Back Talk

Column Editor: Jim O’Donnell (University Librarian, Arizona State University) <jod@asu.edu>

We always stay at the Courtyard Historic District for the Charleston Conference, and over the last several years I’ve paused to consider the ironic landscape visible from the hotel porch: to the left, the greenery of Marion Square and the tall column surmounted by a statue of John C. Calhoun — then, turning to the right, 50 yards away in the other direction, the serene front of the venerable Mother Emmanuel AME Church, where the vile Dylann Roof did his worst in 2015.

This year, I was looking forward to returning to view the scene again, this time without Calhoun’s statue, which was removed in June, and to thinking about the historical wrongs of the place and the opportunities for our time. But now comes the inevitable 2020 news — no face to face conference, but instead Charleston goes virtual. The indefatigable Leah Hall Hinds and the visionary Katina Strauch will surely make this an event to remember. Keeping our spirits up (I’m a member of the conference directors group), we decided that maybe we’d call this the second annual 39th annual conference — and I suggested that perhaps we could invoke the spirit of Jack Benny.

But it won’t be the same. So, what can it be? We’ve all been on a lot of Zoom meetings this spring and I’ve thought a lot about what we do with them and what might be done with them. Of course, they’re not the same thing as being there. But it’s important to remember that the world of online meeting has one great advantage: it’s much

cheaper and easier for people to get to an online meeting than to make the glorious trip to Charleston. We worry a lot about equity and access in our professional lives and should welcome this virus-given opportunity to expand our conference-going in ways that provide advantages often before denied to many: young colleagues starting out; people without official positions but who may need the contacts and professional development all the more; and people (probably more of them this year than ever) whose institutions cannot afford to send them flying about the country. We had a flood in one of our ASU library buildings a few years ago (sprinkler system massive malfunction), and it may be my proudest achievement that I walked into that building at 6:30 a.m., squishing across the carpet, looked around, and said, “This is an opportunity!”

I think I’d be right to say the same thing now. Let’s not get into a position of sighing and thinking that what we’ve been given is a pale shadow of reality. It’s our new reality, hybridizing what we can do online and face to face, and we should seize on the possibilities.

So what do we do? I know that our colleagues are actively pursuing a way of presenting the online conference that gets well beyond the limitations of current online meeting software — WebEx, Go To Meeting, Zoom, all seeming so magical back in March when we moved to this space, all now seeming so limited. Zoom has dominated the landscape this year because they were best in breed and ready to scale up, but we’ve all learned about its limita

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Think of the dreary silence that prevails as people log in to a Zoom call, with everybody suspiciously eyeing the screen and the participants list, checking to see whether their microphones are muted, and shifting uneasily in their seats. We need nothing more acutely for the success of online interaction than a technology that facilitates all of the informal interactions before and after and around the sessions — greeting old friends, making new ones, asking strangers where they’re from or if they’ve ever heard this speaker before. The virtual conference needs to be a conference, not a series of TV shows.

That will require not just better software and good conference organization, but imagination from us conference goers. We’re easily willing to spend most of a week of our lives going to Charleston and back, so shouldn’t we also be willing to focus our attention on the online conferences we do attend? Clear out a day, close the door to our Zoom chamber stocked with treats, and really dig in to what we’re hearing?

Well, sure, but how can virtual conferences make it easier to do that, easier to stay focused? One way forward is to make conference related materials (slide decks, full texts of papers, more documentation on projects) available in real time as the online conference session is beginning. Think of all the times you’ve gone away from a conference presentation meaning to look up that report or that article you just heard about — well, those should surely now be readily available, a click away, as soon as they’re mentioned. And wouldn’t it be grand if the conference software platform helped you keep track of what you’ve attended and the links, so that you get to the end of the conference time with a coherent package of takeaways, not just a conference bag full of scribbled-over bar napkins, handouts, and the like?

One truly important point: when it’s conference time, it’s show time! Like me, you’ve probably spent the last several months studying the architecture and decoration of a lot of your colleagues’ spare bedrooms, studies, and sometimes backyards. Zoom virtual backgrounds offer a little diversion (I found out from her continued on page 85