Gary Ross
Kanazawa University
Gary is a web developer, designer, and programmer, and the creator of Eventzil.la. He works as an Associate Professor at Kanazawa University where he develops the online learning program at the School of Pharmaceutical Science.
Sessions
Technology: Bringing us together in a chaotic world
The web was born just 30 years ago with its sharing technology promising a world of tolerance, goodwill, and understanding. Yet somewhere along this road, this dream has been shattered with our online world apparently to blame for the chaos we seem to find ourselves in. This talk will be about why this has happened, what we can do about it, and how we need to redefine our relationship with this world both on a personal level and a societal one to better cope with this new reality.
How to organize and plan your own online event or conference
JALTCALL2020 was the first major JALT conference ever to be held online. It was recognized as a huge success, bringing together almost 100 presenters and attendees from over 60 countries. Participants talked of the event being ‘historically important’ in the way it brought people together in a time of crisis. Yet the transition online was organized in barely two months. The conference team was faced with many challenges, such as building this online system, organising how presenters share their work, ensuring attendees could navigate the online schedule, managing registration/ticketing, hosting online rooms, communicating with their presenters, and creating opportunities for social interaction. They also needed to consider live and asynchronous options and how to share recordings with a wider audience post-conference. During this forum, three members of the JALTCALL2020 team will discuss how it became our SIG’s first completely online conference and how it can be replicated - indeed PanSIG2020 itself was planned using the same online system and framework. Whether you are planning a weekend webinar of your own or a conference with hundreds of attendees, this talk gives you a practical framework to make your own event a success.
Closing Panel
Some closing comments about PanSIG2020 and looking forward to the next time we get together.
Opening Ceremony
Welcome to PanSIG2020!