Facilitating Remote Participation at International Scientific Conferences

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

Effective dissemination of the results of scientific research is critically important to progress in all areas of inquiry. Isolation from one another slows progress, creating expensive redundant effort around the globe. Open exchange of findings is a cornerstone of the scientific community, and for the individual scientist, in linguistics and beyond, participation in that exchange grows more important, but also more challenging, as cutting-edge research becomes both more interdisciplinary, and more international, than at any time in history. The number and diversity of workshops and conferences that active researchers feel a responsibility to participate in is exploding around the world. This is by and large positive, of course, but it also places an increasingly unsustainable burden on many scientists that by all rights should be included in these critical conversations. International travel, rewarding as it may be, is also time-consuming and expensive. For those with disabilities, it may be prohibitively difficult. For scholars from institutions with fewer resources, or from less wealthy parts of the world, finances may derail otherwise sound travel plans. Other commitments, such as those to family, or local academic and administrative responsibilities, further compete for the time necessary to attend meetings. Visa restrictions add to this expense and effort, and sheer geographic remoteness is often sufficient to convince would-be conference attendees to stay home instead. In some cases, technology already exists to allow participants to bridge the travel issue and participate remotely in scientific gatherings. At least in linguistics, however, these technologies, owing in large part to their expense and unfamiliarity, tend to be deployed, if at all, in a limited fashion, around the margins of most meetings. Remote participants therefore miss out on most of the key scientific discussion taking place at these meetings. This proposal presents a plan to pilot, at the upcoming Speech Prosody 2016 conference at Boston University, a suite of solutions that will enable members of the scientific community to participate in conference activities as fully from remote locations as from the host location itself. Data will be collected concerning the usability and attractiveness of each technology, and will be used to devise a future budget model whereby such remote participation strategies can one day become self-funding. Specifically, this project will implement remote participation solutions for the following scenarios: 1) discussion and Q&A during oral sessions; 2) remote presentation of posters; 3) active attendance and interaction during poster sessions, and 4) "passive" attendance at oral and poster sessions, both in real time, and after the fact via digital archives of the proceedings. Solutions include streaming video, stationary iPads at posters, and mobile telepresence robots. A dynamic post-conference proceedings package featuring video archiving and asynchronous discussion forums will promote sustained interaction after the conference. Ultimately, this works aims to move not just linguistics, but other fields as well, toward a standard of remote participation that can become the norm at meetings, workshops, and conferences around the world.