Read more about our first ever foray into virtual conferences on the Strömberg Lab website. Some snippets about our experience last year, to help you prepare for MPC 2021, are posted below:

The 37th Midcontinent Paleobotanical Colloquium (MPC) was set to be hosted in Seattle in early May of 2020, organized by us in the Strömberg lab and other paleobotanists at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Rooms were reserved at the new Burke Museum, deals struck with local hotels, catering plans made, field trips were planned and reserved, and abstracts and travel award applications were submitted. Then, all of that was disrupted with the COVID-19 pandemic, making the idea of an in-person meeting a pipe dream. While disappointing, we soon began to realize the opportunity we had in front of us to contribute to some positive changes in our field. For years, many people have talked about the problems that emerge from our current model of in-person academic conferences—mainly involving carbon emissions and exclusion of attendees of along axes of, for example, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and academic status. We wanted to create a model and example of how an academic conference could be run virtually, still preserving the important benefits of an in-person meeting, while at the same time promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of paleobotany. More broadly, we also wanted to allow students to show off their work and stay connected with their scientific community in the middle of the pandemic. To gauge the interest for such a meeting, we deployed a survey among those previously registered. When we received positive responses, a virtual MPC was rescheduled to May 29-31. This blog will include an explanation of how we ran it, how it turned out, what people thought, and will end with a discussion of the potential positive impact of virtual conferences on diversity and inclusivity.

The Midcontinent Paleobotanical Colloquium (MPC) is a relatively smaller conference of usually 20-60 in-person attendees, hosted by different institutions every year. The meeting encourages a student focus in oral and poster presentations. Despite the name, the conference takes on a larger breadth of research than just the middle of North America.

Post-conference survey

In order to gauge the attendee’s impression of various aspects of the virtual conference, a post-conference survey was circulated. Sixty-two people responded, out of which one was an avocational paleobotanist, eight were post-docs, 26 were professional paleobotanists, one was a retired professional paleobotanist, and 26 were student paleobotanists. Further, our respondents were mostly participants (42) but about half of our presenters also responded (9 oral presenters and 11 poster presenters).

Conference format

The components of an in-person meeting we wanted to preserve were oral sessions, poster sessions, social/networking events, and workshops. We used Zoom Pro as our virtual platform to host the meeting, available to us free of cost through the University of Washington, although attendees could join with only a Zoom basic account. To curb zoom bombing, a separate private website was created, in addition to our public and previously advertised website, to host all zoom links and act as one stop shop for the conference. We emailed it to those registered only a few days before the conference began and asked that no one share the link. Here is a quick summary of our schedule (all times in PDT, see more detailed schedule [https://sites.google.com/uw.edu/mpc-2020/virtual-mpc-2020?]):

Friday May 29th

10 am–3 pm: Online Database Solutions for Paleobotany Workshop

5–7 pm: MPC Pub Trivia event

Saturday May 30th

8:00 – 8:30: Introduction and Eulogy for Brian Axsmith

​8:30 – 10:00: Oral session 1

10:00–11:00: Break, with “coffee break” social event from 10:30-11:00

11:00–12:00: Oral session 2

1:00–2:30: Poster session 1

4:00: Happy hour

Sunday May 31st

8:00–10:00: Oral session 3

10:00–11:00: Break, with “coffee break” social event from 10:30-11:00

11:00–12:00: Oral session 4

1:00–2:30: Poster session 2

Survey respondents overall were very positive regarding the technical program and design of the conference. Most (97%) thought that the length of the conference—two days encompassing four oral sessions and two poster sessions—was a good amount of time. Overall, respondents rated their likelihood of attending a future MPC as 4.68/5 on average.

General participation

We had 201 registered participants, 22 oral session presentations, and 21 poster session presentations over the course of the weekend. Paleobotanists that are early in their career appear to prefer presenting their work in a shorter presentation format (i.e., poster rather than oral talk). Sometimes this format is appropriate (e.g., for preliminary results), but other times this choice could be motivated by early career researchers generally being less assertive. To encourage early career paleobotanists to present oral talks and posters/lightning talks in a proportion equal to what professional paleobotanists typically do, during the registration process we gave participants the opportunity to choose their preferred presentation format but also the option of not expressing any preference. We then tried to accommodate everyone’s first choice but prioritized early career presenters over professionals for oral presentations. Many professionals showed their support by being extremely flexible in their preferred presentation format. This resulted in early career researchers representing 72% of all presenters (25 students and six postdoctoral researchers). Additionally, we had 85 registered participants in the Friday workshop (Online Database Solutions for Paleobotany​). Overall, the number of people that partook in the Virtual MPC is more than three times as many as the most well attended MPCs in the past.