best a distraction and at worse a reason to leave.

Another mistake that is often avoidable is to hold multiple small groups in spaces with poor acoustics. This prevents each group from concentrating on its own conversation because of continuous interruptions by talking/laughter/applause from neighboring groups.

3 — Seating

In 2017, I facilitated Haute Dokimazo, a cool one-day conference held in The Thinkery, a children’s museum in Austin, Texas. The event was a big success, but during the closing group spective the seating was criticized. Yes, as you might expect, some of the chairs were kid-sized. This took a toll on participants’ rear ends over the day!

Even when a venue is designed for adult use, the quality of seating and poor seating layouts (1, 2) can seriously affect participant comfort. The former is a venue or production responsibility. The latter is easy to fix if you know how to set seating for maximum comfort and function.

4 — Safety

We’ve all suffered through awkward “icebreakers” that fail to introduce attendees meaningfully to each other and have no connection to desired meeting outcomes. Providing the right level of emotional comfort at an event is tricky because our best learning often occurs when we feel safe enough to take some smart risks. There are many ways to maximize learning and connection by enhancing participant safety at an event. Some of them are described here.

5 — Breaks

Have you ever felt exhausted while attending a conference, unable to properly concentrate, learn, or participate fully?

I have — and I bet you have as well.

Conference organizers often try to cram too many sessions into the time available. Attendee comfort subsequently declines, along with the quality and effectiveness of the event. It’s not hard to create meeting schedules that include sufficient downtime. If you feel compelled to squeeze everything possible into an event, tell attendees upfront what you’ve done and give them explicit permission to take breaks whenever necessary.

6 — Movement

Think about the meetings you’ve attended with lots of purposeful activity. What was your energy level like, compared to similar meetings where you sat and listened to people speak all day? Did you feel more energized, more on top of what was going on, less tuned out? Most people do.

So don’t overlook the importance of incorporating physical movement into your events at regular intervals. You don’t have to lead attendees in jumping jacks every hour, but even simple standing and moving about for session-related reasons can make a big difference to attendee physical comfort and attention span. See the suggestions in The Power of Participation for examples.

Keep ’em comfortable!

So, these are my six suggestions to keep attendees comfortable and improve your event. Think about the amount of energy, money, and time that goes into producing and attending an event. Doesn’t implementing as many as possible of the simple suggestions above make excellent sense? You can doubtless think of other ways to improve attendee comfort — for example, streamlining registration and check-in. I welcome your additions in the comments below.

Image attribution: adapted from this article.

Tags: breaks, comfort, comfortable seating, emotions, feelings, movement, noise, physical environment, room temperature, safety, seating| Posted in Event design | 2 Comments »

What I’ve learned about working productively

Tuesday, August 7th, 2012 by Adrian Segar

I’ve worked out of my home office for the last thirty years, and have learned a few things about working productively. During that time I:

Consulted on information technology for hundreds of companies.
Wrote and maintained almost a million lines of code.
Ran a couple of small non-profits (still do) and served on my local United Way Board.
Wrote Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love, and am now hard at work on my second book.

Along the way, I spent a fair amount of time experimenting with different environments and work processes, always with the goal of improving my productivity. As you might expect of a proponent of the philosophy of risky learning, some things worked and some didn’t. I’ll reserve the things that didn’t for another post.

You may not have as much control over your work environment and process as I do. Nevertheless, perhaps you will find helpful some of what follows.

Work environment: Office furniture, ergonomics, and beauty

Twenty-five years ago I purchased two astronomically expensive high-quality office chairs. Until then I had sat on a sagging ancient chair rather like the one pictured. Hours spent in this chair had taken their toll. A kneeling chair replacement, while an improvement, was not comfortable for long periods. The marvelously adjustable Steelcases that made me gulp when I signed the check paid for themselves many times in adjustability, comfort, and eliminated physical therapy appointments.

A few years ago I replaced both chairs, and this time I was happy to sign the check.

In the same spirit, I learned the importance of correct ergonomics for computer keyboards and mice (later, touchpads). Long hours toiling over these machines translate to pain and discomfort if keyboard heights aren’t right and you don’t position pointing devices correctly. Don’t skimp on firm work surfaces, keyboard drawers, and touch devices that are easy to use; your body will be the victim if you do.

Finally, when I had the opportunity and funds to add a custom home office to my home I spent serious time and money creating a space that I would find beautiful. Built at the northwest corner of my home, the office receives natural light from two sides and looks out onto a flourishing garden and beautiful Vermont stone walls and woods.

Knowing my appetite for workspace, I also took the opportunity to build about three times more beautiful custom desktop space than I thought I’d ever need. (A good thing I did—these days it’s pretty full most of the time.) Having a beautiful space for my work feeds my energy and spirit and helps me get through those times when I’m feeling creatively blocked and work isn’t going so well.

Getting Things Done

No question—until the day I die I’m going to have tasks on my to-do list. Being at peace with this reality in the here and now is hard. I am perpetually interested in exploring more than I can practically accomplish. As I age, my ability to keep track of and continually re-prioritize what’s important lessens. Embracing Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done has been a lifesaver. I may always be trying to bite off more than I can chew, but GTD allows me to avoid being overwhelmed by the consequences of my curiosity. What many don’t understand about GTD, and what makes it so powerful, is that it doesn’t impose a specific implementation on you; it’s a framework that helps you build processes customized for your needs. Here’s more information on why and how GTD works.

Highly flexible, continuously-on backup of digital stuff

I have one word for those of you young enough to miss the decades when personal computers were expensive, hard to use, and frequently broke. Lucky! I’ve spent too much time configuring and running expensive and all-too-fallible equipment designed to back up valuable digital data. Today, there’s no excuse for losing any of the ever-increasing quantities of information we entrust to our electronic gizmos. My four computers continually back up to each other (local backups—great for fast restoration of a lost file or two) and to the internet cloud (remote backups—where I’d go if a catastrophe took out all my computers).

You can easily back up to other computers or hard drives in the same location or across the internet (perhaps your friend’s business across town) or to hosted servers sitting elsewhere on the internet. The name of this magic is CrashPlan. (No, I do not get a penny for recommending their service.) If you’re not using a service like this with every computer you own these days you’re nuts.

For working productively, run sprints, not marathons

It took me years to learn that working on a problem or task for hours on end without a break is not an optimum way to work. Please don’t make this mistake (no matter how young you are). Currently, I decide on the task I want to work on, set a timer for twenty minutes, and work uninterruptedly until the timer sounds. Then I’ll take a break for five minutes and repeat two or three more times before taking a longer break. I came up with this approach myself; an almost identical version is called Pomodoro. The frequent breaks give my brain relaxed downtime to mull over a problem and, often, propose creative solutions. And I find it easier to ignore the lure of the modern environment of constant email and internet distractions by telling myself I’ll just work for twenty minutes first.

That’s my summary of what I’ve learned about working productively. Do you have lessons to add?

Chair photo attribution: Flickr user spyndle

Tags: back up, breaks, furniture, getting things done, GTD, Pomodoro, productivity| Posted in Personal effectiveness | 4 Comments »

Give me a break!

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 by Adrian Segar

In 2011, the organizers of a large European conference invited me to give a forty-minute presentation. When I arrived and saw the conference program I was surprised to see that the day’s sessions were scheduled with NO intervening breaks. Participants were somehow expected to instantaneously teleport between session rooms—even restroom visits were apparently not on the agenda. As you might expect, I lost ten minutes of my forty-minute time slot because of this elementary scheduling error. No breaks between meeting sessions!

Most event planners won’t make this kind of mistake, but, given that breaks between sessions should be longer than zero minutes, how long should they be? The answer depends on several factors:

The time needed to move between sessions held in different locations
The overall length of the event
The amount of participation and interaction designed into sessions

In my book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love I describe an event where, at the last minute, we were forced to schedule sessions in two buildings that were separated by a ten-minute outdoor walk. Scheduled program breaks weren’t long enough, sessions started late, and very hot weather during the conference led to additional complaints.

How long should a break be?

At the very least, breaks must be long enough for people to

decide the session they want to attend next
figure out where the next session is
take a bathroom break if needed; and
get to their desired destination leisurely.

Even at a one-day conference with sessions held in adjacent rooms, I recommend at least ten minutes between sessions; fifteen would be better. If your rooms are further apart, or in a building that is confusing to navigate, you need to allocate more time.

Breaks between meeting sessions can be shorter at a one-day event than they need to be at a four-day event. That doesn’t mean they should be. But if you have a crowded, must-do agenda you can get away with minimum breaks for a one-day event. At longer conferences, there’s no excuse for not scheduling extended breaks, and your attendee quality of experience will suffer if you don’t. A long lunch break—at least ninety minutes, preferably two hours—and a significant break between the last session of the day and dinner is a simple way to build longer breaks into the day, but having twenty to twenty-five-minute refreshment breaks between morning sessions will also help to keep energy, participation, and learning high during a multi-day event.

Providing breaks in long sessions

Finally, the amount of participation and interaction included in sessions will influence the amount of break time needed. The opening roundtable I use at my conferences can last a couple of hours. When I first ran this session I innocently ran it with just a single midway twenty-minute refreshment break. Eventually, I noticed what an energy sink this was, and now I break up the session every twenty minutes with short participative exercises like human spectrograms and pair share introductions. A refreshment table in the room allows people to grab a drink or an apple during these frequent breaks. By using multiple short breaks, the energy level in the room now remains high.

Check out my post on the science of white space at events for more thoughts on this important, but often overlooked, topic.

Photo attribution: Flickr user jarkko

Tags: breaks, downtime, session breaks, socials, white space| Posted in Event design | 2 Comments »

The science of white space at events

Thursday, January 19th, 2012 by Adrian Segar

Conference organizers have an unfortunate tendency to stuff their programs full of sessions. It’s an understandable choice; if participants have committed all this time and money to be present, shouldn’t we minimize white space at events and give them as many sessions as we can cram in?

Unfortunately, filling every minute of your conference schedule does not lead to an optimum experience for attendees. We need white space: free time for attendees to do what they want and need to do. Here are some science-based, light-hearted, yet serious reasons why.

Biology

Yes, all of us need to use the bathroom every once in a while. The good news is that just about all event organizers remember this.

Physics

But what many forget is that Star Trek technology is not currently available; we cannot instantaneously teleport from one meeting room to another. At a minimum, breaks between sessions need to be long enough for attendees to walk leisurely between the two session locations that are furthest apart. But don’t program the minimum; people also need time to check their messages (otherwise they’ll just do it in the sessions, right?), get a cup of coffee, fall into a serendipitous conversation, etc.

Physiology

On average, conference session attendees sit 99.13% of the time.
OK, I made that up. But I’m not far off. And here’s a cheerful graphic about the perils of sitting created by Jan Jacobs:

Give your attendees more time to stand up and move about between sessions (and during them, see below) and, who knows, they may live longer.

Social science

According to social scientist Dr James House, “The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors.” Why expose your attendees to such an unhealthy environment? We need to create conference environments that encourage and support connections with others, rather than leaving attendees to their own devices, and it turns out that conference mixers don’t provide as good opportunities for attendees to meet new people as you might think. We need additional kinds of white space at our events.

Neuroscience

Neuroscience supplies the most important rationale for providing white space at your events. As molecular biologist John Medina describes in his book Brain Rules: Learning occurs best when new information is incorporated gradually into the memory store rather than when it is jammed in all at once. Brains need breaks.

We need white space not only between sessions but also during them to maximize learning. Medina suggests that presentations be split into ten-minute chunks to avoid the falloff in attention that otherwise occurs. (Back in the ’70s, Tony Buzan, the inventor of mind maps, recommended studying in cycles of twenty minutes followed by a short break, a technique that has served me well for forty years.)

In addition, Medina tells us that multisensory environments provide significantly more effective learning than unisensory environments; recall is more accurate, has better resolution, and lasts longer. So make sure your sessions include multisensory input (participatory exercises, participant movement, smells, touch, etc.) and that your conference locale provides a pleasant multisensory environment.

So, what to do?

How do we find a balance between providing white space during and between conference sessions and our desire to provide as much potential content and opportunities for our attendees?

During sessions, it’s important to provide white space between every ten to twenty-minute chunk of learning, so that the learning that has occurred can be processed and retained. This is something that we should all be doing to optimize the learning experience at our events.

Between sessions, it’s important to include significant unstructured time. A ten-minute break between two one-hour sessions is the absolute minimum I’ll schedule, followed by long refreshment or meal breaks. I am not a fan of providing intrusive entertainment during meals—eating together is one of the most intimate bonding activities humans have—for goodness sake, let your attendees talk to each other during this time!

I’ve saved my best advice for last. Instead of deciding how much white space should exist at your conference, let the attendees decide! At the start of the event, explicitly give people permission to take whatever time they need to rest, recuperate, think, etc. It may seem silly, but I find that if you publicly define the event environment as one where it’s expected and normal for people to take whatever time they need for themselves it becomes easier for attendees to give themselves permission to do so.

[Thanks to Joan Eisenstodt for providing the initial impetus for writing this post! And check out Give Me a Break! for another viewpoint on the topics of this post.]

White space—it’s not just for advertising anymore! What’s been your experience of white space at events? What suggestions do you have for improving its use?

Image attribution: Flickr user zavie.

Tags: breaks, downtime, Event design, socials, white space| Posted in Event design | 11 Comments »