Attending a Conference Vicariously

Conferences are often the highpoint of the academic calendar. Delegates come from far and wide to hear the speakers present the latest findings in research, explain the processes involved in experiments or take part in panel discussions.

However, conferences can come at quite a cost. If you live and work in the UK, then attending an important world summit in Australia or North America will involve a lot of money. More than perhaps what your research grant can feasibly cover.

But fear not. We live in an age where technology can help us overcome the physical boundaries. Let’s take a closer look at how…

Hashtagging

Delegates are usually proud to be attending a conference and what to let the world know. So they get on their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram accounts and start telling the world what’s happening.

Social media posts connected to a single event are usually categorised with a hashtag — the ubiquitous # on social media apps and platforms. For example, only last week the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit took place in California, whose official hashtag was #THEWAS. Searching for this on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram returns a wealth of tweets, posts and snaps from the conference.

Tweets and posts from delegates can give you good insight into the major happenings at a convention. What’s more, you can always contact the delegates directly, by tweeting them or responding to their posts. Ask them a question to find out more about what a speaker is saying or even give them a question to pose to the speaker during a Q&A session.

Livestreaming

The biggest conferences are global events with delegates and speakers coming from all four corners of the world. The organizers are fully aware of the significance they have in industry and academia alike.

For this reason, the most important talks — the plenaries — are often livestreamed across the globe.

You can usually watch these over the internet. Check out the conference website to find a list of which sessions will be livestreamed. Alternatively, get in touch with the conference organizers directly and ask whether any part of the conference will be made available online.

What’s more, with user livestream services becoming more popular, you’ll find plenty of delegates livestreaming the plenaries on their smartphones and tablets using apps like Facebook Live and Periscope.

Blogging

In 2013 the number of blogs in the world was estimated to be at 152 million. With the arrival of Medium and other blogging services on the scene, this figure has surely risen. That’s a lot of people doing a lot of writing!

And some of them will be writing about the conferences they’ve just attended. In fact, more than what you might initially think. So use social media and hashtags to find out who’s been to the conference and see if they’ve got a blog.

Writing up a blog post after the conference has finished often gives the attendee the time to reflect on what was said, provide some analysis and go into greater depth and detail.

Some summits nowadays even take advantage of the growing blog scene and invite bloggers to become “official” event bloggers, using their blogs to report back on what’s happening during the conference. One example of this is the IATEFL annual conference with its list of registered bloggers.

All in all, attending a conference, especially a major one, is an amazing experience. However, it’s not always possible to get there, sometimes because of money, sometimes because of timing. However, you can still take part in the conference by hashtagging, livestreaming and blogging about it.