Last week, I participated in an online conference
presented by ILETA (International Legal English Trainers’ Academy) and
organized by Sofia Parastatidou.
Curiously, it was the best online conference I have ever attended precisely
because it was organized so differently from an in-person conference. The
factors that contributed to its success were the limited but highly coherent
content, the small number of participants and its short but flexible schedule.
In practice, the conference left the impression of having physically attended
without all the logistics.
In
general, online conferences, however economical and convenient they may be, suffer from issues of downtime, lack of intimacy and mental fatigue.
As most online conferences have only one track and try to reach the largest
potential audience, many of the lectures are irrelevant to a
certain percentage of the participants. In a physical conference, this dead
time is ideal for networking but online conferences do not offer such
opportunities. A more serious issue is that the audience in larger remote
conferences is literally a sea of faces. It is very clumsy to interact with
other participants during the conference. As many cultures consider efficiency
and timeliness virtues, the host keeps the schedule moving more or less on
time, leaving very little time for open discussions while everybody is present.
The consequence is a large quantity of intellectual material but very few connections.
In this
conference, the lectures related to a narrow topic, specifically legal
language, and, most importantly,
complemented and supplemented each other. Each lecturer went into depth on an
aspect mentioned by a previous presenter, thus creating a complete picture. For
example, I spoke about the rules of Plain English in legal writing while Anna Sobota
and Anna Setkowicz-Ryszka, respectively, analysed its actual implementation
using statistical methods and showed how the difference between how attorneys
and linguists view proper legal language. The presentations built on each
other.
This
online conference highlighted the strength of distance learning. It would have
been completely impractical to bring together all of the participants as each
of us lived in a different country. Thus, Zoom allowed all of us to
participate. More importantly, given the relatively small number of persons
involved, everybody could easily see each other's faces, ask questions, make
comments and have their say. There was more than enough airtime for everybody.
Clearly, less is more in online events.
The
strangest aspect, surprisingly positive, was the lack of a firm time structure.
The host ran it on Italian time, meaning she let discussions continue until
they died a natural death. Thus, we had the opportunity to discuss issues
raised in the presentation before going on to the next segment. The “price” was
that there were only a limited number of lectures in the day-and-a-half long conference.
However, the benefit is that it is far easier to retain the content. As an
analogy, seeing one museum in a day is memorable while visiting three museums
in a day creates a muddled picture. Again,
less was more.
In
summary, the ILETA conference virtually felt like an in-person conference. It
provided both content and interaction, feeling like a conversation in a cozy
salon rather than a distant event. The keys were highly focused content,
similarly engaged persons and flexibility. It was a perfect day, showcasing the
potential of a properly organized online conference.
