Hi Chris,
I just wanted to chime in on the online conference concept. I like your
bringing this idea up to the surface, and I especially like its potential
for encouraging a virtual kind of face to face networking between candidates
and established academics. Candidates are required to attend conferences for
good reason. Can online help to foster the networking goal?
So, to ground my interest, I hate to say it, but as a candidate, I had to
force myself to seek out established academics because I worried that I
would not have anything of interest to say. (I've set myself up here haven't
I?)
But if certain environments can better do what other environments cannot,
could an online environment encourage those initial meetings better than the
more common conference situations? I have no answers here. I'm just musing
and wondering how it might be envisioned.
Best,
Susan
On 4/5/08 5:50 PM, "Chris Rust" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> edgar wrote:
>> as a suggestion, conferences could include some papers from students
>> who can't afford to travel.
> I sympathise with this but it undermines the main value of networking
> and I think we need to be more creative.
>
> Three ways forward come to my mind.
>
> First, one person's long haul event is another's regional conference. I
> realise that there are problems especially in Australia and New Zealand
> and we are very lucky in Europe but one answer is for that community to
> make sure that students have access to at least one worthwhile
> conference a year in their own backyard.
>
> To complement that there is a lot of scope for consortia of universities
> to run student conferences, we've had some experience of that and it is
> a good way to increase the opportunities to present your work, and there
> is some scope to make them quite broadly interdisciplinary to
> everybody's benefit. My first real academic conference was about medical
> physics and I learned a lot of general stuff that translated into my
> own work.
>
> Finally, we have not really thought hard about online or multi-site
> conferences but I feel that has to be a big development once sufficient
> places have conferencing spaces linked to the grid. Apart from anything
> else academics can't keep on racking up the carbon miles as we do today,
> no matter how much we enjoy it.
>
> best
> Chris
>
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Susan M. Hagan Ph.D., MDes
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
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