And so much of it is basically impossible to do with scheduled calls. People have tried making video call software to replicate in-person interaction dynamics, but none of them helped for the labs I worked in.
When you’re discussing in person, conversations naturally split up into separate conversations each with their own interested participants.
If you’re no longer interested in something, you can temporarily tune out and listen in on a different nearby conversation to gauge whether you want to move to a different group.
Video call softwares have introduced breakout rooms, but you need to leave a room to enter another. You can’t just quickly scan the room with your ears and pick out another topic you want to talk about. You also can’t do this scan without signaling to current participants that you might not want to talk to them.
There was another that created a virtual 2D room where you can walk around and get proximity chat, but things just get too noisy because you don’t get directional audio.
Calls require scheduling and lack flexibility. Compared to an in person conference where the plan is basically just being around other researchers and interacting with them for the whole day. If it were remote, you would have to book calls to fill up your day and you can’t just decide to drop something because you’re tired and need some time to recover. If you schedule a call, you’re expected to be at the call.
Scheduled calls come with much higher expectations. You don’t generally go into a call to exchange three minutes of small talk and hang up. You’re expected to know ahead of time that this is someone you want to talk to and what you want to talk about with this person. In person meetings let you go through this small talk process with multiple people to find the ones who share your research interests.
Body language communicates a lot too, especially in this search process. Get enough experience with this and you have a much higher chance of picking out people who are of a compatible form of neuro-spicy.
Considering that so many researchers are neurodivergent in some way, planning specific activities helps a lot as social lubricant. Going out for drinks as an evening activity is fairly standard at all conferences I’ve attended. There’s one guy who always organizes morning runs. Sometimes, we chat over board games. Etc.
And so much of it is basically impossible to do with scheduled calls. People have tried making video call software to replicate in-person interaction dynamics, but none of them helped for the labs I worked in.