The Executive Summary - 12/13 - 12/17, by Ashton Merk (H-Business Associate Editor)

on conferences, and being hybrid

Last spring, I taught a hybrid course, because I couldn’t stand another term of teaching from my dining room. When it worked, it really worked - I felt like I was able to bridge otherwise impossible boundaries to bring students from all over the world together into a truly shared intellectual space. When it failed, it felt like I was caught between the real and the virtual world, not quite inhabiting either one. I was neither fully present for my students who were sitting right in front of me, nor was I effectively reaching the students who were taking the course from dorms and childhood bedrooms. It was worth it to finally get back on campus, to not have the quality of my teaching entirely dependent on the weather and my wi-fi connection, and especially worth it to give students the flexibility that hybrid affords. But it was also mentally and physically taxing in ways that I still find hard to articulate.

In many ways, it’s been something of a hybrid year. With the arrival of vaccines and the loosening of restrictions, we are caught between a desperate desire to snap back to the world we knew, and the knowledge of the world we inhabit. At least in the U.S., some universities are back to full-capacity, in-person classes, with little to no precautions, as though nothing has happened. Meanwhile, other campuses remain ghost towns or halfway on the verge of a new lockdown. Some companies are back to business as usual - that is to say, in an office; others may never return to the physical space they once occupied in quite the same way. Some archives are open and operating at full capacity; others remain shuttered. We are caught between two worlds, but it’s hard to know which is the real one.

In this moment, it is still unclear what the future of academic conferences will look like. Conferences held in the spring were fully virtual, as we waited nervously for the vaccine side effects to wear off. By early fall, conferences which had been confidently planned for a post-vaccine future had to be abruptly scuttled, with organizers forced to rearrange panels like so many deckchairs. It seems like just as travel begins to feel safe again, a new variable (or variant) enters the risk calculation. By now, we all know that even well-organized virtual conferences can feel a bit lifeless; but the kind of international, in-person conferences to which we had all become accustomed still feel a bit reckless.

The BHC is, I think correctly, planning for a hybrid conference in 2022. I truly want nothing more than to see the BHC reconvene in a place as exciting as Mexico City, but I also know that the only thing we can count on is the persistence of this feeling of uncertainty. Nevertheless, I'm optimistic that the kind of hybrid we're slowly learning how to do will be better than the all-virtual stuff, and the nervous, ad hoc last-minute-pivot-to-hybrid that made the BHC 2020 possible. 

The reason for this optimism is based almost entirely on my recent experience at a conference on antimonopoly, which was held last week at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford. I sent in an abstract knowing full well I would not be able to go to the UK, even if COVID had disappeared the next day - I simply didn’t have enough PTO built up at my new job to take time off work. I told the organizers I’d understand if they wanted to prioritize in-person attendees. They said it didn’t matter, because they were planning for a hybrid meeting - and they kept their word.

There were a few things about this conference that I thought worked particularly well. 

1. The organizers generally kept it simple. For better or for worse, a platform like Zoom, which almost everyone knows how to operate by now, will win out over a more sophisticated option every time. The use of a familiar platform heightened everyone’s comfort level, as we could fall back on pre-established norms and etiquette (e.g. virtual participants occasionally went camera off for brief periods as needed). Because the organizers had left the meeting chat enabled, the virtual participants were also able to talk to each other - these “side conversations” helped encourage connections when the typical garden-variety small talk over coffee between sessions simply wasn’t possible.  
2. This deserves its own bullet - the meeting was arranged around the ordinary human need to take regular breaks. For the in-person attendees, this meant a shuffle down the hall to refresh their coffee; for those of us in virtualworld, it meant a real chance to stand up, stretch, and not look at a screen for a few minutes. As a result, even with an ambitious program, it was actually humane to be in a meeting for that length of time. This was especially important given that the time zone distribution of participants was not ideal – to attend the entire day’s panels, East Coasters had to wake up at 4am, and participants from Asia had to stay awake until after midnight.
3. The technology worked as intended. Notably, there were no technical snafus at any point. This might say something about the technical competency of those involved, but more likely points to overall familiarity with virtual meetings in general by this point. Other technical successes were less visible, but no less important - for example, the in-room audio actually worked well, which I’ve found is quite uncommon.
4. The overall setup made virtual attendees feel like they were equal participants. The camera angle gave virtual participants a good view of the entire room. Credit goes as well to the in-person attendees, who did an excellent job occasionally turning to make eye contact with what must have been a large screen or monitor. As a result, even though I couldn’t be physically in “the room where it happened,” I could very easily imagine the physical space where the conference was taking place. In other words, the whole thing just felt more real because I could see that it was happening, somewhere. 
5. The group was the right size. It was a small enough group (~5 in person attendees, 8-10 virtual) that it was easy to interact and engage directly with other participants. In a strange way, the norms of virtual meeting etiquette gave virtual participants a slight edge when it came to making comments and contributing to discussion. As one of the organizers pointed out, “You all have the ability to raise your hands, but we almost need red lights or something” (to signal when they wanted to speak). 

A few minor observations, from my view as a participant, on how events like this could be further improved:

1. Consider opening the virtual “room” earlier and closing it later. We still experienced the uncertainty of the waiting room and the abrupt “meeting has been ended by host” as soon as the meeting concluded. Perhaps leaving the meeting running for a few extra minutes (both before and after) might have allowed for virtual participants to engage in a bit of small talk with other attendees.
2. Retooling programs for shorter overall days spread out over multiple days. While the program wasn’t overambitious, I believe that there was much more to discuss with the pre-circulated papers that we had. However, further lengthening the day (the conference ran 9-5 GMT, with an allotted lunch) simply wasn’t feasible. By shortening the number of papers given in a day, and spreading out discussion over several days, we could have held a longer and richer conference. By selecting a shorter, 3-4 hour time window (in this case, that might have been something like 10-3pm GMT), organizers could also avoid very late or very early times for participants in other time zones.
3. Virtual participants need a reliable way to communicate with organizers. Thankfully there were no snafus, but if there had been, other than email, there was no clear way to signal potential problems to organizers. From what I gathered, the chat was too small for in-person attendees to read, so it was only useful to communicate among virtual participants.

It’s worth noting that being on either side of a hybrid meeting has its drawbacks. I did have a bit of the fear of missing out, knowing that I was missing the valuable small talk and socializing that happens at the fringes of these kinds of events. But I’m sure that the participants who joined in person might have liked to have a chance to interact with the virtual participants in a more informal way, too.

While I envision hybrid options as a feature, not a bug, of future conferences, I do look forward to a day when joining virtually is a last resort, rather than a first (or only) choice. Until then, I am hopeful that the kind of hybrid we can look forward to is one that only further encourages global, inclusive, and open intellectual communities, that manages to leave some space for the kinds of personal connections we once took for granted.

A few weekend links:

• Business historians weigh in on the supposed crisis of "retail theft."
• in "best of Twitter": This image of a 24-hour potato vending machine.
• Over at Legal History Blog, a 5-part series on the letter of recommendation system.