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A Conference Goes Virtual: Lessons from Creating a Social Event in the Virtual Reality

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Innovations for Community Services (I4CS 2021)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1404))

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Abstract

Conferences and workshops are important activities in organizations for communication and collaboration, and in academia specifically to criticize and develop new research ideas. In order to enable social interactions during the pandemic situation, organizations use online solutions like video conference systems. A huge number of virtual conferences has been offered, and attracted more participants as the cost and participation effort were lower. However, socializing and informal exchange between conference participants during coffee breaks and conference dinners is nearly impossible in a virtual conference setting. Conferences are important to meet other researchers, to build a network and collaborate in the future, which is critical to society - to create frontier knowledge. Virtual reality could be an alternative to usual video conferences as they could allow social interaction between different participants and thus support to get in direct contact with future collaborators. Our paper explains how we created and executed a social event in virtual reality at an online conference in academia that included 22 participants in three Nordic countries. Based on 17 interviews with Swedish and Danish participants, we analyze perceived advantages and challenges that the event participants faced. Our results provide interesting insights and recommendations for organizers of virtual conferences to enable socializing in virtual reality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University of Denmark, Akademivej, 2800, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

    Kathrin Kirchner

  2. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Lindstedtsvägen 30, 111 28, Stockholm, Sweden

    Britta Nordin Forsberg

Authors
  1. Kathrin Kirchner
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  2. Britta Nordin Forsberg
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kathrin Kirchner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Udo R. Krieger

  2. Deutsche Telekom Technology & Innovation, Darmstadt, Germany

    Gerald Eichler

  3. University of Applied Sciences Jena, Jena, Germany

    Christian Erfurth

  4. University of Hagen, Hagen, Germany

    Günter Fahrnberger

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Kirchner, K., Nordin Forsberg, B. (2021). A Conference Goes Virtual: Lessons from Creating a Social Event in the Virtual Reality. In: Krieger, U.R., Eichler, G., Erfurth, C., Fahrnberger, G. (eds) Innovations for Community Services. I4CS 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1404. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75004-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75004-6_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-75003-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-75004-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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