Virtual Reality and the Future of Conventions

Photo by Danny Grizzle on Unsplash

So, with large gatherings temporarily banned, conventions and conferences are moving online. I finally had the chance to attend a virtualized convention.

We decided it was “junk food” — tasty, but not very satisfying, and nowhere near a substitute for the real thing. Some things worked very well, others did not. I’m going to go through the elements of a typical science fiction con and say what worked and what didn’t.

Presentations and Panels

We used Zoom Webinar for presentations and panels. This worked very well indeed. One downside was that panelists and presenters were unable to see the audience. I expect this was worse for solo presenters. The talking into a void thing is not ideal.

After the con, we discussed allowing attendees to be visible. I came down against it for a couple of reasons:

1. We did have a panelist put up an ill thought out virtual background. If attendees were visible then policing that kind of thing would be hard.
2. The moderator would not have an easy way to distinguish panelists from the audience.

The second issue could likely be fixed by updates to Zoom or other tools, which are scrambling to fulfill this new need.