Science these days is a high-tech enterprise. Research uses cutting-edge equipment and techniques. Publications are going electronic. But one thing hasn't changed much—meetings. For most scientists, the payoff of the job is still traveling somewhere to present their work orally in person. There's nothing quite like seeing the faces and answering the questions of a roomful of people who are really, really into what you're doing. But geologists are trying easier and cheaper ways to meet, online. These promise to change other types of collaboration, like seminars and task forces.
Online Meetings: The First Attempt
In 1998 researchers on two separate continents held a scientific meeting live on the Web. It was rudimentary, but like the Wright brothers' first airplane, it did the job. In Toronto, a group of specialists at the Geological Society of America (GSA) annual meeting held a seminar with half the audience sitting 20,000 kilometers away in Adelaide, Australia. The subject was "Understanding Groundwater in Arid and Semi-Arid Environments of North America and Australia," and the 1998 GSA International Internet Symposium had to make some compromises.
First, it was not a videoconference; the phone line alone would have cost around US$5,000 an hour, not to mention the hardware. Besides, the record of the meeting would be impossible for most scientists to access after the conference.
Second, the talks were delivered on video—shown simultaneously at Toronto and Adelaide. This was a new thing for almost all of the speakers. And it does seem, looking around the Web, that scientific video "papers" are rare. Problems stemmed from the use of retail-grade cameras, the incompatible video formats of the two countries, and the projectors needed for the audiences. And naturally, the VCR projector in Canada crashed the system when it failed 10 minutes before the session began. But the scientists persevered.
Third, the group's discussion after each video was conducted live over the Web with Microsoft NetMeeting software, using projected computer video and little ordinary computer microphones. The audience of about a hundred people strained the system. "At some points, there were problems with audio quality and understanding the questions and discussion," the session organizers reported in GSA Today. And there was the problem of sticking to the schedule, like trying to end a telephone conversation. "The convenors could not simply tell the audience that the authors would be available for informal discussions during the coffee break," they wrote. "This was especially difficult when an international discussion had just heated up and become interesting."
NetMeeting was chosen because it's free, and also because the scientists were already using it for one-on-one talks between continents. "We have found that half-hour conversations about research using NetMeeting are much more effective than months of e-mails," the organizers wrote, "because, unlike e-mail, this communication method is spontaneous and immediate." And the organizers had an answer for anyone who might say they tried to do too much. "They may be correct, but we favor Einstein's quote, 'Anyone who has ever made a mistake, has never tried anything new.' . . . We think that the 1998 GSA International Internet Symposium was successful as an experiment in an area that will become commonplace in teaching and research in the future."
Nevertheless, the second attempt at a Web-based meeting was canceled in 2000.
Online Meetings in the 21st Century
A decade later, almost everything has changed. Most top universities have videoconferencing (telepresence) rooms available, but adequate tools for any kind of Web collaboration are found on any laptop.
First, there is Skype, the free software allowing people to converse over the Web.
Second, there is podcasting, the production of recordings that combine images and audio. For a grassroots example, try the PodClast series of geological conversations, launched in April 2008 and accessible through the GoodSchist blog.
Third, webcams and computer projectors are cheap and ubiquitous. The 1998 meeting could be easily reenacted today, but if anyone is doing this at science meetings, I haven't heard about it. However, many talks given at meetings are being broadcast on the Web these days. Here are some from the GSA. The only thing missing is a way for the remote audience to participate.
Web Seminars: Two Web Cameras and a Microphone
Tools like this are too good to save for special occasions. In 2008 Paul Wessel of the University of Hawaii used Skype and podcasts to bring guest speakers to eight sessions of a graduate seminar on advanced plate tectonics. The speakers simply sat in their offices, ranging from Australia to Norway, while the students watched their presentation on a projector and talked with them using a webcam and microphone. The experiment was documented in the 28 April 2009 Eos, and the eight sessions are available on the university's Web site.
The participants had only good things to say about the experience—even the Norwegian lecturer who phoned in from his office at 10:30 pm local time. Although the speakers didn't get to be in Hawaii, neither did they have to fly there and back. And the students got to speak with the very authors of the papers they were studying.
Wessel told Eos readers, "With the possibility of Skype talks and seminars becoming part of mainstream educational efforts, brace yourself for an in-box full of e-mail invitations to participate in future remote presentations."
PS: The next step, I suppose, would be for these seminars to go on YouTube for anyone in the world to enjoy. Scientific content is burgeoning there, served up by established science agencies and passionate amateurs alike.
