Facilitating Remote Participation at International Scientific Conferences

有效传播科学研究成果对于在所有研究领域取得进展至关重要。彼此孤立会减缓进展，在地球仪各地造成昂贵的重复努力。公开交流发现是科学界的基石，对于语言学及其他领域的科学家个人来说，参与这种交流变得更加重要，但也更具挑战性，因为前沿研究变得比历史上任何时候都更加跨学科，更加国际化。活跃的研究人员感到有责任参加的研讨会和会议的数量和多样性在世界各地呈爆炸式增长。当然，总的来说，这是积极的，但它也给许多科学家带来了越来越不可持续的负担，这些科学家理应被纳入这些重要的对话中。国际旅行，尽管可能是有益的，但也是耗时和昂贵的。对于残疾人来说，这可能是非常困难的。对于来自资源较少的机构或世界上不太富裕地区的学者来说，财务状况可能会破坏原本合理的旅行计划。其他事务，如家庭事务或地方学术和行政事务，都进一步占用出席会议所需的时间。签证限制增加了这方面的费用和努力，而纯粹的地理偏远往往足以说服潜在的会议与会者留在家里。在某些情况下，已经存在技术，使与会者能够解决旅行问题，远程参加科学聚会。然而，至少在语言学方面，这些技术在很大程度上由于费用昂贵和不为人所熟悉，往往是在大多数会议的边缘以有限的方式使用的。因此，远程与会者错过了这些会议上进行的大多数关键科学讨论。该提案提出了一项计划，在即将在波士顿大学举行的2016年演讲韵律会议上试行一套解决方案，使科学界成员能够从远程地点和主办地点本身一样全面地参与会议活动。将收集关于每种技术的可用性和吸引力的数据，并将用于设计未来的预算模式，使这种远程参与战略有朝一日能够自筹资金。具体而言，本项目将针对以下场景实现远程参与解决方案：1）口头会议期间的讨论和&问答; 2）海报的远程展示; 3）海报会议期间的主动出席和互动，以及4）在真实的时间和事后通过程序的数字档案“被动”出席口头和海报会议。解决方案包括流媒体视频、海报上的固定iPad和移动的远程呈现机器人。一套动态的会后程序，包括视频存档和异步讨论论坛，将促进会后的持续互动。最终，这项工作的目标不仅是语言学，而且是其他领域，朝着远程参与的标准发展，这种标准可以成为世界各地会议，研讨会和会议的规范。

Effective dissemination of the results of scientific research is critically important to progress in all areas of inquiry. Isolation from one another slows progress, creating expensive redundant effort around the globe. Open exchange of findings is a cornerstone of the scientific community, and for the individual scientist, in linguistics and beyond, participation in that exchange grows more important, but also more challenging, as cutting-edge research becomes both more interdisciplinary, and more international, than at any time in history. The number and diversity of workshops and conferences that active researchers feel a responsibility to participate in is exploding around the world. This is by and large positive, of course, but it also places an increasingly unsustainable burden on many scientists that by all rights should be included in these critical conversations. International travel, rewarding as it may be, is also time-consuming and expensive. For those with disabilities, it may be prohibitively difficult. For scholars from institutions with fewer resources, or from less wealthy parts of the world, finances may derail otherwise sound travel plans. Other commitments, such as those to family, or local academic and administrative responsibilities, further compete for the time necessary to attend meetings. Visa restrictions add to this expense and effort, and sheer geographic remoteness is often sufficient to convince would-be conference attendees to stay home instead. In some cases, technology already exists to allow participants to bridge the travel issue and participate remotely in scientific gatherings. At least in linguistics, however, these technologies, owing in large part to their expense and unfamiliarity, tend to be deployed, if at all, in a limited fashion, around the margins of most meetings. Remote participants therefore miss out on most of the key scientific discussion taking place at these meetings. This proposal presents a plan to pilot, at the upcoming Speech Prosody 2016 conference at Boston University, a suite of solutions that will enable members of the scientific community to participate in conference activities as fully from remote locations as from the host location itself. Data will be collected concerning the usability and attractiveness of each technology, and will be used to devise a future budget model whereby such remote participation strategies can one day become self-funding. Specifically, this project will implement remote participation solutions for the following scenarios: 1) discussion and Q&A during oral sessions; 2) remote presentation of posters; 3) active attendance and interaction during poster sessions, and 4) "passive" attendance at oral and poster sessions, both in real time, and after the fact via digital archives of the proceedings. Solutions include streaming video, stationary iPads at posters, and mobile telepresence robots. A dynamic post-conference proceedings package featuring video archiving and asynchronous discussion forums will promote sustained interaction after the conference. Ultimately, this works aims to move not just linguistics, but other fields as well, toward a standard of remote participation that can become the norm at meetings, workshops, and conferences around the world.