Remaining online "forever": HuffPost article

[polly_mer]

I want to agree with the premise behind https://www.huffpost.com/entry/accessibility-covid-19-pandemic_n_5ea6e11dc5b6a30004e57bc3 .  Yes, it turns out we can do more online/phone to accommodate more people with complicated lives.

However, I can't possibly be the only person who has noticed how much worse online-only is for activities that were admittedly time-consuming and resource-intensive in person so that tradeoffs were regularly made.

Yes, the main purpose of a meeting still happens via conference call with shared screens.  However, we're missing much of the casual interaction we would have had in person as we arrive early (it's a random amount of time from my office to the meeting room) or chatting as we walk back to our offices.  Conference calls with more than a handful of people are far, far less productive than when we all met together with necessary side conversations easily achieved by leaning over.

The occasional interruption by kids, pets, and others is cute.  Having an entire hour meeting such that, every time Person X unmutes to speak, we hear the chaos in the background at his house is draining and annoying, especially for those of us who took special actions to greatly reduce the chaos on our end for that hour.

Yes, I know exactly the trade-offs for a large babysitting bill as part of the travel time to attend a professional event where the point is to talk with many people in a freewheeling conversation.  Individual phone calls by appointment are not at all good replacements for that situation, even when I will know within rounding of everyone at the event.

Totally online conferences that are mostly presentations aren't very appealing.  When I was early career, the talks were important to me as a way to learn about the topic differently and quickly.  Now, most of the benefit to a conference is in the hallway/restaurant discussions with people who are eager to talk about our shared interests that have few experts at any of our home institutions.  Sure, I can call up anyone I know to converse on a specific topic of shared interest, but that's not an adequate replacement for the serendipity of joining a group that unexpectedly is discussing something I've been musing.

The underlying message appears to me as a plea to not have to incur the professional opportunity costs of choosing actions that are objectively less good and thus much less desirable to the general relevant population.

[stemer]

Well, I can't possibly be the only person who has noticed how much better online-only is for activities that were admittedly time-consuming and resource-intensive in person so that tradeoffs were regularly made. :)

Conference calls in lieu of meetings -in my neck of the woods- have become extremely more streamlined and efficient. No idle chit-chat, no typical gripe and whine before or after. Somehow there is significantly less toxicity! Agenda items are specific and we no longer get side tracked by our favorite deadwood drifting off to irrelevant stories. We are really getting things done in a fraction of the time.

Conference calls with more than a handful of people are far, far less productive than when we all met together with necessary side conversations easily achieved by leaning over.

Not here. During our mega meetings (full faculty), we went through the agenda in an hour of what would have taken in person multiple hours!
During our in person medium meetings (committees and department), every.single.faculty seemed to feel the need to assert their presence (see: "say something") -- but not with online, fast and on task!

I agree with your last point, this is a serious problem. The online conferences fail in the networking department. Their only saving grace is limiting the boondongle effect of some venues. If you don't have something meaningful to present, you don't write a paper just so you get to go to Paris.

[marshwiggle]

Conference calls in lieu of meetings -in my neck of the woods- have become extremely more streamlined and efficient. No idle chit-chat, no typical gripe and whine before or after. Somehow there is significantly less toxicity! Agenda items are specific and we no longer get side tracked by our favorite deadwood drifting off to irrelevant stories. We are really getting things done in a fraction of the time.

This has been my experience so far as well. Just before we went into lockdown, we had one final department meeting that was a mix of in-person and online. The chair noted early on that it was the highest attendance for a meeting in recent memory. It's easy (especialy when you have nowhere else to go) to set aside an hour for a meeting. And it's great that there's much less tangetial meandering.

What I am curious about, and somewhat apprehensive of, is starting off labs (which are by nature somewhat interactive) without any bit of face-to-face interaction. A recorded video is one way, and facial expression and body language help a lot to assess what people are getting long before they are supposed to have something completed.

I do like not feeling required to be in a specific location for specific hours of every day in order to seem "productive". I think in an ideal world, one or two days a week of actually showing up in person would maximize my productivity and satisfaction.

[Parasaurolophus]

I would like it if we kept on live-streaming the big, fancy lectures that people in my field sometimes give (usually in the UK). Not conference talks, and not colloquium talks. But the big, fancy addresses (presidential addresses to various societies, etc.). It's nice to drop in on these even when they're far away.

And sure, it would be good if we allowed more people the freedom to work remotely. That also seems useful and important.


Meetings? I'm not sold. The few I've had have been pretty time-wastey, minus the commute, and I think more would have been achieved in-person. But my sample so far is very small. We'll have our first online department meeting next month, so we'll see how that goes.

Teaching online sure is awful, though. I feel completely alienated from the fruits of my labour. And my students are guaranteed to do much, much worse in the upcoming all-online summer semester.

[apl68]

Totally online conferences that are mostly presentations aren't very appealing.  When I was early career, the talks were important to me as a way to learn about the topic differently and quickly.  Now, most of the benefit to a conference is in the hallway/restaurant discussions with people who are eager to talk about our shared interests that have few experts at any of our home institutions.  Sure, I can call up anyone I know to converse on a specific topic of shared interest, but that's not an adequate replacement for the serendipity of joining a group that unexpectedly is discussing something I've been musing.

Tell me about it!  Professional meetings and conferences that include opportunities to talk shop face-to-face with colleagues are very important, especially to those of us who work for small, isolated institutions and get very little of that.

Our annual state professional association conference scheduled for this fall has already been reduced to an online-only event.  Sounds like it will be little more than a collection webinars.  As far as I'm concerned, it's already been as good as cancelled. 

[Aster]

I don't know about "more efficient". More "checked out" is what I'm seeing.

Half of our very large department was technically logged onto the videoconference call we recently made, but they had video and audio both disabled. Rarely was there any evidence that any of them were even listening to the meeting. I believe that many of them just logged in so that their "presence" could be documented. Sort of like students who sign the class attendance roster and then walk right out of class.

I find videoconferencing incredibly inefficient. People interrupting each other because you can't easily read body language, people talking over each because they can't easily read body language, people not talking because they don't want to potentially interrupt someone else because you can't easily read body language.

It's pretty much exactly like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ

[Vkw10]

A group I meet with regularly carries on side conversations in chat, with many agreements to "talk and walk" after the meeting. The actual meetings are fairly efficient. After the meeting, people talk on phone while taking short walks. Not ideal, but partially replicates the post meeting chat dynamic.

Online conferences are much less valuable than in person. Besides the lack of networking with potential research partners, speakers seldom get feedback that helps develop good presentations into better articles and everyone loses the 3-5 days of immersion in topic that often sparks ideas.