Remember that awkward moment when you sit down next to a stranger or wait in the coffee line and try to start a conversation? The Ecological Society of America has recreated the same awkward moments by many randomised breakout sessions during the virtual 105^th Annual General Meeting (AGM) on August 3-6.

The conference, titled “Harnessing the Ecological Data Revolution”, drew more than 3,600 virtual attendees to present and listen to 1,700 talks and over 100 live events. Over 20% of the participants were non-US based and all conference materials will be available for three months. The AGM was supposed to be in Salt Lake City, Utah on 2-7 August and next year’s AGM is expected to be in Long Beach, California on August 1-6, 2021.

There were two large plant-related conferences the week before the ESA meeting, Plant Biology 2020 and Botany 2020 (read about it here). The ESA registration fees ($60-260) were generally $10 more than the Botany 2020 fees but $100 less compared to Plant Biology 2020. As a comparison, I attended the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Bonn Digital Conference 2020 in July which had 5,000 participants and all sessions were streamed on Youtube for free. The cost of full access to the online program (including cooking shows!), app and online chats was $10. Over 3 days #GLFBonn2020 reached 50 million users while #ESA2020 reached 13.5 million over 2 days. Both online events show the potential of reaching people around the globe virtually.

Whilst all the plenary talks and presentations were pre-recorded, there were live events throughout the whole day, which made the conference very engaging. In my time zone (BST), the conference began at 4 pm (11 am EDT) which allowed me to watch presentations and decide which live Q&A sessions over Zoom I should attend.

The conference was opened by Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer at Microsoft, who gave a thrilling presentation about “Scaling Ecological insight”, introducing the AI for Earth project, which was followed by a live Q&A session. It was an inspirational kick off but “where’s technology, there are glitches”. Unfortunately, the conference website was overwhelmed during the first day and the links and presentations took 5-20 minutes to load. Whilst the tweets were flooding in about the glitches, I felt for the organisers and website managers. Luckily, the following day, the website seemed to have been fixed. Captions were available for pre-recorded presentations and all sessions over Zoom. The daily emails were very helpful, helping attendees navigate through all the links and tips for any other technological glitches.