Like many other conference organizers, in the Spring of 2020, Virtual Chair founders Jason Hartline and Nicole Immorlica were leading their field’s virtual transition team to convert the previously planned physical conference into a virtual one. With many conferences struggling to provide the engagement and interaction of a physical conference, the team focused on creating a conference experience to emphasize three priorities: interaction, dissemination and broad participation.

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With Local Chair Yannai Gonczarowski, the team reviewed many platforms for virtual conferences and eventually adopted Gather.town because of its unique physical metaphor that encouraged striking and surprising interactions with attendees in an early tech rehearsal. We worked closely with the Gather team to create a fully integrated conference experience — the first conference to do so — entirely on the Gather platform.

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Weeks before the conference, the team organized student volunteers to run live-audience pre-recording sessions for authors to record video presentations. We then organized student volunteers to edit pre-recordings and create synced video for parallel sessions during the main conference. The team prepared calendars of events for attendees. The team meticulously and painstakingly designed the conference venue, and constructed a schedule around watch parties, lightning talks, and poster sessions to encourage interaction of participants and dissemination of results.

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The results were remarkable! It was a virtual conference that felt like a physical conference. Spontaneous interaction between attendees occurred throughout the program. The conference experience was amazing, and while it took considerable effort to achieve it, we knew we had a formula that could be recreated.

The result is Virtual Chair.