The following questions were prepared using input from the pre-event survey and were shared with the panelists before the event.

Introduction

• Please introduce yourself, describe an online event you were recently involved with. What were the best and worst things about it?

Logistics and planning

• What aspect of organizing an online conference is the most different from organizing an in-person conference?
• What logistical issues do organizers need to consider? If you had one piece of advice for someone planning an online event, what would it be?
• What part of the conference logistics or technology made the biggest difference in the participants’ experience, either positively or negatively?
• What tools do you wish you had?

Social interactions

• One of the key reasons mathematicians go to conferences is to renew professional relationships and to make new ones. How can online events serve this objective, especially for those new to the field?
• What can we do to help create a sense of community and foster social interactions at an online event?
• If you used breakout rooms, how did you manage them, and how well did it work? How can we ensure everyone feels included?
• Did you try any structured social events (e.g. games)?

Technology and the future

• How can we exploit technology to improve the online experience for participants?
• What was a speaker’s most interesting use of technology in a talk?
• How did you handle speakers who had difficulty or felt uncomfortable using the technology?
• When the current health crisis is over, what role do you see online events playing in our mathematical lives?
• Are there any unexpected benefits of the online experience that can be translated to in-person conferences?

The following questions were asked by attendees either in the pre-event survey or duing the live event. This list is not exhaustive, and it has edited for clarity, to reduce duplication, and to preserve anonymity. Most but not all of these questions were addressed by the panelists in some fashion.

Logistics and planning

• Are there problems related to codes of conduct? Thoughts on supplementing them for online or mixed meetings? Tools for monitoring conduct?
• Can you comment on how you manage scheduling to accomodate multiple time zones?
• For international conferences being rescheduled, what are the best approaches to timing? Condensed over 1-2 weeks at the time zone of the original location? Spread over 6-8 weeks to accommodate multiple times zones?
• What is the experience of time-shifting presentations? Are there good ways to extend discussion and follow-up of presentations that recently concluded?
• How long should breaks be between talks? How do you keep people engaged?
• What is the effectiveness of mixing live and pre-recorded content?
• What are some good ways to manage panel discussions with questions from the audience?
• How many people does it take to run an online session? Can one person both chair the meeting and keep it going technically?
• What kind of registration fees have you found are acceptable for online conferences?
• Should speakers be able to choose not to be shown on camera? Should we allow attendees to remain anonymous?
• What specific challenges arise when bringing together a new community (e.g. researchers in different fields) in an online format, and what are some possible solutions?

Social interactions

• Do you think the mathematical discussions in the chat during a talk can be distracting? In real life, people would interrupt the flow of the talk, interact directly with the speaker and involve everyone in the discussion, or they would ask someone sitting next to them and let the talk continue. In a virtual talk, I find it difficult to follow the talk and the chat at the same time, especially when they are both really interesting. What do you think?
• Do you have any ideas on how to address and lower barriers for participant interaction, for example, making it easier for people to "interrupt" talks with questions?
• What can we do to better include advanced undergradutes and early graduate students who may be attending their first research conference? There seem to be fewer events catering to this audience online, and in addition to having less technical background, there are social barriers to overcome. How can we help them?
• What have been some of the most successful ways to have a social component of an online conference? Specifically, should there be hosts, topics, particular room sizes, randomized participation, other things?

Technology and the future

• What is the best way to manage chat? Which chat tools support latex?
• How do "webinars" compare to regular vidoe conferences?
• Can you recommend a "scrollback" system for digital whiteboard talks?
• Do you have any experience with providing live closed captions for participants with hearing challenges?
• How worried should I be about "zoombombing"? Has anyone experienced this in a meeting where a password was required?
• In addition to the use of slides or digital whiteboards, should we also be exploring the use of software as a visual medium?
• There now seem to be many online seminars. How many are enough? Could there be such a thing as too many? Should there be some kind of meta-organization by our community? Should we create a centralized repository for recorded talks?
• Rather than watching the same speaker giving the same talk in different semianrs (often in a less than ideal audio/video environement), would it be better for them to prepare and pre-record the best version of their talk under ideal conditions and then make the video available to everyone?