Virtual events Archives

Agenda designer

The person or people responsible for designing the event, including defining overall goals and shaping content that meets the goals. This may be, but does not have to be, the same person or people who fill the role of Moderator.

Citation: Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement. (2022) CSCCE Glossary: Virtual Events. Pratt, Woodley, Ainsworth, Carter, Crall, Elkins, Gauthier, Ihle, Kornahrens, Martinic, Santistevan, Shaikh, Sidik, and Wyatt doi: 10.5281/zenodo.6608609

Archiving of artifacts

Virtual events often create digital artifacts such as shared documents or brainstorming boards. Your archiving process will consider the purpose of these artifacts; whether you need to change access permissions after an event and, if so, how soon; whether artifacts are to remain public and for how long; how the artifacts can be found (e.g., on a shared resources page); and whether there are additional editing or formatting steps that you as curator need to undertake. The intended use and audience(s) for artifacts should be made clear upfront to those contributing, and authorship should be appropriately acknowledged.

Asynchronous content

Event-related participation that can be done on an attendee’s own schedule; does not require “live” participation. Digital examples include pre- or post-event recordings of presentations, discussion boards where topics are posed and answered, and messaging tools that allow attendees to interact outside of sessions. Face to face equivalents might include posters (that are left up outside of poster sessions), an expo fair with information to pick up, and other exhibits to peruse outside of live sessions.

Offering digital asynchronous content makes an event more inclusive by allowing participants to interact with content in their own time zone, when they have access to childcare, or using modes of communication that they prefer (e.g., written rather than spoken communications).

See also: Synchronous content

Backchannel

From the perspective of virtual event participants, a backchannel is a (most often) public space for communication and annotation of the conversation, resource sharing, and a way of communicating without needing a working microphone or quiet space. Examples include Zoom Chat, Slack, and Twitter (using an event hashtag).

From the perspective of the event organizers, a backchannel is a private communication channel via which they can communicate about technical problems, scheduling changes, and other time-senstive issues.

Camera etiquette

A set of norms around what is appropriate, and not appropriate, as it relates to the livestreaming (or pre-recorded) video of participants, speakers, organizers, etc. Examples include having your camera on for a stated portion of the event, or subevent types and having good lighting and clear audio when you’re a presenter.

Different events serve different purposes, so keep this in mind when you set norms around whether you expect participants to turn on their cameras or not. Having cameras turned off allows participants to take a break from seeing themselves (known to be unsettling) and/or things needing their attention in their surroundings (bio breaks, child care, an unexpected visitor, or meal times).

Captions

Captions appear on screen in real-time and include non-speech sounds, not just spoken audio, to improve the accessibility of your event including for those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or are not native speakers of the language being used. Closed captioning means text can be turned on/off by the listener. Groups considering using an AI-based captioning service should carefully read the platform’s privacy policy first as many tools record events in order to improve their algorithms. There are additional human transcription services for live captioning that may be more secure and also improve the accuracy of captions for specialized topics.

See also: Subtitles

Code of conduct committee / responders

Agroup that processes and responds to reports of code of conduct violations during an event. This group may or may not also be involved in creating the code of conduct or community participation guidelines.

Curation and content management

Virtual events can often produce a lot of content, e.g., virtual notes, whiteboards, recordings. As a convenor, you should think upfront about your content management practices, how to convey those practices to participants, and how to support them in being part of the content management process. This might include using release forms and adding relevant information to your speaker guide as well as asking for paid or volunteer curators, note-takers, live-scribes and post-event reporters to help with creating, editing, summarizing and sharing event artifacts.

See also: Archiving of artifacts

Discord

This is a platform that was initially adopted by the gaming community. During the pandemic, many communities started using this platform as it offers both text and audio communications as well as the ability to screenshare. Discord also provides an easy way for participants to “switch” between channels and view their version of “breakout” rooms.

Dry run / dress rehearsal

A rehearsal of all key technical transitions of the event before the live event. This often involves the moderator/host, facilitators, and technical support, but also instructors/presenters who would like to practice using your event platform ahead of time in order to feel comfortable presenting their content.