You hate online conferences because 1. You hate conferences. The actual conference parts are boring. And academics get away with boring conferences because people like the other stuff. 2. There's no travel, no having dinner with friends. Those are the parts of conferences you like. The problem isn't, therefore, online conferences. It's folks not putting in the work of creating actually fun and generative etc. events. This was never a priority for on-site events because you didn't have to care to sell tickets. But you need to do it online or else the whole thing is boring. The problem isn't Zoom. It's hosts who refuse to put in the work of learning how the platform works, and ensuring all participants have what they need for success, technology-wise. The problem isn't that it's online. It's that organizers don't build in ways to connect participants beyond formal sessions. They don't usually even think about non-presenters as participants at all, because there's not much meaningful participating for them to do. This is no fun and it's not inviting. Online conferences are the future and we do actually have the tools to make them awesome. But it's going to take a lot more time and money (to pay for expert help) than most seem to want to spend.
(Instead of flying organizers all over, putting them up in fancy big city hotels for a week, and having them eat expensive and often bad food for every meal you could spend some of that money in making your online conferences not suck.)
@FromPhDtoLife Number 2. I go to mingle and discuss in the margins. The talks I worry less about and if interesting I'll just read the paper. I don't feel as chatty online (and a free bar always helps on this front).
@FromPhDtoLife Appreciate the splaining but no, people hate online conferences because they like both 1 and 2 , and online there is no 2 and the quality of 1 is lower
@FromPhDtoLife The fatalism, lack of imagination, and ableism in the replies here are astounding. Online conferences ARE the future, for health, inclusion, equity, and environmental reasons.
@FromPhDtoLife I disagree I think the problem is that it is online and that it is the same as the problem with online teaching - knowledge is much better communicated informally in person