Virtual conferences can help save the world
Conference travel emits serious carbon
Floods, wildfires, hurricanes, drought—it is no wonder that U.N. Secretary General António Guterres recently said, “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived” (Bisset, 2023). Climate change is a full-blown planetary emergency that demands immediate action.
One systemic action with a big positive impact involves reducing the number of in-person conferences each year. According to a 2016 study by the Events Industry Council, approximately 85 million conference trips were taken annually in the United States before the COVID-19 pandemic (Oxford Economics, 2016). That travel emits about 170 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (Gattrell et al., 2022; Klöwer et al., 2020), or about 3% of the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the United States each year (EPA 2023). In 2023, 80% of that travel had already resumed, and we’re on track to match or exceed pre-pandemic levels (Oxford Economics, 2023).
Cut carbon emissions and improve inclusion
We can reverse this trend with a moderate yet powerful idea: replacing in-person conferences with virtual ones every other year. This would cut conference emissions in half. And it would have additional benefits beyond carbon reduction: By significantly lowering the costs and effort for participants, virtual conferences are more accessible and inclusive than in-person meetings, particularly for early-career professionals, non-profit organizations, and other folks who may not have funding sources to cover their travel expenses.
Virtual isn’t quite there yet
The problem is that virtual conferences aren’t quite there yet. Those held in the pandemic era were mostly disappointing to attendees and organizers. Day-long series of sessions were overwhelming, many presenters simply fell into a didactic mode, and there was little or no relief from “Zoom fatigue.”
The missing piece: informal networking
Those early virtual conferences were strongest in terms of formal learning, through presentations and workshops, but they mostly failed to provide the informal, unstructured learning opportunities that conference attendees often find so valuable. In-person meetings are full of hallway conversations, coffee breaks, cocktail parties, exhibitors’ halls, mealtimes, and entertainment events that promote a sense of belonging and help to sustain professionals in their fields. Such informal networking supports the spontaneous sharing of ideas and perspectives, the development of meaningful professional relationships, and the chance to initiate cross-organizational collaborations.
Moving among small groups during a conference’s Coffee Chat in the SpatialChat platform.
We believe that virtual conferences can be structured to come far closer to meeting the goals of informal learning, community building, and career advancement that are high priorities for many attendees and organizers. Such improvements would go a long way toward persuading conference organizers to embrace an every-other-year-virtual model.
Every day, new virtual platforms and features are being created, some of which address this need. However, we still have a long way to go in making virtual spaces comfortable for social networking so that attendees can easily mix with peers and round out the full conference experience.
Join us at CCI to identify effective virtual conferencing platforms, and design activities and social norms that we can deploy to meet each conference’s specific goals. (Upcoming blog posts will highlight advances in these areas.) Together, we can make virtual conferences educational, socially engaging, and exhilarating!
Josh Gutwill is Co-Director of the Clean Conferencing Institute.
