Online conference: the differences

Rather than heading to Vienna as I did last year for the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union, I attended its online replacement this year: Sharing Geoscience Online (#shareEGU20).

As everyone knows, online meetings should happen more often because it's better for the climate and because we do have the technology nowadays to make it happen easily. While some (including scientists) have already been taking advantage of this possibility for a while, the current pandemic is forcing almost everyone else to do the same.

As most people, I happen to have been on video calls with a few people to discuss results from my research or plan upcoming measurement campaigns. However, I don't recall participating ever in an online conference before last week.

I thought that I would make a short (and extremely subjective) comparison between the in-person and the online versions of the EGU General Assembly. Let me know in the comments about your own experience with this conference or any other conference that moved online.

	EGU General Assembly 2019 (in person)	Share Geoscience Online 2020 (online conference)
Travel time	ca. 2.5-hour flight from Helsinki to Vienna	< 1 minute from bedroom to kitchen
Carbon footprint	offset on site	negligible
Cost	ca. 2000 EUR (fees, travel, accommodation, etc.)	35 EUR (abstract submission fee)
Early start	8h30	one hour later
End of the day	late	earlier
Coffee	whenever available	sometimes (lot of tea otherwise)
Merch/Goodies	some	none
Technical struggles	it happens	it happens
Small talk	lots	none
Unexpected/unplanned encounters	yes	no
Lunch/Dinner with colleagues and friends	frequent	never
Weather	pleasant Viennese spring	irrelevant
Outfit	formal (presentation day) to casual (other days)	very casual
Schnitzel	2	0
Feeling of being overwhelmed	yes	somewhat