Paper detail

How to organize an online conference

On January 13th 2020, the inaugural Photonics Online Meetup (POM) brought together more than 1100 researchers to discuss the latest advances in photonics. Or rather, it didn't, because the meeting was completely delocalized with the speakers, organizers, and attendees scattered across six continents and hundreds of locations, connected via a video-conferencing tool and social media. Despite this "delocalisation," the meeting retained many characteristics of a traditional conference: invited and contributed talks with follow-up questions and discussion, and a poster session. However, unlike with traditional conferences, all attendees avoided air travel, high registration costs (it was completely free), CO2 emission, or visa issues. Surely the impact on families was minimized as well, though participants in inconvenient time zones had to wake up early or stay up late. In this Comment, we highlight the key steps that enabled this event, offering tips and advice, to aid the organisation of similar Online Meetups.