The 2022 APS March Meeting last week was in-person for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting last-minute cancellation of the 2020 event. It was also the first attempt at a hybrid virtual and in-person version of the world’s largest annual physics conference. Although in-person attendance was down relative to pre-pandemic levels, for those at McCormick Place in Chicago, the meeting regained much of its previous feeling.
In a typical pre-pandemic year, the March Meeting hosted about 10 000 attendees. Last year’s all-virtual meeting drew about 13 000 registrations. This year, just under 8000 physicists made the trip to Chicago and around 5500 attended the conference virtually. The total attendance was a record high.
APS took many precautions to ensure a safe meeting for those in Chicago. All in-person attendees had to submit proof of vaccination in advance, test for coronavirus infection within 72 hours of the start of the conference, and submit daily attestations of not being exposed to or showing symptoms of coronavirus. Participants were instructed to wear N95, KF94, KN95, or three-ply surgical masks, although the occasional person was seen wearing a cloth mask.
Attendees signaled their level of comfort with physical proximity through the colors they chose for their lanyards. A green lanyard indicated the wearer has no issues with physical contact; yellow, the wearer prefers physical contact be limited to elbow and fist bumps; and red, the wearer prefers to maintain social distancing. Most physicists opted for yellow and green. And as in the past, the halls were filled with groups chatting. There were also the usual coffee hours, receptions, and other social events.
“It was wonderful being back at an in-person conference,” says Emily Gehrels, a postdoc at Aix-Marseille University in France. “Virtual conferences let me keep up with the newest research in the field but really lacked good opportunities for networking.” Graduate student Daichi Hayakawa from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, echoes that sentiment. “Being present allows me to really focus on the talks, and I appreciate being able to talk to the speakers right after and get to know them.”
Invited sessions included a combination of live in-person and live remote talks. Focus sessions had live in-person and prerecorded talks. All the talks could be viewed by those in Chicago, but only the invited sessions were livestreamed to virtual attendees. In-person speakers in focus sessions were asked to upload videos of their talks in advance of the meeting so virtual participants would also have access to the entire scientific program.
One big complaint from in-person attendees was that the program didn’t indicate which talks would be given in person as opposed to being prerecorded or livestreamed by a remote speaker. Prerecorded talks typically received the least favorable reviews. “After spending the pandemic watching Zoom talks, it was refreshing to be able to see a speaker engage their audience face-to-face, and it felt much easier to actively listen to the talks,” says Thomas Videbaek, a postdoc at Brandeis University. When a prerecorded talk came on, he says, “it usually felt like the enthusiasm of watching the talks left the room.”
Many in-person speakers were frustrated by the instructions to upload a video of their talks. APS requested that videos for all participants be uploaded to the meeting website by 3 March, more than a week before the start of the conference. “Most people I knew did not have their talks ready until a few days before the talk, making a March 3 deadline hard to meet,” says Videbaek.
Some attendees felt the emails from APS didn’t make it clear that they needed to upload a video. Others worried that if they did so, the recording would be played in lieu of their live talk. And some felt the request that they record their whole talk in advance was unreasonable. The result of all that confusion and frustration was that throughout the conference, only about half of the talks were available online. “I think no one foresaw the low percentage of in-person speakers who would bother to upload videos,” says Gehrels, who did upload a prerecorded talk. The meeting website will be reopened for uploads for a week after the end of the conference.
Those who did upload recordings of their talks or the slides for their presentation were asked to give APS a nonexclusive, perpetual license to use the material, which some participants found concerning. APS subsequently allowed presenters to request a limited-rights agreement in which content would be deleted after 90 days.
Only invited sessions were streamed live because the technology and staff needed to stream every session would have been prohibitively expensive. “My virtual attendance was hindered by technical difficulties accessing the platform, also shared by my colleagues, and by the fact that only a few talks were accessible online,” says Pasquale Marra of the University of Tokyo. Virtual attendees were able to chat and ask questions during live sessions. But overall, the virtual experience was limited compared with the in-person one and fell short of last year’s all-virtual March Meeting, which included every talk live, with equal accessibility to all participants. Marra found this year’s meeting “a huge downgrade from last year’s meeting, where all talks were available.” Sonya Bahar of the University of Missouri–St. Louis agrees, noting that “last year’s all-virtual meeting was excellent.”
With the limited offerings, some virtual participants wondered if the cost to attend was justified. “The organizers did not clarify beforehand that the virtual audience would not be able to access the whole conference,” says Marra. “Given that only a few talks were available online, the virtual attendees didn’t get what they paid for. I believe APS should refund the cost of registration to virtual attendees.”
For an APS member who registered by the regular deadline, attending the whole conference in-person cost $665, whereas virtual admission cost $430. The registration fees for in-person attendance are comparable to those pre-pandemic, and fees for virtual attendance are comparable to those for last year’s all-virtual meeting.
A hybrid meeting is more expensive than either an in-person one or a virtual one because it requires a full infrastructure for both types of meeting. Other organizations have found that virtual platforms are nearly as expensive as in-person venues and their associated expenses, so hybrid meetings can be nearly twice the cost of fully in-person or fully virtual meetings.
Although several aspects of the hybrid format need to be improved, it is here to stay, at least for the near term. Last year, the APS Council approved a recommendation by the Committee on Scientific Meetings that all meetings have a virtual component. Hybrid meetings are more environmentally friendly and more accessible than strictly in-person events. Researchers without the funds to travel can more readily afford just the registration to attend remotely, and international researchers don’t have to get visas, which can be difficult to obtain in some parts of the world. What’s more, those with caregiving obligations don’t need to make accommodations for a multiday absence.
Bahar, who attended virtually in part because of a heavy teaching load and concerns about COVID-19, acknowledges the importance and advantages of hybrid meetings but adds, “I definitely hope that APS can develop a better hybrid model going forward.” Future plans for hybrid meetings will be informed by careful considerations of attendees’ experiences and community feedback and could look quite different from this year’s inaugural event.
Although some in-person attendees said they hoped the March Meeting would fully return to its pre-pandemic form, many recognized the benefits—even for themselves. “I appreciated having the ability to preview and review certain talks before or after the live presentation,” says Noah Mitchell, a postdoc at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “These formats complement each other and together can build a more flexible composite experience.”
