How to organize an online conference -- Lessons learned from Cool Stars 20.5 (virtually cool)

TL;DR

This paper shares practical lessons from organizing a successful virtual conference, highlighting effective tools, scheduling challenges, and low-cost solutions based on the experience of the Cool Stars meeting.

Contribution

It provides a detailed account of organizing an online conference using multiple integrated tools, offering insights and recommendations for future virtual event planning.

Findings

Virtual conference was highly successful and well-received.

Poster sessions and social interactions via Gathertown worked effectively.

Low-cost, multi-platform approach minimized overhead and resource requirements.

Abstract

The virtual meeting was a success. Several people told us that this was "the best virtual meeting they had seen so far", which, a year into the pandemic and without a commercial provider in the back, is a great success. The biggest point of criticism was the timing: We had programming from UTC 17:00-22:00 (evening and night in central Europe, afternoon on the US East Coast, during the day in South America and on the US West coast, but in the middle of the night for Asia and Australia). There is no good solution, but at least some variation in session time might go a long way to make it easier for all to attend at least some sessions. Feedback also indicates that the schedule was too compressed. Poster sessions and social contacts with the tool Gathertown worked out really well for all that used it. Our way of combining several services (Zoom for plenary and break-out rooms, Zenodo for uploading and viewing posters and proceedings, Google forms for registration and abstract submission, gathertown) allowed for a very low-cost meeting with little overhead (total cost: 600 $ for gathertown, zoom was provided through an institutional subscription, just 4 people on the LOC).