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So, let’s start with basics, what is a virtual conference?

By definition, a virtual conference is an event that brings people together for the exchange of information and discussion without actually requiring them to be present physically in the same location. Practically speaking, it involves conference material and in- formation being set up in a software environment, usually a World Wide Web @VWW) site, and registrants ac- cessing this through a networksuch as the Internet. They can then examine, read and respond to the presented material in much the same way as at a real-life conference.

How do delegates gain access to the conference, and how is this controlled?

Delegates access the conference by simply reaching a location on the WWWvia an address called a URL(uni- form resource locator). For example, to reach M C M S EC-l (the Electronic Molecular Modelling and Graphics Society Conference to be held in October 1996; Box I), users point theirbrowsertohttp: //bellatrix. pcl.ox.ac.uk/mgms/ Registrantsmay be required to enter a user identifi- cation and password to access confer- ence material on the W W W or to log in to a discussion facility.

Is the conference material continuously available to attendees who can log in at any time?

Yes, the conference material can be made available continuously so that attendees may view material in their own time. Additionally, new material, obtained for example from multi-user projects, can be added on an ongoing basis. The opportunity to amend presentations and material on a continuous basis is rather unique to virtual conferences.

How do attendees navigate around the conference?

For ECC-1 (the First Electronic Glycoscience Conference, see Box I), we used the idea of providing maps containing rooms as might be found at a regular conference centre. The rooms corresponded to all the differ- ent types of material present such as ‘abstracts’, ‘job centre’, ‘message board’, ‘bar’, etc. (see Fig. 1). The point-and-click maps and other but- tons made it intuitively easy for users to navigate through an amount of in- formation that would have threatened to overwhelm them in unstructured form. Additionally, keyword search

Virtual conferences

Barry Hardy and Deborah Sweet

An interview with Barry Hardy, conducted in May and June 1996

by e-mail and on 12 June 1996 at a MOO site. The development of the Internet has

provided the opportunity of conducting meetings and conferences electronically.

In this interview, Barry Hardy outlines the main principles involved in staging and

attending a ‘virtual meeting’, and issues an invitation to the readers of trends in

CELL BIOLOGY to become involved in organizing the first international electronic

cell-biology conference.

engines and indexes can provide users the ability to search and find refer- ences to a topic of particular interest to them.

What types of presentation are there and how are they prepared?

The main form of presentation is to present text and graphics via W W W pages. The presentation can be an elec- tronic poster or a full research paper intended for refereeing, discussion and permanent publication. Addition- ally, trade shows can feature exhibitor displays on company products and services. Finally, lectures can be held where text and/or audio is delivered by the virtual speaker who then fields questions from the registrants logged into the interactive environmentwhich could be a MOO (multi-user dimen- sion object oriented) where registrants have characters that can move, speak and take notes.

Typically, a W W W presentation in- volves the preparation of hypertext markup language (HTML) containing text, tables, figures, graphics and other multimedia formats [e.g. three- dimensional (3D) images and movies] and hyperlinks between them. This is then converted to a suitable format (e.g. graphics interchange format, or GIF, for graphics files) and transferred by file transfer protocol (ftp) to the conference organizers for incorporation into the presented material. As this kind of preparation is relatively new for many people, it can involve additional effort over that for a real-life confer- ence. However, the current develop- ment of authoring tools is making the task easier for the user. We also feel it is important to provide guidelines and ongoing advice to conference partici- pants and a personally staffed elec- tronic hot line for problem solving.

If articles are intended for publication, how and where does this eventually take place?

In a physical or electronic journal. Actually, there are plans for future conferences to be linked specifically to particular journals for publication purposes.

What mechanisms are there for communication between delegates?

In a room in the virtual conference centre, delegates may interchange dis- cussion comments in real-time conver- sations that may be seen by all ‘pres- ent’ in the room. Alternatively, they may choose to make private remarks to another participant that other users may not see, i.e. a ‘whisper’. A mess- age board can be used to allow regis- trants to leave and checkfor messages from other registrants through a con- tinuously updated W W W page, and social-interactive spaces such as a MOO or Java-based coffee shop provide the capability for informal social interac- tion. Finally, if an official transcript is desired, it can be recorded based on on-the-record comments made by delegates. This recording can then be posted for viewing perhaps by the conference delegates or by others who were unable to be present themselves.

Is there any opportunity for company exhibitions as well as scientific presentations? What about job-hunting?

Yes, this is possible, and it is also very important for a successful event to in- volve business and industry. In the meetings I have been involved in or- ganizing, we have hosted trade cen- tres as part of the conferences where exhibitors can advertise their prod- ucts, provide in-depth information on their background and effectiveness

Barry Hardy is at the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK OX1 342. E-mail: harry@ bellatrix.pcl.ox. ac.uk

trends in CELL BIOLOGY (Vol. 6) September 1996 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd 363 PII: SOS.%8924(96)60033-6

MISCELLANEA

and also field questions from regis- trants. A Virtual Employment Centre provides the capability to receive resu- mes and job postings and to act as a broker for virtual meetings and inter- views between potential employers and employees. This perhaps could es- tablish at least the basis for a follow-up real-life meeting and, hopefully, the all-important job offer!

How many virtual conferences have you been involved in?

I became interested in international virtual scientific conferences about 18 months ago and have now partici- pated in two events and have been, or am, involved in the organization of six others (see Box 1). I estimate there will have been about ten major inter- national scientific electronic conferences staged by the end of 1996, which is a small number as such conferences are a recent phenomena. I expect the number to rise rapidly over the next few years and would not be surprised if it rises into the hundreds before the millennium. In that sense, the devel- opment is revolutionary, although I do not want to hype this too much!

How long does a conference normally last?

The ECC-1 conference (1 in Box 1) that we held in 1995 ran for four weeks. Two similar conferences we are running in the autumn [EGC-2 (Ref. 2) and the First Electronic Mol- ecular Modelling and Graphics Society Conference, MCMS EC-l (3 in Box I)] will run for two weeks as four weeks appeared too long to retain concen- trated interest. Nevertheless, these virtual conferences run for longer periods of time than regular confer- ences owing to the intention that virtual conference participation fit in with other demands of a registrant’s regular work day. One could also imagine shorter virtual conferences that focused on narrower subject areas or that complemented regular conferences as adjunct events - we are working on developing events like this too. For example, we are hosting an electronic poster session in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (4 in Box 1) in June, which will run for a week, with just a few scheduled dis- cussion sessions of a couple of hours each.

How many people normally participate?

From a handful to a few hundred is definitely feasible. At ECC-1, we had 550 registrants, and I expect we will have certain kinds of con- ferences that involve many more. We might even have a ‘virtual Woodstock’ kind of event where many users flock in vast numbers be- cause of the attraction of a topical subject. It would be exciting to be at such an event when it occurs, al- though it will probably not be a scientific conference.

What kind of feedback have you received?

We have surveyed users after the event and received many positive remarks on the enjoyment and use of the event. We also have received plenty of useful healthy criticism, which is allowing us to improve the quality of future developments through soft- ware modification or adaptation. For example, we are producing more user-friendly interfaces for the regis- tration facility and the discussion environment.

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Are there any specific areas that you still feel need improvement?

Our philosophy towards a virtual conference is that it is an attempt to build an environment that reproduces the capabilities of a real-life conference to as high a degree as allowed by the available technical constraints. It is dif- ficult to match up to the benefits of real- life interaction, but I feel compelled that we try. Hence, working on issues of interactivity and the social and psychological aspects of such events are, I believe, very important current challenges for us. In addition to such attempts at mimicry, the software en- vironment also allows for possibilities not easily realizable at a regular real-life conference. For example, a registrant may listen to a speaker, read the pres- entation in multimedia form on W W W pages and, additionally, interact with complex 3D data sets. Development of these aspects, and others that are not so readily obtained from real-life conferences, will help to ensure that virtual conferences become established on the scientific meetings agenda.

Are there any plans for setting up discrete length (e.g. two months) virtual discussion groups as well as the conferences themselves?

There are many different types of Internet discussion groups based on newsgroups, mailing lists and other formats. However, these avenues often have difficulties, including information- overload, reluctance by some to make public remarks in these forums, lack of interactivity or lack of moderation. The groups can work well in some cases, and one can imagine online journal clubs for example - interest has been expressed in doing this, and I work with a number of people in this way using regular MOO events for group or board meetings. However, I currently prefer the idea of doing the shorter, more focused events as I think there is a real difficulty holding atten- tion over the longer time-frames. I see our task as providing a focus-point where quality discussion can be held on-line within the constraints of tech- nology, the complexities of human nature and busyness of scientists’ lives and schedules.

What do you see as the main advantages of a virtual conference? Are there any disadvantages?

The advantages of virtual confer- ences include ease of accessibility, con- venience, ability to multi-task or com- bine with other tasks and schedules,

FIGURE 1

Floor plan of EGC-1. The First Electronic Glycoscience Conference (EGC-1) was held in a virtual conference centre with several different rooms. This is an image of the three-dimensional (3D) clickable floor plan map that could be used for moving between the various conference areas. A number of 2D maps were also available for navigation around the conference site. These maps are still accessible at the site listed for the ECC-1 in Box 1.

the ability to combine and streamline conferencing and publication, and the capability to display data in rich and insighfful formats. The overall cost of attending is also low, and will be- come even lower as the hardware and software required to prepare presen- tations and attend become more widely available.

The main disadvantage lies within the definition of the core word ‘virtual’ itself. Perhaps this is like a real-life con- ference in some ways, but it is still a long way from the complex rich in- teraction that occurs between human beings in real life. That is something for us to aim for at least.

Do you think virtual conferences will eventually replace real-life ones?

I believe that in the short-term they provide complementary alternative forms of communication. I do not think they will replace all real-life confer- ences, but I do think people will make the choice to mix virtual and real-life conferences, and attendance at physi- cal conferences might be reduced, therefore, in the future.

Are there any plans for a cell-biology virtual conference?

We would like to see a cell-biologyvir- tual conference held soon (i.e. in 1997). As a first step, we need to assemble a scientific board around which it could be structured. We would like, there- fore, to issue an invitation now to any cell biologists interested in participat- ing to contact us, either directly or through trends in CELL BIOLOGY.

I am attracted to the idea of design- ing a virtual conference centre around the structure of a cell so that meetings and contents of particular relevance to certain parts of the cell, such as the nucleus, the Colgi, the plasma mem- brane, etc., would be held in virtual organelle areas of the constructed cen- tre, although obviously it would only be possible to cover selected topics in each ‘organelle’. This idea is a little wacky but it does sound like fun and I believe that more fun in science makes for better learning and research!

Further reading: HARDY, B. (1995) Chem. Des. Auto. News 16,16-23 HARDY, B. (1996) Trp3 6, 1 O-l 1 HARDY, B. et al. (1996) Trends Biochem. sci. 21, 31-33 ANDERSON, T. Int. 1. Educ. Telecommun. (in press) also available at: http://www.ualberta.ca/ -tanderso/papers/vc/vcintro.htm

The 1997 First Electronic The 1997 First Electronic t t Conference in Cell Biology Conference in Cell Biology

Cal for organizer5 Cal for organizer5 Barry Hardy is interested in Barry Hardy is interested in

assembIing an advisory committee assembIing an advisory committee of cell biologists who would be of cell biologists who would be

willing to assist with setting up the willing to assist with setting up the first international cell-bidogy first international cell-bidogy

! !

electronic conference in 1997. electronic conference in 1997. Anyone interested in participating, Anyone interested in participating, at any tevel, should contact either at any tevel, should contact either

Barry Hardy Barry Hardy (barry@bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk) (barry@bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk)

or the trends in CELL BIOLOGY or the trends in CELL BIOLOGY editorial team. editorial team.

trends in CELL BIOLOGY (Vol. 6) September 1996 365