Should All Conference Talks be Pre-recorded?

Should All Conference Talks be Pre-recorded?

The
Code4Lib conference
was last week. That meeting used all pre-recorded talks, and we saw the benefits of pre-recording for attendees, presenters, and conference organizers.
Should all talks be pre-recorded, even when we are back face-to-face?
Note!
After I posted a link to this article on Twitter, there was a great response of thoughtful comments. I’ve included new bullet points below and
summarized the responses in another blog post.
As an entirely virtual conference, I think we can call Code4Lib 2021 a success.
Success ≠ Perfect, of course, and last week the conference coordinating team got together on a Zoom call for a debriefing session.
We had a lengthy discussion about what we learned and what we wanted to take forward to the 2022 conference, which we’re anticipating will be something with a face-to-face component.
That last sentence was tough to compose: «…will be face-to-face»? «…will be both face-to-face and virtual»? (Or another fully virtual event?)
Truth be told, I don’t think we know yet.
I think we know with some certainty that the COVID pandemic will become much more manageable by this time next year—at least in North America and Europe.
(Code4Lib draws from primarily North American library technologists with a few guests from other parts of the world.)
I’m hearing from higher education institutions, though, that travel is going to be severely curtailed…if not for health risk reasons, then because budgets have been slashed.
So one has to wonder what a conference will look like next year.
I’ve been to two online conferences this year:
NISOplus21
and Code4Lib. Both meetings recorded talks in advance and started playback of the recordings at a fixed point in time.
This was beneficial for a couple of reasons.
For organizers and presenters, pre-recording allowed technical glitches to be worked through without the pressure of a live event happening.
Technology is not nearly perfect enough or ubiquitously spread to count on it working in real-time.
1
NISOplus21 also used the recordings to get transcribed text for the videos.
(Code4Lib used live transcriptions on the synchronous playback.)
Attendees and presenters benefited from pre-recording because the presenters could be in the text chat channel to answer questions and provide insights.
Having the presenter free during the playback offers new possibilities for making talks more engaging: responding in real-time to polls, getting forehand knowledge of topics for subsequent real-time question/answer sessions, and so forth.
The synchronous playback time meant that there was a point when (almost) everyone was together watching the same talk—just as in face-to-face sessions.
During the Code4Lib conference coordinating debrief call, I asked the question: «If we saw so many benefits to pre-recording talks, do we want to pre-record them all next year?»
In addition to the reasons above, pre-recorded talks benefit those who are no…