REISERAPPORT


Daniel Winfree Papuga, president for ICME

Can 'virtual presentation' aid in integrating global museum communities?

ICME i Miami 10. - 12. juli 2006


A major problem in organizing any international conference is the logistics of how people can physically come to the conference venue. ICME and other ICOM international committees have tried to equalize possibilities for attendance by holding annual meetings in different parts of the world. ICME conferences are held at least on various continents over the years, even if it is not possible to have a "local" presence in all of the 56 countries where we have voting members. No matter what, however, there are always many museum professionals who are interested in participating in our conferences - but cannot attend for one reason or another. This is particularly true for ICME members from what could be termed "economically disadvantaged" countries.

The July 2006 ICME conference "Connections, Communities and Collections" in Miami Beach, Florida, could act as a good example of the limitations of locality. A large number of excellent paper proposals from all over the world were accepted within the March proposal deadline. By June, however, almost half of those whose proposals had been accepted reported that they were forced to cancel their participation, due to difficulty in obtaining either travel funding or US visas. Because of this - only a few weeks before the conference was to start - the organizing committee found itself in a quandary. Should the conference be reorganized in some way when a significant number of participants can't come? This dilemma led to the idea of a session with "virtual presentations" representing those who couldn't attend in person.

This following invitation was sent to the participants who had to cancel:

  
  "Although you have informed us that will not be able to come to Miami to present your paper, we would like to invite you to do a "virtual" presentation at the ICME 2006 conference. Including alternative presentations of this kind at the conference can be a way of raising a discussion on how we might gain greater participation in ICME - even if funding sources are limited. You may choose to contribute by either making a "stand alone" PowerPoint presentation (which wouldn't need a live speaker to be understood by the audience) or to record your paper presentation as a MPEG video on DVD or CD, or simply record the presentation on an audio cassette or MP3 file."

  
  While only two of those who had cancelled were able to send in "virtual" presentations in time for the conference, the initiative functioned quite well as an experiment. Each of the presentations consisted of the full text of their paper to be read aloud while screening a PowerPoint summary.

Participant comments after the presentations included:		  
  • "Texts should preferably be distributed beforehand for reading by participants, with only a summary presentation and moderator during the conference itself."  
  • "'Virtuality' should be limited to only one or two conference sessions in order not to preclude 'live' proceedings."  
  • "Post-conference discussions of the virtual presentations on the ICME newsgroup can be a useful way of expanding participation."  
  • "Discussion is difficult when the author of the paper is not present."  
  • "While a 'virtual' presentation is not nearly as fruitful as a 'live' presentation, it still allows 'other' viewpoints to come forth."  
  • "Virtual presentations need moderating to a greater degree than presentations where the author is present."  
 
I myself feel that we need to rethink the aims of our conferences, and to evaluate if there are more inclusive ways of maintaining international networks of museum professionals - which is what ICOM and ICME are. Referring back to the case above, alternative forms of direct communication might be useful in generating better contact during such virtual presentations, such as SKYPE, IRC chatting, or even a standard telephone.

But now that the conference is over, both 'live' and 'virtual' participants are putting finishing touches on their revised papers, which will be made available for downloading on the ICME web site: http://icme.icom.museum
 		  
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