HACKER Q&A
📣 chrisBob

How is there not a good online conference company?


With the current virus outbreak I am seeing a lot of conferences canceled. Why isn't there a good system for putting these online? I am planning to skip WWDC this year, and I feel like they could replicate most of the conference online.

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?


  👤 chrisBob Accepted Answer ✓
- poster sessions with a way for people to see the available posters and discuss them with the poster presenter

I completely forgot poster sessions which are a large part of most scientific conferences


👤 mhdhn
OMG, how do classes run with such sh*t SW? I've been taking classes that are considered "state of the art" and using Adobe Connect. What an absolute backwater of neglect!

👤 VieEnCode
There's an early-stage company called hopin working in this space:

https://hopin.to

Even beyond the coronavirus, events and conferences may be increasingly looking into this option as an element in carbon footprint reduction.


👤 helen842000
There is! HeySummit is really nice.

👤 kull
As much as I am pro remote at work, things I enjoy about in person conferences are visiting a new city and attending sessions and presentations I would probably skip if available online (I can watch it later, but it’s never gonna happen).