Honestly very understandable
We should be ripping our institutions apart at the seams over this. Thats fucken bullshit. Their our allies.
I’ll (Canada) probably be skipping a conference that we usually do each year in the states as well. Not worth potentially getting my phone/laptop scanned and data stolen.
Imagine getting to a point where people need burner phones to enter the US.
I’m trans. If there is a scientific conference in the states, you can be damn sure I’ll be sitting that one out
I was thinking some people are being forced to go by work. Can’t imagine going willingly.
Hold them in Aussie land instead!
Hear me out. Host them online and from multiple locations at once. I know we’re not quite there in terms of vr or ar, but I’ve spent plenty of time wasting time in VRC with limeies and kiwis and it was seamless to communicate effectively as if we were standing 2 ft apart while being on opposite sides of the planet. Flying is bad for the planet sincerely an American.
As someone who often attends and speaks at these type of events, I would advice against that. The main benefit of these events lies in the connections people make. These connections are very personal and don’t really work in a virtual context (yet, might in the future though). Most innovations are inspired by having a chat with other people and just throw some ideas and different perspectives around. That won’t happen if you treat a conference as a Teams meeting, people would just dial in, give their presentation and leave. Frankly, most presentations or talks during these conferences could have been (usually are) an article anyways. It’s the discussions that happen outside of these agenda items where the value is.
I would guess that you have not experienced social VR yet. As I said above as far as communication goes, it’s like physically being in the same room with 80 other people even though the closest person to me is actually 300 miles away. Is it perfect? No. Is it clunky at times? Yes very at minimum you need to wear a headset and have controllers and trackers. The technology is not fully developed at this point, however there is profound potential. With the current social video game. VRC I can connect to a virtual world grab a virtual marker and draw my entire idea out or write out math or poetry or any other thing I want and display it to them there in real time and they can collaborate with me in real time. There are also ways to easily share most media formats.
Within the next 10 years, I guarantee you somebody’s going to build an entire company off integrating that kind of tech into a purpose-built Business solution
Technically Sydney is referred to as the Emerald City.
https://asksydney.com.au/why-is-sydney-nicknamed-emerald-city/
I have visited the us on long roadtrips down both coasts. I was shocked at the state of their cities. Extremely run down and in a poor state, homeless everywhere and the people who werent homeless were very fat and unhealthy. It was very unpleasant to be there.