Conference Organizers Need to Plan for Infectious Disease Outbreak

Tom Worthington speaking at NITC 2018

Those organizing international conferences in the next few months need to have a blended, or fully online, option available, due to COVID-19 Coronavirus restrictions. One option is to offer venues distributed around the world, which delegates can travel to locally. They will be able to interact face to face with colleagues. They can participate in local presentations face-to-face, and those from other venues via a video link. The moderator at the speaker's venue can relay questions submitted thorough the conference's chat facility, and queue audio questions.

A conference can be run 24 hours a day, with three venues spread equally around the world's time zones, to "follow the sun". With this format each venue takes turn running the conference during their daylight hours, handing over at sunset.

As someone who speaks at international conferences several times a year, I would miss the  travel to interesting places and meeting new people. But sometimes it can be a relief when you travel for many hours, to get to the same old place, and see the same old people. ;-)

ps: Not that I will be refusing invitations to interesting places just yet. I just accepted one for June.