It is a truth universally acknowledged that a conference in possession of good science must be in want of an in-person venue.
And it’s garbage.
In-person conferences actually suit bugger all nobody, and academia needs to become as invested in realising the potential of virtual experiences for scientific progress as we are in developing the next generation of instruments.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Scientific conference in 2019. (OK, OK… conference held by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831.) Credit: World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, academic conferences (and indeed, all other forms of in-person meeting) have been forced onto platforms such as Zoom. And yes, I hated it too. But I feel the potential for virtual meetings is colossal, not only for bringing together a global community, but for going beyond the in-person experience to where the exploration of scientific results isn’t limited to a projector in a conference venue.
I want to tell you now that I believe the future for scientific discourse is virtual reality. But I fear it will lose the majority of my audience to preconceived ideas of what this entails. So I’m going to start with this:
Two years online have established that online meeting dramatically improve diversity. The lack of travel strips back costs, especially for junior researchers and those not based in the US or Europe, where the majority of conferences are hosted. Accessibility blossoms for everyone from carers to wheelchair users to those with dietary requirements or mental health struggles who no longer have to choose between health and career. Then there is the carbon costs of travel; an area that impacts every single life on this planet.
This is evidence in spades that our response to poor online experiences should be “let’s experiment to improve” not “let’s conference like it’s 2019”.
Scenes from the virtual reality space used in “IR2022: An Infrared Bright Future for Ground-based IR Observatories in the Era of JWST”, hosted at JAXA. The main talks were held on Zoom and also GatherTown, but virtual reality was used as an alternative poster and networking spot, including a room showcasing models and videos of JAXA missions. Area developed by “The Future of Meetings” (TFOM) team.
Why virtual reality?
Firstly, VR tackles the biggest criticism of online meetings: presence. With all-surrounding three-dimensional visuals and basic body language, interactions with people in virtual reality feel very natural. It is genuinely easy to strike up conversations with meeting-goers in front of their poster, or just while exploring the virtual space.
Secondly, the only limit to how you present your data in VR is your imagination (and admittedly, some coding).
If you want to discuss the sampling method of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars, or JAXA’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft on asteroid Ryugu, how about a discussion around a 1:1 scale model? For that matter, why not hold the presentation on Mars or Ryugu, visualised from the real data? If you want to take a look at the structure of the galactic center, well let’s go. Tell me that isn’t better than even a beach towel in your Florida conference swag.
OK, maybe sounds interesting. But there are problems, right?
Yes, but let’s first boot a few myths.
Scenes from an outreach talk given in virtual reality on JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. Virtual environments included a recreation of the interaction space at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo, the mythological underwater palace in the tale of Urashima Taro, and the surface of asteroid Ryugu, recreated from images captured by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft.
Meeting in virtual reality does not require a high-end gaming PC nor headset. Most VR social platforms are accessible through both a PC and Mac computer, with others extending to tablets and smart phones. While there is a reasonable amount of computer power needed to run these sessions well, I’m willing to bet that the number of people with the necessary capability greatly exceeds the number that can join any given in-person meeting.
That said, the most immersive experience is definitely through a headset. However, price is no longer a major inhibiting factor. A powerful standalone headset (no computer needed at all) such as the Quest 2 is available for about 300 USD. Not pocket change, but a fraction of the cost of attending an in-person meeting. If I were unexpectedly made leader of the Universe, I’d make every institute buy a dozen headsets to loan to their academic staff. And then force people to make tea only with boiling water (seriously, what is wrong with you microwave people?!)
VR sickness can be an issue, but I suspect it’s much smaller problem than many believe. Similar to how the first 3D movies largely seemed to involve you being kicked by a horse on a cinema-sized screen, the VR demos that you may have tried in arcades are designed to shock you. VR social experiences do not throw you off cliffs (normally).
VR sickness can occur in a similar manner to travel sickness due to the disconnect between what your eyes and inner ear are experiencing regarding movement. It can usually be overcome with a few gentle sessions and comfort mode option (e.g. teleporting) available in most VR apps, and will take you less time than trying to find a flight deal that won’t decimate your research grant.
Talk on virtual reality I gave in virtual reality for inception madness at the IR2022 conference. VR platform used here was AltSpaceVR.
The software can be glitchy. Yeah, I don’t have a counter for this one and I admit I would not want to be completely reliant on VR yet for any meeting. The harder you push in terms of what you need from the VR experience (e.g. capacity of people, complexity of the model etc) the more challenging it will be for the software. This is of course true for any new technology, and reliability and capability will improve as people experiment.
It’s also true that the design of custom 3D models and scenes takes time and resources. But the technology is there and a surprising amount of ready-to-go material, such as virtual conference venues and a wide collection of models (including telescopes and spacecraft).
Do in-person meetings have a future? Honestly, I might relegate them to the roll of department journal clubs: useful for day-to-day drive, but ultimately not the place to share results with the community. I might be wrong: in case it’s not obvious, I like VR a lot! But I do think VR is worth considering as a serious leader in the future of the scientific community.
Presentation of scientific results and the resulting discussion is universally recognised as an essential part of the research career. Yet, over the last 20+ years, the only change in conference presentations has been the shift from hand written overheads to powerpoint slides (sometimes of the same handwritten overheads). When you consider that the “supercomputer” in my parents’ day has a fraction of the power of the calculator I took to high school 25+ years ago, this complete negligence to push the boundaries of scientific discourse is obscene.
Does VR solve all our diversity and accessibility problems? No. But two years on Zoom has shown that it already tackles the issue better than an in-person meeting, and it’s a developing system. Moreover, I believe VR offers the opportunity to go beyond in-person, and bring the next generation of scientific meetings up to the level of the research we are presenting.
Keep it in mind for your next meeting.
Other more legit commentary on this topic:
Nature Astronomy: Forging a path to a better normal for conferences and collaboration
The Future of Meetings (TFOM): the team can offer advice and feedback on using virtual meeting spaces.