Dear Colleagues,
Here is an interesting post by Colin Marshall that just appeared on The Daily Nous web site. The Daily Nous is a philosophy blog and discussion list. Their notes are always interesting, and often applicable to other fields. Prof. Marshall proposes that more departments make an organised commitment to managing at least 15% of their hosted seminars and presentations by videoconferencing.
It seems to me that this is quite sensible for some kinds of talks and presentations. It’s likely that we can’t or won’t cut Face-to-Face conferences entirely. For some single-session presentations and seminars though it seems to me that presenting over FaceTime or Skype works well. When a two-hour presentation requires an airplane trip and at least one night in a hotel perhaps two this offers environmental benefits while reducing costs and making life easier.
A couple years ago, I did the first, three-hour session of a research writing workshop for PhD students at Politecnico di Milano by FaceTime. A week or so later, I flew to Milan for five days of intensive, day-long workshops. It was simple and effective to do the FaceTime workshop. Based on that experience, I’d be happy to do similar talks and short workshops sitting at home.
Videoconferencing would allow for a great more exchange between and among design schools and doctoral programs without straining the environment or departmental budgets.
It’s something to consider.
Yours,
Ken
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http://dailynous.com/2019/06/20/flying-less-videoconferencing-guest-post-colin-marshall/ <http://dailynous.com/2019/06/20/flying-less-videoconferencing-guest-post-colin-marshall/>
Flying Less, Videoconferencing More
Guest post by Colin Marshall
Philosophers know that we should drastically reduce our contributions to climate change, and that our frequent flying isn’t helping. Shifting away from in-person job interviews at the Eastern APA was a great first step, but it shouldn’t be our last one.
So here’s a thought, which probably isn’t original to me: could departments and conferences commit to having at least 15% of their talks via videoconferencing?
Of course, it’s often much better to have a speaker there in person, just as there were real benefits to APA interviews over Skype interviews. Informally hanging out with other philosophers can be one of the highlights of the job, and networking can make a huge difference in one’s career.
But there are some other real benefits to having more remote talks. For one, it saves money and time. For another, and more importantly, it increases the number of people who can participate as speakers, since quite a few philosophers cannot travel for personal reasons and/or find some of the social aspects of in-person talks debilitating. I’m not the only one who feels intense social anxiety at APAs.
Right now, it seems there’s some stigma against remote participation—I think many people wouldn’t see doing a talk using videoconferencing as a ‘real’ colloquium. But if enough departments and conferences jumped in, that stigma could go away. And if we made this sort of shift, it would make it easier for other academics (and our students) to do so as well. So there’s the potential for a non-trivial impact here.
I mean this as an invitation for discussion, and I hope that any departments or organization already doing things along these lines can take this as a chance to share. (There’s also the topic of what to do as individuals, such as buying carbon offsets, but it seems worth focusing on the institutional level as well.)
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Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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