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Meeting in Cyberspace
| Article
# : |
11744 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1994 |
2,108 Words |
| Author
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Tom O'Haver
Tom O'Haver is professor of chemistry at the University of
Maryland, College Park, where he teaches and does research on
analytical spectroscopy and instrumentation and the
applications of computers in education and research. |
First, you clear your calendar. Then you fill out and send in the registration forms and fees, book a flight, make hotel reservations, arrange for someone to cover your duties at work, and pack your luggage. Don't forget to get someone to feed the cat, pick up the mail and newspaper, and water the houseplants at home. When you get there, you have to locate ground transportation, register, find your way around an unfamiliar convention center, and look for a decent place to eat.
You'll have to arrange your schedule carefully, because so much goes on at the same time. It's likely that you won't be able to hear all the talks you might be interested in or talk to everyone you'd like to meet. After each talk, in principle, there is supposed to be time for questions and discussion, but in practice there is usually not enough time. By the time you think of a really good question, the talk is over and the speaker is lost in the crowd. And finally, when it's all over, you--or your organization--will have to pay for it all.
Attending a conference can be a complex, expensive, and time-consuming undertaking--sometimes even a little frustrating. Or you may not even get the chance to attend at all; often the people who are actually involved in the day-to-day operation of an organization cannot afford either the time or the money to attend conferences. Nonetheless, conferences are one of the main ways that professionals and many business people learn what is going on outside of their immediate organizations. Conferences are an important way to get to know other people in the same field, to exchange ideas, describe ongoing projects, share experiences, present project results, and even reach decisions.
Air travel has been a primary enabling technology supporting the rise in the last 40 years of conferences as a major mode of information exchange among diverse professionals. Now, electronic communication is emerging as a new enabling technology that can support the rise of electronic conferencing, a high-tech alternative to a physical conference that can accomplish most of the important objectives while overcoming many of the difficulties.
Reach out and touch . . . a group
Electronic conferencing means using communication technology to allow people to "convene" electronically, without traveling to a common location. The familiar telephone conference call is, perhaps, the closest analogue of electronic conferencing. However, conference calls are
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