Dear All,

Thanks for your replies. I want to point out that Colin Marshall is not suggesting that we substitute videoconferencing for all travel and meetings, but a limited subset. The term “videoconferencing” doesn’t mean substituting video for conferences — it refers to a technology. In Marshall’s terms, we are videoconferencing when four colleagues at remote locations meet on FaceTime or Skype.

Let me distinguish between the technology — videoconferencing — and the event of a conference.

We use physical, real-time conferences for many purposes. Not all of these are worth the cost, at least in my view. In many fields, people use conferences as an opportunity to travel. Many people also use conference presentations as a way to demonstrate that they are doing research on the premise that a peer-reviewed conference paper demonstrates research activity for departmental and university accounting. The conference itself is often negligible as far as the presenter is concerned — I have had the experience of attending some conferences where universities send doctoral students to present simply to give them experience, while the anxiety-laden students spend all their time prior to their own session rehearsing papers in hallways and on the lawn outside rather than listening to other papers. (It’s hard to get an accurate figure, but it was my sense that many people went sightseeing after they presented.) Some universities now require PhD students to present at conferences or to publish as a condition of completion, though it is my view that this is an inappropriate requirement.

For full-time academics who present to demonstrate research activity for accounting purposes, conference papers never develop into journal articles. And the quality of some papers at huge conferences is open to question. Don Norman discussed this problem for our field in a well-known blog post titled “Why Design Education Must Change.”

https://jnd.org/why_design_education_must_change/ <https://jnd.org/why_design_education_must_change/>

For many reasons, conferences are not always the best way to spend time or money. But I’m not discussing conferences in general, and I don’t suggest dropping them. I merely suggest that we substitute videoconferencing — the technology — for some travel and some presentations.

I appreciated Lubomir Popov’s comments. For many purposes, writing is better. We have on one or two occasions used the PhD-Design list for well organised, asynchronous conferences over a period of several days. These worked very well.

One can also write journal articles. 

I am a bit uncomfortable with the notion of blended conferencing where 50 or 100 people show up live for an event that supposedly involves several thousand people. But that kind of thing is also related to the supposed mega-conferences where people attend and present only for the signal effect. In essence, speakers at such conferences seem to be paying money to conference organisers to present simply for the purpose of demonstrating to someone not present that one has done research that a peer review committee accepts as worthy.

For myself, I rarely attend large conferences. I did not do so even when I had relatively unlimited travel funds. This wasn’t an environmental decision at the time. It was a factor of my sense that large conferences weren’t a good investment of my time.

In contrast, I agree with Susan Hagan about the value of small conferences. These remain quite rewarding. For those who attend, the opportunity to engage in direct, focused conversation on a topic of mutual concern can be genuinely valuable. For conferences organised as single-track events where all participants meet together for the full conference, a conference opens dialogue as a result of thinking, talking, and working together. These kinds of conferences seem to work well at sizes running from a dozen or so people up to about 80 participants.

A friend of mine once accused me of elitism and secrecy for organising such conferences from time to time. He stated that I was being exclusionary and undemocratic. It was my view, and it still is, that useful purposes are served by genuine conversation over several days. The organising principle of selecting people based on already demonstrated interests and focus rather than what is often a cursory peer review seems to be quite reasonable. I usually sought variety — gender balance, representation from all levels of academic rank (including promising PhD students), and geographic spread. To me, the format worked well — and all the speakers received attention and shared interaction with all the other speakers. That meant that promising PhD students, recent post-docs, lecturers, and junior professors had the same time, space, and attention as the most distinguished people present. Perhaps I should have undertaken a formal project to track the resulting interactions and networks, especially those after the conference, but I was more interested in the topic of discussion. The format itself and the long-term results would have been worth investigating.

But I didn’t share Colin Marshall’s thoughts to speak against all conferences, and not even to argue against conferences of any kind. He was suggesting, as I was, that SOME events can be done by video rather than travel. I’ve turned down speaking opportunities in recent years because I simply can’t manage as much travel as I once did. In contrast, my video experience at Politecnico was pleasant and easy. I gave a version of my Research Writing Workshop. [A copy is attached.] The benefit of videoconference technology was that I could give a real talk, discussing and deepening points that one might certainly read — and everyone in the room could ask questions, develop issues, and interact with me. 

What struck me as interesting about Marshall’s proposal is very simple. For presentations and talks, it allows people a middle ground between declining an invitation or traveling. It’s not quite the same as a live talk, but the costs are far lower — for the environment, for the host, and for the speaker. I still make a few trips every year for face-to-face meeting and live presentations, but I’ll be 70 this September and I can’t travel as much as I once did. In contrast, I’d be happy to repeat the very useful experience of my live remote presentation at Politecnico.

I can imagine many kinds of situations in which videoconferencing offers a valuable alternative to travel. Imagine, for example, inviting a specialist to teach a semester-long weekly seminar for doctoral students without the cost of bringing him or her for a full semester. That would enable a PhD program in The Netherlands or in Texas to invite Ali Ilhan as a visiting professor in statistics without bringing him from Istanbul for a full semester. Sabine Junginger could teach organisation design in Oslo once a week without leaving Lucerne. Even adjusting for slightly more difficult time differences to Sydney, a school in Germany could host a frame creation seminar with Kees Dorst.

Given today’s changing world situation, it also solves the increasingly common difficulty of visas for scholars who must travel to the United States from nations where visa permission is sometimes restricted or constrained. That doesn’t help where intense collaboration or live meetings are the goal — but it can make life easier for many kinds of presentations and lectures.

A recent article by Bertrand Badre on the economics of climate change makes it clear that we must explore and adopt large scale solutions if human civilisation is to survive in a reasonably recognisable form. 

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-change-reform-of-capitalism-by-bertrand-badre-2019-06 <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-change-reform-of-capitalism-by-bertrand-badre-2019-06>

This kind of small-scale change won’t make a dent in a global problem of that size. 

Nevertheless, with 22,000 universities in the world today, if we and our colleagues in many fields could manage to reduce travel by 15%, that would make a measurable if modest difference.

For some kinds of talks and seminars, videoconferencing is an excellent solution. For other things, writing works best. And for still other purposes, nothing can replace face to face meetings, seminars, and conferences.

Ken 

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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