I think a popular system would include:
- Live streaming of sessions with feeds of both slides and the presenter
- Group discussion and panel sessions where a series of people present
- A way to chat in questions, or have participants speak their questions with followups.
- An overall site with the schedule and links to all of the components.
- A logistics service that mails out conference packets
- ? A chat-roulette type service to let you connect with other conference members. Some conferences already provide a live-stream, but you lose out on the 1:1 connections that you get from these events. There should be a way to replicate that.
- A conference-specific store
- A way to wait in line for special 1:1 services
This is a bigger project than I can handle, but seems feasible. Limiting the conference to the 100-10k people that register would make all of the technical challenges much easier, but it could also be scaled up to include people who wouldn't normally attend. Someone should be all over this right now. Is there a good service for this that I couldn't find?
I completely forgot poster sessions which are a large part of most scientific conferences
Even beyond the coronavirus, events and conferences may be increasingly looking into this option as an element in carbon footprint reduction.