When our abstract was accepted for the 2020 World Congress of Bioethics in Philadelphia, we prepared our poster for a standard presentation – a one-hour session in a cavernous conference hall, hoping to meet a few people. That was in January. As the global pandemic progressed, it was uncertain if the conference would move forward. When the decision came, the timeline was compressed and we had less than two weeks to adapt our standard poster into a digital format. The format would now be a digital poster accompanied by a ‘podcast’ audio recording that played when participants viewed our poster. Our team jumped into action. While Liz was located in Durham, North Carolina, Paige O’Leary, collaborated from Toronto, Ontario, and Professor Kearsley Stewart, contributed from Chicago, Illinois. We worked day and night via Zoom, FaceTime, email, and text to complete our poster and record a presentation in time.
The International Association of Bioethics (IAB) conference, with 338 poster presentations and over 400 participants, successfully met via live broadcast and Zoom for three days. Speakers and participants represented our global community, with a multitude of languages, time zones, and topics of presentation. Discussions emphasized solidarity, intersectionality, and the concept of “global is local,” all within the setting of COVID-19.
Surprisingly, Zoom only crashed once, there were very minimal delays in timing, and zero breaches of security occurred. The IAB conference serves as a novel experience of an up-and-coming method of research communication. Further, this mode of conference attendance increases accessibility to participants by removing barriers of travel and cost of attendance. While the conference lacked the traditional benefits of in-person networking and collaboration, we believe all future conferences will at least have some element of online participation. Two main drawbacks to the digital format were the inability to get feedback and the inability to access any posters outside of the conference. While we opted-in to receive feedback via email or phone calls during the event, we were not contacted by any participants nor were we able to know which participants had viewed our poster. The poster was only available to conference attendees during the meeting and for approximately three months following the conference.
As noted in the closing of the conference, the location of the future IAB conferences now becomes very limited in order to support required streaming technology. Certain countries, especially in Africa, have yet to be selected to host an IAB conference and this additional technological requirement leaves their chance of selection even lower. The IAB conference traditionally alternates between being hosted by a low or middle-income country and a high-income country. Even though accessibility increases through online broadcasting, high-income countries will now take the lead in hosting conferences, yet again. This leads us to question: is this the future of research communication?
Digital poster best practices:
- Clarity is key! A virtual poster presentation means that listeners do not have the ability to clarify any questions with you in real time.
- A catchy title makes all of the difference. Given the format of the presentation website, people can only preview the titles, not a visual of the poster. Without an attention grabbing title, people will skip right over you.
- It may be time to rethink the traditional scientific poster style. A 2D poster makes engaging with participants nearly impossible. If conferences continue electronically, innovations in research poster presentations are required.
What we learned while adjusting quickly to an online conference:
- Due to the short transition time, and the reduced timeline, our team had to rapidly respond and maintain open communication until our poster was complete.
- Our team had to be mindful of each other’s locations and time zones, as we were in three different places!
- We had to ensure that our audio recording was particularly engaging. Opting to add audio improves accessibility and allows us to practice our presentation skills. A pre-written script was helpful, but it was important to keep it conversational. We were able to record our using built-in microphone technology on my laptop.
- The traditional dimensions of a research poster posed a challenge – would people be willing to zoom-in or download our poster to see it more clearly?
- The main disadvantage of the online format was the lack of question session and networking. We were unable to receive feedback from experts in the field.
2020 Aimone E, O’Leary P, Koris A, Mususa D, Manyau S, Dauya E, Ferrand RA, McHugh G, and KA Stewart. Confidentiality and Consent in Health Research With Youth Living in Zimbabwe: Ethical Challenges for the Responsible Conduct of Health Research Using Social Media in Africa. International Association of Bioethics: World Congress of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, 19-21 June, USA.
