Maintaining scientific discourse during a global pandemic: ESO's first e-conference #H02020

TL;DR

This paper describes ESO's first virtual e-conference during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its setup, participant feedback, lessons learned, and the potential for e-conferences to enhance scientific discourse, inclusivity, and environmental sustainability.

Contribution

It presents a detailed account of organizing a large-scale virtual scientific conference and discusses its benefits and challenges, offering insights for future e-conferencing practices.

Findings

High participant engagement with 200-320 researchers daily

Positive feedback on virtual format and inclusivity

E-conferences can be more effective and climate-friendly

Abstract

From 22 to 26 June 2020, we hosted ESO's first live e-conference, #H02020, from within ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany. Every day, between 200 and 320 researchers around the globe tuned in to discuss the nature and implications of the discord between precise determinations of the Universe's expansion rate, H0. Originally planned as an in-person meeting, we moved to the virtual domain to maintain strong scientific discourse despite the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. Here, we describe our conference setup, participants feedback gathered before and after the meeting, and lessons learned from this unexpected exercise. As e-conferencing will become increasingly common in the future, we provide our perspective on how e-conferences can make scientific exchange more effective and inclusive, in addition to climate friendly.