Much has been said about how crazy the current time is and how (un)eventful the present year has been, contrary to what we would have had imagined in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has played spoilsport on all aspects of life and academia and scientific research are definitely not the resilient ones. Organizations that had spent half of the previous year planning for this year’s scientific meetings and conferences have been left in limbo, only to either completely cancel them or move them over to the next year. But what if an institution is brave enough to go about their usual stuff and have a conference with over a thousand attendees, with the slight difference being that this year the conference is being conducted entirely online. Yes, not slight, but a big difference. The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) has willingly accepted the challenge of having their annual conference, Plant Biology 2020 (PB20) online. This conference would, in my perception, be a harbinger of several such in the future.
The question of why attend PB20 stems from the question of why attend scientific meetings at all. Conferences have always been the watershed moments in many scientific works and legacies. Digressing a little from plant science, the celebrated theoretical astrophysicist, Prof. S. Chandrasekhar’s whole scientific endeavor was shaped by an incident that he faced at a scientific meeting in 1935. A recent blog post by Prof. Tom Bennett (University of Leeds) about a collaboration that contributed to one of his publications rightly drives home the point of how important scientific meetings are for fostering healthy and vital collaborations.
So, how is PB20 important? It’s a known fact that ASPB is not only an ‘American’ society as the name suggests but unites plant scientists around the globe. Thus, PB20 offers a rare occasion to meet people from other parts of the world, albeit, virtually. And the mere fact that a virtual meeting of such a humongous size is conducted should kindle the interest to join the bunch.
One of the biggest challenges for the organizers this time around will be to give an in-person feeling, which is the most crucial and defining aspect in any scientific meeting. For this purpose, the organizers have proposed to arrange “chat rooms” and “video meet-ups” for people to brainstorm. Would it give a feeling of real conversation is something for us to wait and see? No, register and see!
Workshops are another aspect of PB20 that needs emphasis. The subject matters range from those sometimes considered non-scientific, but which definitely affect how research is conducted (equality, inclusion, etc.) and hardcore scientific concepts (genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9, machine learning, etc.) to what are sometimes considered “soft skills” (a guide to scientific illustrations, career guidance, etc.). These are not mere “topics” but represent an institution that is socially and scientifically open, learning and evolving with time – something that’s for every one of us to learn.
One unquestionable advantage of having virtual meetings is that the recordings of the talks are available to be revisited later; in this case, ASPB provides access to the talks for up to one year after the conference. Hopefully, that should be the icing on the cake!
It is not an exaggeration to say that this virtual meeting could encourage other organizations to move their events online. In fact, this has been a widely discussed aspect due to the potential environmental costs associated with thousands of people flying across the globe (https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/05/why-some-climate-scientists-are-saying-no-flying; https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.02.022079v2.full). The current pandemic has advanced it and ASPB has embraced it. And it needs our support.
Meet you all at PB20!
