[OSM-talk] SotM 2020 - Move to virtual conference

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 26 March 2020, Christine Karch wrote:
>
> the deadline ended a month ago. At the moment it is not planned to
> call for additional submissions. We will ask the speakers of
> "accepted talks" first, and then see what the feedback is. If we have
> too much cancellations, we would make an additional call. But this is
> not planned at the moment, just a thought.

As a bit of broader background:  The participants of physical presence 
conferences like SotM - and thereby implicitly also those holding the 
talks at such conferences - largely belong to one of the following 
groups:

* wealthy individuals from around the world who can afford the visit to 
the conference from their own pockets.
* employees of companies who pay for them to visit the conference.
* members of the local community from where the conference takes place.
* in small numbers as scholars: Other individuals deemed worthy to be 
supported in visiting the conference by people with money and who are 
willing to ask for such support and subject themselves to scrutiny for 
this.

One of the biggest benefits for having a virual event instead of a 
physical presence event would be that presenting something there would 
not be limited to the above mentioned groups but would be possible for 
a much larger range of people with much lower barriers of entry.

That does not mean the idea presented by Christine as a substitute for 
the physical presence conference cancelled in the current situation is 
bad.  But i would call it more a virtualized conference.  It does not 
make full use of the potential the idea of a completely virtual event 
would have.

I would very much like to see more bold endeavours to organize virtual 
conferences and other virtual social events in the OSM community that 
test and make use of all the potential this has.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/