I’m attending another online international conference, The Nature of Cities Festival. It’s about reintegrating natural systems into urban environments. It uses one platform—Hubb.me—to register and list events. To attend a session, you click on a Zoom link. Conference plenaries
I had heard of the conference via a New York City eco-arts network’s email and then my friend Robert, now a professor in Nova Scotia, learned of it and sent around the link. (He had organized several such conferences in the early 2000s.) It was his first online conference and he was impressed. As he said, online conferences should continue after lockdown.
(I love the conference logo.)
Notable to this one was an effort to create a “park” in which to mingle between sessions. In reality, it’s on another website, Topia.io. Attendees ranged from a musician in Toronto and an artist in Berlin to biologists in Utrecht and Colombia. There was a bar, a “food truck” sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service (the Columbian led us there; I wasn’t sure why she wanted to go there–virtual food was not on offer). In many ways, mingling is easier than at live events. As with live events, I do find you need to reach out, ask conferees about themselves, make connections, etc. I often find myself in that role.
