'Last year, on a regular cloudy day in Falmer, I was
asked to be part of the organising committee for the Corpora
and Discourse
conference for 2020. I did not think twice – this was an incredible, rare
opportunity for me to be involved in a linguistics event of such international
scale.
But then the Covid-19 pandemic
happened.
So, too, did the conference.
In this blog post, I reflect on my experiences of
organising a major international academic conference in the midst of a public
health crisis.
My name is Dario Del Fante and I am a PhD candidate in
Linguistics at the University of Padua, Italy. I spent the previous year at
Sussex as a visiting PhD student, where my mentor and supervisor, Charlotte Taylor, is based. My job on the Corpora and Discourse organising committee
consisted mainly of helping to set up the website and checking all of the video
presentations before uploading those on the website.
We were initially going to hold
the conference at the Sussex campus with social events in the city centre, but
when the Coronavirus pandemic started its fate grew more and more uncertain. We
were at a crossroads: cancel the event, or restructure it. We went for the
latter; it would have been such a pity to abandon our project. We had also
considered postponing it for the following year, but it would have then
overlapped with other conferences that had already been scheduled. Above all
else, however, was the principle behind our decision: to resist. We thus
decided to turn it into a digital conference. Firstly, we had to focus our
efforts on facilitating public access by making some improvements to our
website, such as having more digital space to ensure that we could upload large
video files – this turned out to be the most important factor. Secondly, we
needed to correspond with people who had already had their papers accepted and
inform them that we were making substantial changes to the conference’s format
and structure; we asked whether they would agree to proceed, as well as if we
could help them in any way – to our surprise, very few decided to withdraw
their papers.
My personal highlight throughout
this experience was the early career researcher zoom hangout. At first I
honestly did not have high expectations as I was of the mind that a hangout
could only constitute meeting and chatting with people in person, however
contrary to my expectations it was an immense success; an authentic exchange of
ideas and experiences could easily be had as people by this time had already
become familiar with zoom software. Moreover. I found that this solution helped
bypass the awkwardness that can often arise with face-to-face social
interactions.
I also want to mention the winners
of the conference awards. Mark Wilkinson (Lancaster) received the price for the
project which showed greatest methodological innovation or
reflexivity. James Balfour (Lancaster) got the prize for the project with
greatest potential for impact. Kate Barber (Cardiff) was judged to have presented
the best project, by a student researcher, addressing a socially relevant
topic. Katherine Kavanagh (Cardiff) was awarded for best adapting her
presentation to the online format. Personally, I particularly appreciated the
ability of Katherine at redesigning and reshaping her presentation for an
on-line audience. All presentations remain available on the conference website.
The conference in numbers-
- · 130 posters and papers presented
- ·
250
attendees from 30 countries
- ·
700
website visitors
If you are planning to organise a conference, but then
have second thoughts and consider postponing or cancelling it, think again – an
online conference is so much better than you would expect: no geographical
restrictions, and the reduced costs make it more accessible to younger
researchers. My only advice is to think carefully about your website; it is
really important to invest time and money in a very good one that can be easily
accessed by guests and has the capacity to host multimedia content created by
the presenters.
Anyway, I honestly hope to see you
all to the next Sussex conference, whether that is in the digital realm or in
Falmer!'
Comments
Post a Comment