For better or worse, most of us are gaining a great deal of experience with attending virtual seminar, workshops and conferences. To be sure there are advantages to the virtual conference, but to truly maximize the opportunities and experience we have assembled some tips for you (and ourselves!) and some information and tips specifically for #shellfish21.
First off: just as a reminder all times listed in the schedule are Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) Please be sure and adjust for your time zone. Most calendaring applications will adjust the time to your locale, but it is best to check.
General Tips
We have found that it is best to treat a virtual conference as you would the in-person conference as much as possible. This is especially the case with your calendar and task load. It is best to try as much as possible to prioritize the time to be truly present in the moment and engage with the presentations and workshops. Use the tools provided (Zoom chat, Slack, and other networking tools as available) to regularly connect with other attendees, presenters and sponsors.
As with an in-person concurrent session conference it is suggested that you peruse the schedule carefully before the meeting begins to identify the presentations and sessions that are most important to you to see and block out your calendar. Most of the presentations for #shellfish21 are pre-recorded and will be available until April 10th, but the Q&A sessions are live sessions in Zoom, so it is important for the presentations that matter to you most, that you view them prior to the Q&A sessions.
The Plenary, Q&A, Social and Workshop sessions will be live Zoom sessions so make sure to block those slots out as well.
When you are watching alone, it is very easy to “multi-task” and get distracted. To help prevent these productive distractions, we suggest reducing notifications, making the conference video full screen and grabbing a notepad and pen for note taking.
The live session provide an excellent opportunity for interacting with others and having any questions answered directly by the presenter. Again, a good idea to block out that time and minimize distraction to make the most of the opportunity.
The advantage of the pre-recorded presentations and poster session is you can watch and rewatch the material (well, up till midnight EST of April 10th). But remember while you can ask questions in the Slack channels of presenters, not all presenters will be in Slack, but all should be in the live Zoom Q&A for their session. So be sure to watch any that are important to you before that sessions Q&A period.
Social Media Campaigns
Please feel free to continue the discussions in your social media circle using the hashtag #shellfish21 on Twitter, Instagram, Slack, Facebook etc… but also please keep in mind please do not share screenshots of other presenters pre-recorded materials without the authors/presenters permission. Some of the meeting presentations will be on preliminary results etc. and should be treated as such.