The 70th edition of the International Communication Association conference was supposed to take place in these days in wonderful Gold Coast, Australia. By the time you’ll be reading this post, you’d probably already know that the organizers decided to cancel the in-person event and to substitute it with a virtual one. A bold move indeed, considering that the conference features 3,000 presentations, spread across 23 divisions and 9 interest groups.
So instead of flying to Australia, every presenter was invited to upload a pre-recorded video of their presentation on Vfairs, an online platform for hosting virtual events. The result, in my opinion, is not bad at all. True, we’ll all miss hanging around receptions, beaches, and hotel bars. On the other hand, I think we’ll have more time to focus on the contents of the presentations: we can watch the videos whenever we want, we can do it from the comfort of our couches and without having to travel for days (literally) to get to the venue. So let’s give this virtual way of conferencing a try because, who knows, it might become much more common and accepted in the future.
Going back to ICA, I did my part and recorded 2 video presentations. In one I talk about the use of the case method at Harvard Business School. The research was recently published in the Journal of Management History. I suggest you visit this page if you want to know more about it and download the pre-print, open access, version of the paper. While in the second presentation I talk about a research project I conducted with colleagues at SFU’s Genalab. It’s a media framing analysis of blockchain. The paper is currently under revision. Hopefully, I’ll have some good news to share in the near future.