The (virtual) reality of running an online conference

Alison Karley, DIVERSify Project coordinator and Agroecologist at The James Hutton Institute, UK, reflects on the Intercropping for Sustainability conference

In the beginning…When we started planning the ‘Intercropping for Sustainability’ conference, 18 months before it was due to be held in January 2021 in Reading, we were blissfully ignorant of the dramatic change to our lives that was lurking around the corner. The conference was due to mark the culmination of four years of intercropping research in the DIVERSify and ReMIX projects and the wider intercropping community…

The motivation for holding the conference was to understand where general principles are emerging from research about intercrop design and practice, learning from ecology where the theory of biodiversity and system function is well established. We also aimed to identify where new thinking can help us to understand the mechanisms underpinning resilience to environmental change, and where research can support innovations in breeding, machinery development and crop management advice. Exciting!

We had to adapt…Back in September as it became clear that the restrictions to keep the pandemic’s second surge at bay were going to make any physical gatherings impossible we took the decision to take our conference online. We were determined to go ahead with the meeting, not only because it was promised as an output to the Horizon 2020 funders, but also because we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to present and discuss our research with collaborators, colleagues and stakeholders.

Let’s go virtual….To achieve this using an online format, representatives of the DIVERSify and ReMIX projects worked tirelessly with the Association of Applied Biologists (AAB), and the online conference portal Speakeasy, to convert our planned two-day physical meeting into a three-day virtual event. We sifted through abstracts, arranging them into nine themed sessions with 43 talks, 38 poster presentations and live discussions, running talks in parallel to make sure each session lasted no longer than two hours with a good length screen break between sessions!

We were relieved that our invited speakers (Antoine Messéan, John Vandermeer, Bernhard Schmid and Maria Finckh)* agreed to continue working with us to deliver their talks – they had no way of knowing what they were signing up to when we first invited them to the event. The poster presenters and speakers were incredibly responsive when we asked them to upload their posters and pre-record their talks several weeks before the conference. Researchers are used to revising and refining their presentations right up to the last minute, and so we were impressed at how everyone was willing to prepare their contributions well in advance. Thank you.

Behind the scenes…The live sessions of the conference presented different challenges, but the session hosts stepped up to the mark. Each session of pre-recorded talks was followed by a live Q&A session, chaired by members of the scientific organising committee*. This involved the speakers and the chairs entering a ‘Zoom room’ briefing and communications check 30 minutes before the talk session ended, which went live at the end of the talks. The countdown to going live was a slightly nerve-racking and odd experience – a lurch of the stomach when we were aware that everyone could see us, but we couldn’t see the audience and had no way of knowing who was out there. However, once the questions started streaming into the live chat box, we settled into our chairing roles, directing questions to speakers and keeping the discussion flowing until the session went off air.

The second day of the conference involved an evening discussion panel aimed at farmers and others interested in the practicalities of intercropping. The discussion panel members*, represented crop breeding (Eveline Adam), farming (Andy Howard), and intercropping research/advice (Martin Weih, Robin Walker) seemed unfazed by the online format. Thanks to their good preparations and expert chairing by Caroline Drummond, this session run by LEAF UK was one of the conference highlights; with lively interaction between the audience and the panel members, who responded thoughtfully to questions from the audience and were generous in sharing their insights into intercrop research, innovation and practical application. Watch this space for the session recording – coming soon!

The final session of the conference provided an opportunity to show delegates a preview of the final episode of DIVERSify’s video web series produced by project partner Taskscape Associates Ltd. Researchers are increasingly turning to film-making both to gather evidence from different perspectives and communicate it to different audiences, greatly extending the number and types of people reached by their research than by academic research papers and presentations alone.

The film led to an open discussion about the recommendations from our intercropping projects (more to follow on this shortly as well!) about the opportunities for using mixed cropping in farming and downstream value chains, about knowledge-sharing mechanisms and incentives that might support wider use, and where our future research priorities should lie.

The conference closed by highlighting the opportunities for continuing our work on intercropping, allowing it to be further developed for reducing inputs, supporting agrobiodiversity and diversifying farming systems. Achieving these aims is critical for the future sustainability of agriculture and the livelihoods and industries that depend on it. This is something that we reflected on throughout the course of the conference with contributions from our plenary speakers highlighting how cross-disciplinary and systems thinking as well as transformative change are likely to be key to the successful application of intercropping research.

On reflection…I think we managed to achieve our original aim: the conference showcased many examples of innovations in intercropping research and practical applications. We heard talks and saw poster presentations of experimental trials and theoretical modelling showing how sowing patterns can be optimised for intercropping, and how species and variety combinations can be selected to give the best outcomes (such as for nutrient management or weed control).

We heard about novel analytical methods being used to identify crop traits for breeding and to understand the effects of these traits under different conditions of environmental stress. We learned about developments in machinery and precision tools to maximise intercrop performance, and where new tools have been produced for decision support, as well as novel methods for promoting collaboration between researchers and farmers.

What did we learn from this virtual conference experience? That it wasn’t as daunting as we first thought, mainly due to the combined expertise of the AAB team and Speakeasy, who worked extremely hard to guide us through the planning process, kept us organised with timings, and responded to the delegates’ many enquiries about registration, abstract and paper submissions, and using the conference portal. We are so grateful for their support.

The conference delegates also helped to make it a success – they were willing to play their part in getting the event up and running, and then participated enthusiastically by attending talks, posting questions and stimulating discussion in the poster and Q&A sessions. After many hours spent preparing my own pre-recorded talk, I have great respect for all the lecturers and teachers out there who are doing this every day – it takes so much more effort than presenting live. There were one or two technical glitches, of course – no meeting is immune to that – and some aspects of going virtual will never replace the social gains from meeting face-to-face (where was the bar?!).

But there were some benefits too: we had over 150 delegates, some of whom would not have been able to attend if it had been a physical event. We were glad to find a way to bring together people from across the globe while keeping everyone safe. While this was brought about by unexpected adverse factors, the experience has readied us for the future of international conferences, providing new methods for interaction and wider opportunities to involve more people, while minimising our environmental footprint.

Finally…a sneaky addition from the conference organising committee, who would like to highlight that the conference’s success was in no small part due to the very diligent, skilled and practical leadership of Ali Karley as she is too modest to write about this herself! Many others* played important parts but success depends on someone coordinating it all with unwavering enthusiasm and commitment – cheers Ali, we’ll see you in the bar one day!

*Speakers and organisers included:

Invited speakers
Dr Antoine Messéan, Institut National de la Recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement, France
Professor John Vandermeer, University of Michigan, USA
Professor Bernhard Schmid, University of Zürich, Switzerland
Professor Maria Finckh, University of Kassel, Germany

Discussion panel
Caroline Drummond (Chair), LEAF UK
Martin Weih, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Eveline Adam, Saatzucht Gleisdorf, Austria
Andy Howard, Bockhanger Farms Ltd, UK
Robin Walker, Scotland’s Rural College, UK

Scientific committee:
Jean-Noël Aubertot, Institut National de la Recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement, France
Inger Bertelsen, SEGES, Denmark
Charlotte Bickler, Organic Research Centre, UK
Rob Carlton, Association of Applied Biologists, UK
Alison Karley, The James Hutton Institute, UK
Beatrix Keillor, The James Hutton Institute, UK
Adrian Newton, The James Hutton Institute, UK
Maria Carlota Vaz Patto, Universidade Nova do Lisboa, Portugal
Alastair Simmons, Taskscape Associates Ltd., UK
Emily Trivett, Linking Environment and Farming, UK
Christoph Scherber, The Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Germany
Kairsty Topp, Scotland’s Rural College, UK
Christine Watson, Scotland’s Rural College, UK

Conference providers:
Carol Millman, Association of Applied Biologists, UK
John Andrews, Association of Applied Biologists, UK
Ashton Togneri, Speakeasy, UK

| AUTHOR: Ali Karley |