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070 - EAA2020 - Virtual Recap with Matilda Siebrecht
334 Plays4 years ago
This is a special episode of Conferences Podcast with special guest Matilda Siebrecht, a PhD researcher at the University of Gronigen, Netherlands.
She recently attending the online virtual EAA2020 conference and we discuss the benefits and challenges that such a format presents. Including the in session chat feature and moderation, moving between different sessions and what new conference etiquette we may need to learn.
EAA used https://hopin.to/ in order to run the conference.
Links:
Matlida's Twitter - https://twitter.com/ArchaeoTilly
Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/stone_age_monkey/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Special Edition on EAA Conference
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the Archaeology Podcast Network's conference podcast. In this episode, we'll be talking about the recent European Association of Archaeologists online virtual conference.
Guest Introduction: Matilda Siebrecht and Her Expertise
00:00:26
Speaker
To take us through it, I have one of my friends and PhD researcher, Matilda Siebrecht, who specializes in bone tool analysis through microware, and who's also the host of the EXARC Friendly Friday podcast. Well, thank you very much for sitting down with me today. Yeah, no worries. Thank you for inviting me. A nice surprise.
Overview of the EAA Conference's Significance
00:00:50
Speaker
So I'm just wondering, this is one of the biggest online virtual conferences that has happened this year. It's actually one of the biggest conferences that happens during the year anyway. Overall, what was your takeaway from the whole experience? How do you feel it came across?
Matilda's Experience and Benefits of EAA Membership
00:01:16
Speaker
Well, for me personally, so I will say, first of all, I was not presenting at this conference. I was there merely as a participant, which might also skew my view of things. So apologies to any presenters listening who go, what? It wasn't like that at all.
00:01:32
Speaker
From a participant perspective, I would say I really enjoyed it. Actually, I was not originally intending to join the EAA conference this year. My research at the moment is more based in American archaeology. I'm more focused on Canadian archaeology at the moment.
00:01:50
Speaker
And so even though I was interested in a lot of the talks, I had thought, oh, well, you know, I only have a certain amount of budget for conferences this year, so I won't bother going. And then I got an email from the EAA saying, oh, you know, as a member of the EAA, here is your free registration link to join this year's virtual EAA conference. So I thought, well, I guess if it's free and I have a link and I have the time at the moment, so sure, why not attend it?
00:02:19
Speaker
So I'm not sure how it would be for those people who were originally planning to, for example, go to Budapest and attend it in person. Maybe that would have been more disappointing. But for me personally, it was more inconvenient for me to go. So I had already decided, well, OK, I can't afford to. And I don't have the time to travel there this year. So I won't go. So actually, the opportunity to join online was already, for me, a very positive thing. So that kind of already from the start already made me think quite well of it.
00:02:48
Speaker
And yeah, I really enjoyed it was my general thing. Again, that might more be because I was sort of pleasantly surprised that I could join it, if that makes sense. But I think that it was a really nice opportunity and making it a little more accessible for those people like me who, I mean, I'm quite lucky. I'm a paid researcher and I have a budget for these things. But there's also a lot of, for example, student researchers or perhaps archaeologists from
00:03:17
Speaker
maybe smaller institutions who don't have the budget to send their researchers off to these conferences who wouldn't have had a chance to go and they now had the chance to attend this conference. So I think for that reason alone, I think it was very good.
00:03:30
Speaker
That sounds really, really good and very, very positive. I understand that the EAA, they weren't just doing Zoom. They actually had their own platform. What was your kind of experience using that platform that they had? It was kind of like a sign-in place. Were things kind of like laid out on the screen and you kind of picked a session? Or how did you kind of navigate through the conference?
Virtual Conference Platform and Features
00:03:56
Speaker
Yes. So it was, what was it called? Hopin, I think, was the platform that they used. And it was, so you had to register in advance. So I'd registered sort of a week before and they had up until the day of the conference, I think a couple of weeks until the day of the conference, they had some sort of test ones, test rooms for people to enter to check that they knew how it all worked and everything. So they did provide that
00:04:22
Speaker
beforehand for those who had the time to sort of check it out themselves, which was quite good. And then on the days themselves, they had, it was sort of a menu down the side with sessions, live stage, and then the fair, the sort of stall that's going on, because for those of you who have attended these kinds of conferences before, usually there's the lectures going on or the sort of the talks and the different sessions, but then at the same time, there'll be some
00:04:48
Speaker
big hall somewhere where publishers have their stands or local archaeological companies or museums or societies and those kinds of things, which I was wondering how they were going to manage that. And they actually had a separate sort of little
00:05:05
Speaker
channel, shall we say, specifically for that fair. I'll come back to that in a second. But so, they had these sort of main different menus down the side on a side menu. And then within, so, for example, if you clicked on the sessions, they would have, and I mean, yeah, for those of you who know the EAA's, there's a lot of sessions going on at the same time.
Advantages of Digital Format in Conferences
00:05:26
Speaker
I mean, there's so many talks, which actually for this, I found really great. I have to say, when I was
00:05:33
Speaker
I've attended EAA's before in person, which obviously is great in different ways. But one of the downsides of the EAA and any really like you mentioned that it was it's one of the biggest archaeological conferences, any massive conference like that with over hundreds and hundreds of talks going on. And yeah, you're going to have issues with I mean, I think they had something like 400 sessions or something like that over the course of the conference.
00:06:00
Speaker
So you're going to have a lot of issues with overlap and trying frantically to run from one session to another. It's impossible to, for example, catch the first half of some talks in one session and then go to a different session that you're interested in. You really have to stick with one, and then that's it. You're sort of stuck there for the four hours or so that the session runs, which obviously sometimes very interesting, especially if it's a specific topic that you're interested in. That's quite good.
00:06:24
Speaker
But especially for me, I was more there to get a sort of a range of information and to see what different studies were going on. So I actually found it really nice that they had all of the sessions that were currently going on on the screen. And if you went into one and if there was perhaps a talk that wasn't so relevant for the work you were doing, or if there was a talk in a different one, which was particularly interesting and you really wanted to catch that one talk from that session, you could just click into that session and you'd be there.
00:06:52
Speaker
And then you could listen for the talk and then go back to the other session if you wanted to. The way they had it set up was that the speakers could share their microphone and share their video. And then participants were just chatting, so in sort of typed chat.
00:07:09
Speaker
So that meant it was actually nice. It was sort of you could you could already be typing comments or questions alongside the presentations as they were going on, which actually is also how we do it in the Finally Friday and the question and answer sessions. But yeah, so I thought that that was quite good as well. So in terms of the setup, I feel like in some ways it was more beneficial, actually, especially when you have a conference of that size with that amount of sessions going on to have
00:07:38
Speaker
in a digital format, which meant you were more easily able to switch between different talks and to experience different talks as well. Does that make sense? Definitely. Were there any instances of this is more of a paragraph than a phrase?
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, as in the, well, I have a question, well, actually. But then that's the great thing about when you have it all typed up, so it was the moderator's job to like the session chair to keep an eye on the chats that were coming in. And so when we had the discussion moment, or you know, the question and answer session, the speakers could also see the chat, so they would sometimes also directly answer it. But then if there were any that
00:08:22
Speaker
you know, were just these quite typical, you know, you know, you know, the people I mean, who and say, Oh, well, my opinion, it doesn't really need an answer. And so you don't have to answer it. So they would just say, Yes, nice point. But you wouldn't have to go through the five minutes it took for them to state their point, you know. So also, in that case, you could say it was it was more beneficial.
00:08:43
Speaker
That's really good and I think this is the thing about going online is that there are these things that actually might be better than an in-person kind of situation so that is quite a good one.
00:08:58
Speaker
But obviously, yeah, and obviously, having something written down means you put a name to it, and you can present somebody with something, if they've said something that's a bit off-colour, you know, you can kind of present that to them. No, that does sound very good. Did you have an idea of how many other people were present, or is it just showing you who's typing?
00:09:23
Speaker
No, yes, they had a little in the top of the screen, they had how many people were joined into that session at the time. So you could see, so I mean, in some of them, I think the biggest one I had had like 60 or something participants, and the majority usually had sort of 20 or so.
00:09:42
Speaker
around, you know, in the 20s. But also, related to the point you said before, what's also good about the chat is that you can people were posting links, people were, you know, sharing documents, like that. So, you know, someone would mention, oh, this study by so and so in their presentation, and someone would ask a question like, Oh, what was that, you know, what's that study you mentioned, and then the speaker could actually
00:10:06
Speaker
post the link to the study in the chat so you could already sort of click on it and download it which was also very useful I thought. That is really useful. Those are aspects that are definitely much much better. Now
Challenges of Virtual Conferences: Technical Issues
00:10:22
Speaker
I will have to ask because it's inevitably something that's asked about every move to digital technical issues. From the ones that you experienced, obviously a selected bias, like there's a selection bias there, but do you feel that there was some technical issues that had to be worked through or not really much at all?
00:10:48
Speaker
Yes, no, there definitely were. A lot of the issues were mainly related to people's internet connection, which is sort of, I feel like when organizing a conference of that side, there's only a certain amount that you can do to avoid those kind of issues from taking place.
00:11:05
Speaker
But there was a problem repeatedly where somehow you couldn't share because I think what had happened when the EAA decided they wanted to go online, I imagine they had asked all of the speakers to record their presentation because the majority of the speakers did have it pre-recorded. So, you know, they had a little video of themselves giving the talk.
00:11:29
Speaker
A lot of the speakers then used this pre-recorded talk already. Quite a few of them decided to actually just skip it and they shared their screen with a PowerPoint presentation and you could share your screens within it. So they would share their screen, you could maximize that particular screen and then they would just talk and do it sort of in a more what we would consider natural conference situation. But there were a couple of times where
00:11:56
Speaker
they tried to play a pre-recorded presentation and for some reason, in some particular, I don't know, some people were using Firefox and not Chrome or something like that, and then the sound didn't work. So there were
00:12:09
Speaker
some issues, I think, in terms of compatibility with the platform that was being used. And that was a bit of a problem. I remember in one session, there was a problem with a lady who didn't have very good internet, a speaker. And yeah, so she couldn't
00:12:26
Speaker
She couldn't share her screen. It was just her internet was cutting out and sending her out of the room too much. But she had pre-recorded it, but then they couldn't get it to work pre-recorded wise. But I must say, I actually posted a little thing on the main page. There was a main chat for technical issues and everything, and you could post, we need help in this room. In most of the rooms, they also had a volunteer who was there specifically to help with technical
00:12:50
Speaker
So if something started going wrong, they could be working in the background and trying to work out what was going on in that one. For some reason, we didn't have one. I think they hadn't shown up or they got confused.
00:13:01
Speaker
So I went and asked for technical help. And within two minutes, we'd started with another talk instead. And within two minutes, there was someone there working things out. And her name was Katia. I can't remember her last name. She was one of the main volunteers or one of the main organizers, I mean, of the EAA. And yeah, she got it sorted within five minutes. So even though there were technical difficulties, but to the extent that they could, I feel like they
00:13:27
Speaker
dealt with them fairly well. However, like I say, this was just in the sessions that I saw. I don't know how it was in other sessions, for example.
00:13:36
Speaker
I mean, this is evidently something that will happen to every online conference. I think it is one of the realizations this year that, unfortunately, not everybody has the same access to the same connectivity as other people. And actually, I think this is one of the really, really strong arguments for looking at access to the internet as not just a luxury. It is a necessity and good internet speed as well.
00:14:05
Speaker
So, did you find yourself making use of the switching between sessions or did you kind of stick to like a session, like a themed session or, you know, did you kind of dip in and out? What were you actually, what did you do through the day? Yeah, so I had, I'd made myself
00:14:25
Speaker
Because, yeah, there were so many sessions. This is usually how I approach conferences. Anyway, I make myself a little timetable of all the sort of interesting sessions that I would want to attend. Because as I say, usually with an in-person conference, you kind of you are stuck with one session. So I usually first look at the sessions. But then I did make a note of kind of secondary ones that I could be interested in. Or I had, for example, quite a few colleagues or friends who were presenting in other sessions. So I noted down what time they were presenting.
00:14:55
Speaker
So I did indeed, there were some times where a friend was, for example, presenting in a session that wasn't of particular interest to me necessarily, but I wanted to support them in their presentation, you know, and give feedback of how they how I thought they did and, you know, that kind of thing. So then I would kind of keep an eye on the time. And usually, at least for the ones I was in, people seem to be fairly good at keeping on time as much as any conference, really. So you could
00:15:23
Speaker
usually give or take 10 minutes. The talks are also only 15 minutes usually. There was less chance for longer periods because usually after 20 minutes, if they'd still been going, then the moderator would say, yeah, okay, we need to wrap up now and move on to the next one. I tried to keep
00:15:42
Speaker
an eye on time, and if I needed to, then I would switch over to another session, see which talk they were on at the moment, and see whether I could pop back another time or whether it was then another minute until my friend was talking, so then I'd wait. So in that respect, I popped over. I also did occasionally, I mean, I'm sure it's happened to everyone. Everyone finds different talks interesting at conferences,
00:16:07
Speaker
lots of different topics are relevant to different people. There's certain topics that are just not so relevant to my current research, also perhaps not so interesting to my personal tastes. It's not to say that they're not interesting to everyone, but you enter a
00:16:25
Speaker
a room, you think, oh, yeah, this looks great according to the abstracts and everything. You start listening to the presentations and you realize, okay, no, actually, this is very different to what I thought it was going to be. And then if you're at an in-person conference, usually you think, okay, so this is, you know, two hours of my life that I've now been sort of wasted because it's really rude to get up and, you know, what do you do sort of thing? And how do you leave? And yeah,
00:16:51
Speaker
But then, yeah, at an online conference, if you are getting a bit bored or if it seems that it's really not the session for you, then I did that twice, actually, I have to admit, where I then got a bit bored after the first two talks and thought, okay, no, this is not what I wanted. So I went and found a different session, which was perhaps not so related to my research, but I found interesting.
00:17:14
Speaker
Um, then if I had been at an in-person conference also, I probably wouldn't have gone to because you are then dedicating yourself to that conference. But I thought, well, let's just give it a try, see how it goes. And they were very interesting. Um, so, uh, yeah, so I did do that a couple of times. It's also good if, if you're a bit late to a session, um, it's not that awkward, you know, shuffling it at the back and trying not to shut the door too loudly. So, uh, yeah. Um, I did, I definitely did switch between sessions quite a lot.
00:17:41
Speaker
We've all done that with the door, definitely more than once. We'll hear more about that after this short break.
00:17:52
Speaker
And we're back speaking on the Archaeology Podcast Network's conference. This is a special episode talking about the virtual conference of the EAA this year, which was meant to be in Budapest. So we were just talking about switching between sessions because it's something that you can now do.
00:18:15
Speaker
You could probably do it in an in-person conference, but as we discussed, it's sometimes a little bit awkward sneaking around. There is another thing that you do lose with the virtual conference, or the idea of the virtual conference is the kind of in-person meetings that you have with people that you may not have seen in a while there, or just that you get to
Networking in Virtual vs. In-Person Conferences
00:18:39
Speaker
know. I remember when I was in Bern last year for EAA,
00:18:45
Speaker
I met a lot of people in between sessions that I could chat with and talk to and get to. I had really, really good conversations with. So I wonder if there's a kind of.
00:19:03
Speaker
there's that kind of separation as well. I mean, you're active on Twitter. I guess Twitter was kind of talking back and forth at the same time. What do you think, do you like that kind of in-person meeting at conferences? That's something I do, but I don't know. Is that something you ever did?
00:19:23
Speaker
Yeah. I was wondering when this topic would come up because it inevitably does when talking about online conferences. So, yeah, I don't know. I think actually you noticed, and that's why you asked me to do this, that I was on Twitter a lot during this one. So, in online conferences, I can remember, for example, the last EAA conference I went to, I think the last one I went to was in Maastricht, a show a couple of years ago.
00:19:50
Speaker
especially if it's a conference of that size. It's great for catching up with people that you already know. But in terms of networking with new people, I personally find that very difficult. It's intimidating to go up and say to someone random, like, hi, I'm a daughter, what do you do kind of thing. It's, I guess, easier in terms of I
00:20:18
Speaker
hope that I would be able to, for example, if I found a speaker's talk really interesting, I might go up and talk to them about it afterwards or ask their opinion on things.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, so I do in in-person conferences, I do try. With smaller ones, I find that generally easier, because you sort of all know what everyone's been doing. But I guess with the EAA, my main problem as well is that there's so many sessions that it's not that you kind of have a quick chat with someone for five minutes, you know, at a coffee break, and then they'll go off to another session, you'll go off to a different session, and you'll probably never see them again, you know, so it's, it's more difficult to
00:20:58
Speaker
kind of then maintain that relationship if the relationship is a strong word. But if you're at a smaller conference, then it's kind of you're in a session together, you have a quick chat, you're in the same session together afterwards, then you can say, oh, so what did you think of that one? It's easier to maintain that in that respect. And I do have to say for me personally,
00:21:18
Speaker
the aspect of it, so getting to know people within your sessions and the speakers. I actually felt more confident in doing that with the format that they had with the typed question sort of paddle within each session, because you didn't feel like you were
00:21:37
Speaker
at the end of a talk and they say, oh, any questions for the speakers? And you feel like, oh, I have this question, but it seems so insignificant. Like maybe it's not that important. Oh, I'll wait. And if there's time, then I'll do it. And inevitably, there's never time. So you never get to ask your question. You never get to interact with the speaker. And you just kind of shuffle out the door. Maybe this is my Britishness coming in. Whereas in the question one, I thought, well, OK, if it's insignificant, they
00:22:04
Speaker
just ignore it. It's not taking up anyone's time. It's not being too out there. So in a way, I at least found it easier to
00:22:15
Speaker
interact a lot more with other people and with the speakers and ask questions, make comments. But I will say that I did notice that usually within a session, there were one or two where that was an exception. But in general, it seemed that
00:22:34
Speaker
considering the amount of people that were joining the session, there were a very small percentage who were actually interacting in the chat panel. And I feel like that is something that is just because we're not so
00:22:48
Speaker
the majority of people perhaps are not so used to talking like that and chatting like that in an online community. I have become more used to that now with doing these finally Friday sessions because that's done through Discord. So I'm used to now, if someone's doing so, I chat around and I say, oh, this is like that thing. And I
00:23:09
Speaker
Sure, you remember when I joined the Archaeology Podcast Network Conference, I was chatting the whole time because I was more used to it then and I was finding it quite easy. But I can imagine for a lot of people that might not be as easy and they might find it easier to speak to people in person. So that was the sort of in terms of the sessions. In terms of networking in between the sessions, they actually had a networking session. So they'd have breaks, they'd have lunch breaks and coffee breaks in between the sessions.
00:23:36
Speaker
And they had a little I noticed on the left-hand side. So they had sessions, live stage, fair. And then they had networking, which I thought, oh, I wonder what this is. And I clicked on it. And it comes up with a screen that has a little button saying enter now. And it says above it, prepare to meet a random person or something like, I can't remember the exact wording. And then you click enter now, which to me, it was, I mean, my goodness, you have to be
00:24:03
Speaker
I think a very confident and, I don't know, person to be like, yeah, sure, you know, it's like chat roulette kind of thing, you know, which maybe some people are better at than me. But for me personally, I didn't do it. I have to admit, I should have. It was I, yeah, I do regret not trying it. And I think some people did try it, I noticed and, and, you know, met some interesting people.
00:24:25
Speaker
But yeah, I really wonder how many people did use that opportunity to actually meet new people. Because to me, it was a lot more scary, I guess, than just sort of having a chat with someone at the buffet bar.
00:24:42
Speaker
Mm hmm. No, definitely. I mean, honestly, the only reason I do talk to people apart from being, you know, very, very outgoing is that I usually have a recorder in my hand and I usually have a reason to go up to people. It's it's it's actually one of the things is like I I very much rely on being
00:25:04
Speaker
not a journalist, but like a kind of pseudo-journalist in a way, because I have a reason to go up to people. I have a reason to say. Oh, hi. I work for the Archaeology Podcast Network. Would you like to talk about your research? Oh, go on, please. Yes.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Which to me is always a problem at in-person conferences is I can never think of a reason to approach someone apart from just like, I liked their talk, which then that sounds so, I loved your talk, you know, it's... Yeah, but I know, but that is a good thing, you know, like, I would like that. The opposite, you know, your talk was terrible.
00:25:49
Speaker
No, but that's a wee bit rude, isn't it? I think you're absolutely right in identifying that there are changes in conference etiquette, you know? But nobody ever talks about conference etiquette, really. There's no list of rules for conference etiquette. And I must say that the first conference I ever went to was the EA in Glasgow in 2015.
00:26:18
Speaker
And I didn't know what a conference was like, you know what I mean? It was a new experience for me. And I think it's funny that there are unspoken rules at conferences, I find.
00:26:34
Speaker
There's ways of doing things like the whole moving between talks and everything and trying to not make comments and make questions instead of comments that are relevant and not lengthy at all.
00:26:50
Speaker
I think it's interesting that we're going to have to develop a new kind of way of doing this. Do you think that going forward, do you think that these online virtual conferences
00:27:09
Speaker
are good enough to replace physical conferences? Or do you still think that there's more value in a in-person conference? Perhaps for something maybe that's more, that's definitely in your wheelhouse rather than something that's a bit more general.
00:27:29
Speaker
Well, for example, one of my favorite conferences to go to is the XR conference, the experimentality conference. Oh really? Yeah, surprisingly would. That was actually the first ever conference I ever went to back in undergrad was the XR conference in Dublin.
00:27:48
Speaker
I guess the thing, because it's focused on experimental archaeology, they always include a demonstration of something. So they had someone playing the... Oh, shoot, I've forgotten the name of it. Those Iron Age big horns that they had in Scotland with the
00:28:07
Speaker
Wolf's head on the top or something and it sounds like a really loud horn. The war horns. I can't remember what they're called. This is going to annoy me. Never mind. I'll find it later and let you know and you can edit it in. They had, for example, someone who'd made a replica instrument, shall we say. So they had made a replica instrument and they were demonstrating it or they were
00:28:26
Speaker
showing the facilities at University College Dublin. So they were showing the house rebuilding project and you could physically go into the house and they were showing all the pottery and all of this kind of thing. So with something like that, where it relies so much on the physical interaction and the experience of it, that I think is difficult to make into an online environment.
00:28:50
Speaker
Although I must say one of the talks I saw at the EAA was about sounds in the past and archaeology of music. And there was a guy who had, I'm so sorry, I've forgotten his name, but who had made replica instruments from Mesoamerican contexts, I think, and was demonstrating them. So, you know, that was possible to see.
00:29:11
Speaker
but something like that, those kind of conferences. So that for me is one of the big ones. I'm trying to think of the other kind of conferences that I attend. But I think out of all of them, the main one that involves some kind of more practical interaction with the material would be the EXARC conference. And the rest of them, to be honest, they're
00:29:35
Speaker
It's a difficult thing to... Actually, it was interesting.
Interactive Online Teaching and Conference Techniques
00:29:40
Speaker
I was listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network the other day and had an episode by Chris Webster about... I can't remember who the guest speaker was now and I can't remember what
00:29:51
Speaker
title of the episode was about online teaching in universities. His speaker made a really good point. I thought in the online teaching, you have to find better ways to engage with the students because you have to make sure that they kind of stay involved because it's a lot harder digitally. And then he was saying, which is silly because really, why should it be limited to digital? Surely we should be trying to engage them in person, lectures as well.
00:30:17
Speaker
And I thought that's also really interesting about conferences. So many of the times someone's just there with a PowerPoint presentation and they give the talks and all this kind of thing. Whereas I think having it online offers so many more opportunities. I attended the Exarch Berlin conference that was online back in March.
00:30:34
Speaker
as well. That was one of the first online conferences I attended. And they had the method where the presenters would upload their videos to YouTube at specific points within the program. So you watched via YouTube, and then the discussion was done by Discord, sort of typed by Discord. And a couple of the speakers were really inventive in the way that they presented things. It was about open air museums. So they had done sort of like 3D
00:31:03
Speaker
images of the museums that they moved around, they had done on-site videos of themselves. So rather than just presenting in front of their computer screen, they were actually filming next to a house reconstruction, something like that. So I think that it has a lot of potential for those subjects which might be considered
00:31:23
Speaker
which don't need a practical interaction and actually which having a digital form would enable you to see more. So for example, filming around a house or something like that. I think that there's a lot of potential for that and there's actually a lot more that can be done digitally than would be done in person. The only ones that I can think of that would be still better for me personally, in person would be more practical ones like the XR Conference, for example.
00:31:50
Speaker
Now we're on to our final break.
00:31:56
Speaker
And we're back. This is the final segment of this special episode of the Archaeology Podcast Network Conferences Podcast. We've been talking about the AAs, a virtual conference, and we've talked just there about whether this technology going forward is the replacement for other conferences as well.
00:32:24
Speaker
And I'd like to add my own thoughts on that as well, because I think there are many benefits to having an online virtual conferences, but there are also negatives.
Technology's Role in Conferences: Pros and Cons
00:32:36
Speaker
And I think that the idea that everything can be solved by technology
00:32:43
Speaker
really misses the point. I think it was a really, really good example that you brought up when you talked about people being inventive and there's no reason why those same people can't be as inventive in face-to-face conferences as well. I'm a big, big fan of
00:33:04
Speaker
talks that are fun, that are engaging, that are interesting, you know? And it's difficult to present, you know? I've both presented at conferences and I've also been a session organizer. And I understand, like, standing behind that podium, I know for somebody who does lots of talking on podcasts, I actually find speaking in public quite difficult. I enjoy it.
00:33:29
Speaker
And that I'm also terrified by it. So I understand that it is a nerve wracking procedure, but at the same time, I think I really enjoy the conversations and the talks that people do that are just, you know, just that bit different. That are kind of like using more technology, but that's the unreliability of technology because
00:33:55
Speaker
we all we have all been in a conference room where the sound doesn't work or the video play doesn't play back properly because the university that they're at is you know the the windows media player they're using it's not got the right codec you know there's things that people people use powerpoints because it's it'll work you know
00:34:21
Speaker
So I think going forward, I think there's some really inventive things that you can do with online platforms. And especially I actually I dipped in night of the EXARC one. And that was really good because I still am working from home. And it was actually just nice to have it on in the background. It was like my little chatter in the background and I was just working away.
00:34:48
Speaker
Exactly. Or like having a podcast on. I really enjoyed that. But I mean, a good friend of mine actually said to me, well, there is another problem. Because so for a number of conferences, I actually have the
00:35:09
Speaker
I have the privilege to actually go and record conferences with Landward Research, Doug Rocks McQueen and his team. And there are times when people don't want to be recorded.
00:35:23
Speaker
And there are times when people feel that having that, even just having it in the room makes them worried, you know? And I just want to finally wrap up with, you know, this is the other side of it, is that if we go digitally, it does mean that, you know, it's very difficult to prevent somebody recording sessions if they're viewing them online, you
Ethical Concerns in Digital Sharing of Research
00:35:50
Speaker
know?
00:35:50
Speaker
And then, you know, and it sounds weird, but like there are times in conferences where people can give out information that's not meant to be publicly available. And this is a very weird balancing act where public knowledge
00:36:11
Speaker
is obviously very important, but at the same time, up-to-date research might actually be… there might be a danger in making up-to-date research available to people who might want to get access to sites and stuff like that. How do you feel about those kind of issues?
00:36:32
Speaker
Well, it's actually so I know, for example, that the EAA, when this was going on, they were recording them. And they were going to provide the recordings later. I think it's also it's so related to that issue as well of, of sort of almost open access publication to write like the idea of, okay, how
00:36:52
Speaker
how open should we really be about the research that we're doing? Which, to be honest, for me personally, especially now, I'm much more involved with Canadian archaeology. My research focuses on Arctic Canada. And so a lot of my work is very heavily involved with Inuit communities. And I mean, that's sort of perhaps a more extreme version of it. So, you know, I can't, I'm there coming in. I'm not Inuit, obviously.
00:37:20
Speaker
So what right do I have to not share my research and the research that I'm doing with those people who have a direct link in terms of heritage, in terms of identity, in terms of land, in terms of all aspects of things with the material that I'm studying? As I say, that's perhaps a more extreme version, but even in terms of European side of things,
00:37:46
Speaker
Is it actually, I mean, and this is why I love sort of the podcasts and everything as well, because it is making archaeological research more accessible and it is making it more widely known. And although I understand that there are issues, it's not so relevant, I guess, for my own research for that, but there are issues in terms of sites, you know, with looting and that side of things. So I can definitely understand why it would be an issue. But it's I think that it's hard to say this without
00:38:15
Speaker
without studying, treading on someone's toes. I feel like I'm walking in eggshells, but it's, I think it's hard to not then just sort of retain the ivory tower of academia, if that makes sense. So say, oh yes, but this is just meant for us guys, you know, like don't tell anyone about it. I think that that's a very, a slightly more elitist way of approaching archaeological research, and in which case,
00:38:40
Speaker
why is that work being done? The relevance of the work that you're doing to the wider community needs to be maintained. So I think if you feel that you cannot share that research with the wider community, then maybe how the research is being done needs to be approached in a different way. Obviously, I know this is just from my own perspective, and I'm sure there's lots of people out there who are going, well, she has no idea. But this is my opinion on the subject, shall we say.
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, no. And I completely understand that because I think it's absolutely it is the right question to ask is that our conferences, like, who are the conferences for? You know, like, we've all agreed on archaeologists getting together to present ideas to each other. But, you know, it's very much in the mindset of
00:39:34
Speaker
of it all being kind of like, oh, it's all to do with, like, how to put it, like, it's all to do. It's like, well, all archaeology should be public archaeology. You know, that's that's my opinion. But I know exactly I know exactly what you're saying there in terms of, oh, it's to do with like, how do we share information?
00:40:03
Speaker
That's not just like blocking it off for everybody. I mean, the thing is, if we are able to get to more people, does that mean that archaeology will get better? You know, is this how to move things forward? Or do we need to have conferences that are public archaeology conferences instead? You know, do we need to have something? Do we need to separate that out?
00:40:26
Speaker
But those are all questions that can have, probably have already had lots of discussions about. I'm pretty sure that somebody's definitely tried to tackle that in the DigiPop arc world, my favourite kind of world. But yeah, well, that I think really sums up a lot of the thoughts that I had about this. And, you know, I really appreciate you sitting down and talking to me
Preview of Upcoming Events and Themes
00:40:54
Speaker
about this.
00:40:54
Speaker
No worries. Thank you for having me. Why don't you tell us a little bit about when the next Friendly Friday is and what are your plans for the next couple of Friendly Fridays? Yeah, so it's finally Friday actually. Sorry, I talked way too quickly, so I'm sorry I can't pronounce it properly. So actually, the next one is coming up on October. It's the first Friday of every month.
00:41:21
Speaker
Um, so that I think my mouse isn't working now. Typically I need to check the date. Um, so it's on October 3rd, I think is the, is the Friday. Um, I'll just say that again so that I can get it right. Uh, why is it gone? Okay. Yes. Uh, October 2nd. Okay. I'll just start that bit again.
00:41:43
Speaker
So yes, so the next episode is going to be on October 2nd. It's always on the first Friday of every month through Discord, through the EXARC Discord server. And you can find all the information of how to join and everything through the website, EXARC website, www.exarc.net.
00:42:01
Speaker
And the next one is going to be all about the pottery, actually. The Potter's Wheel. There's a big conference coming up in Amsterdam. I think that one will be in person in November about pottery and specifically about technology and innovation related to ancient pottery. So we have two guest speakers about that. The next
00:42:23
Speaker
finished episode, which was all about sewing and past textiles is going to be released either this week or next week. So that will also turn up on the website at some point. And yeah, in terms of the next couple of episodes, I know that for the next one, the next one that will be released is all about
00:42:43
Speaker
interpretation in open-air museums. It was a really interesting episode, that one actually talking about how we view the past, how we display the past, who has the right to display which parts of the past. It was very relevant, I will say, to a lot of issues that are going on in the world right now. The aim is to continue with different themes, different specialists from various walks of life. We're going to be doing ones about different technologies, different approaches to technology, different parts of archaeology.
00:43:10
Speaker
Everyone is welcome to join and the podcast is free to listen to. So very, very happy for anyone to listen along if they're interested at all in anything related to archaeology. Excellent. Excellent. And just finally, where can people find your work and your stuff online? Oh, yes. So promote yourself.
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah. So my official work is at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. So I'm a PhD student there. Also, I am on social media as Stone Age Monkey. And I share my research that I'm doing and also other fun archaeology related things I'm doing on there. So very happy to chat to anyone who's interested in stuff there as well. Great. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you.
00:44:03
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.