Speaker
Description
The reality of large international conferences is that they pose a considerable risk to the environment. This is a long recognised fact [Reay2003], yet until 2020 little has been done specifically for conferences. The carbon footprint per paper was estimated by one study to be 801kg of CO$_2$ [Spinellis 2013], this is obviously not an insignificant amount and thus efforts and techniques to make conferences more environmentally friendly should be an important consideration now and into the future. Whilst the internet of course is not a carbon-free entity, it is far better than hundreds of attendees flying in across the world. Increased virtual presence of a conference can help to reduce travel, along with other potential implementations [Hamant2019].
The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a boom for virtual conference which allowed to play with the format and to understand Pros and Cons. A general review of formats, problems and achievements as well as possible future improvements will be given.
