Making Opportunities for Social Connections during an Online Conference

The current global pandemic has led to social distancing. One result of that is that many conferences have been canceled, postponed, or moved online. In the past, online conferences have been a bit of a fringe activity. An in-person conference may sell web access where people can watch presentations, but in the vast majority of cases, the online component has been secondary to the in- person conference and has tended to be just a video livestream. And webinars are often similarly conducted as just a presentation. What’s new about the pandemic is that in summer and fall of 2020, really key conferences and the core participation in those conferences has gone online. For the first time, for many conferences, the speakers and the peo- ple with hefty travel budgets are all attending online. And for the first time, conferences that haven’t had an online component in the past are now open to people who might not have had the travel budget to attend the same conference in person with hotel and airfare.