“The great thing about the virtual conference is that you can do cartwheels in a mini-skirt”

This is an account of my experience taking part in the Special Libraries Association (SLA) annual conference this year - as a virtual participant. I've also written some tips for virtual meetings on Marieke's Ramblings of a Remote Worker blog.

The great thing about the virtual conference is that you can do cartwheels in a mini-skirt - so said Tina Jayroe, Rocky Mountain Chapter secretary, an enthusiastic virtual attendee. That’s not a feature that brought me to the virtual conference – my reasons were much more mundane - I could not attend the conference due to budget and travel restrictions, so a virtual option looked attractive. But it does reflect the experience the virtual attendees went through – a number of surprise benefits emerged during the conference and many of us shared them with each other, creating a lively real-time community.

The 101 virtual attendees had other reasons for attending online – child care commitments, or simply not being able to spare the whole of their time due to staffing pressures. Who knows (and I don’t specifically) some people may just prefer attending the sessions without fuss – Conference Lite, if you will.
Always keen to explore new ways of using technology in my profession I was curious to see how it could work.

SLA partnered with a company called Digitell to create a virtual auditorium in SLA colours, with two screens (one for the live feed of the speaker and one for their PowerPoint presentation, if they used one). To the left and right of the virtual stage, the live conference Twitter feed and session information were shown, respectively (as in the screenshot below).

SLA virtual conference hall

During the presentation itself, participants can opt (as I did) to have a view of screen 1, 2 or both:

Patrick Lambe speaking. The traffic light buttons are mainly intended for replays (another benefit of virtual attendance).

Outside the doors of the auditorium was a virtual courtyard (presumably for networking between sessions, but I have to say I didn’t use it - the attendees were perfectly happy to network inside the auditorium between sessions, and had a great dance party there after the final session), and on from there, a virtual exhibition hall. This was a disappointment– there were only two exhibits this time. Definitely something for SLA and exhibitors to work on in the future – there are real possibilities for interactive exhibits and even an avatar rep to chat to in real time. What about virtual freebies? Well, that’s another opportunity for vendors to be creative!

There were twelve sessions available to virtual attendees over the three days including the opening and closing keynotes. I assume only the main auditorium was equipped with the necessary technology, so on this first attempt at virtual conferencing, the virtual attendees had no choice of sessions to attend. However, the subjects were generally interesting and varied (though I'm not sure if they would had been my first choice if I had attended the conference in person). My highlights included Mary Ellen Bates on 'Brand You and Web 2.0', and Steve Arnold's session on real-time search.

The panel sessions also worked well, as the moderators were briefed to acknowledge virtual participants and could see the questions coming in from us in real time. The virtual audience seemed to ask proportionally more questions - perhaps it is less of a barrier to type in a question in the comfort of your home or office rather than walk to a microphone in front of a room full of people?

I had no problems with listening to and viewing the presentations throughout the conference but others did have quite a few issues with the feed breaking up, reporting that the 2D environment was much more reliable for them. However Digitell had several people in attendance in the virtual conference itself and once I worked out that they weren’t other participants, answered my dumb questions very patiently.

A few words about technicalities. There was the option to install a 3D environment called VirtualU, or to use a 2D browser based player requiring the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. I chose to install the 3D program on my home computer (much of the conference was on during the evening in my time zone), which has a good graphics card, and a reasonably fast broadband connection. I was encouraged to try out the virtual world beforehand, learning to move around and even to customise my avatar. It only took a few minutes to become reasonably competent, in contrast to my stumbling efforts in Second Life, where I could fly around, but found I couldn’t land gracefully, always falling in a crumpled heap. Once in the virtual world almost anything is possible and James Newman, Digitell Director of Research & Development, took some attendees on a tour of some of the areas they have created for other clients, teaching us to teleport and to fly in the process. The areas included a museum complete with old masters (you can zoom in and study the brush strokes) and dinosaurs, and a Main Street for one client who wanted to show a ‘before and after’ for their renovation plans.

In a chat nearing the end of the conference, some of the attendees reflected on their experience. (This was during Nicholas Carr’s final keynote, and the irony of this, considering his subject matter, was not lost!). One person said the virtual conference had “brought me back” to SLA.

A few pros and cons that came up included:

Pros
1. You are front and centre in the audience - you can even zoom in on those 'eye-chart' PowerPoint presentations
2. You can download the PowerPoint files straight away
3. You can share what you have learned with colleagues straight away
4. You can make notes as noisily as you like
5. You can listen while moving around
6. You can converse in real-time with other participants without disturbing others
7. You can watch and listen to the replay - these were made available soon after the conference - and fast-forward to the bits you want to hear again
8. You have more confidence to ask questions
9. It's much cheaper
10. For me, the sessions were well timed. Breakfast sessions were a comfortable 2 p.m. for me in the UK; and
11. Your avatar can do cartwheels in a mini-skirt (well, Tina's can).

Cons
1. It's dangerous to assume you can multi-task. Even more so if your employer expects you to do this and assumes 'business as usual' just because you are in the office
2. Networking opportunities are reduced (but not eliminated - you do see the list of other participants and it is possible to chat to them one-to-one or in a group). Perhaps this is something SLA could work on for next year by encouraging particpants to post mini-bios and even have online get-togethers before and after the conference. The success of Twitter shows it is not necessary to meet face-to-face to make meaningful connections
3. Attending sessions in a different time-zone may not fit in to your schedule.

Quite a few attendees said that the virtual conference was a great showcase for the quality of sessions on offer and as a result of the virtual conference option this year they would definitely be going in person to Philadelphia next year. And if I can make it, I hope to be there as well.