An era of virtual seminars: from creating one to a list of ones to join

ESERMAN, LAUREN; DEANNA, ROCÍO; PRETZ, CHELSEA; SIMOES, ANA RITA

Plant Science Bulletin

Botanical Society of America

Año: 2020 vol. 66 p. 111 - 121

0032-0919

Online seminars provide opportunities to share research, meet people, and learn. In this era of digital media, the use of video meetings has increased communication and collaboration. There are many benefits of hosting digital seminars (even when COVID-19 will no longer be a threat). One major benefit is no one has to travel! This is not only environmentally friendly, but also means it is possible to hear about research and collaborate with international researchers, without spending large amounts of money. Virtual seminars are a great way of sharing ideas across fields with researchers that may not attend the same conferences. Not to mention, these seminars develop a community that is welcoming and encouraging for new researchers. Ana Rita Simões and Lauren Eserman have developed the Convolvulaceae Network Seminar Series during the past year, which currently gathers over 100 participants from nearly 20 countries, from Asia to Brazil. Rocío Deanna and Chelsea Pretz saw this as a model and started a similar seminar series focusing on research on physaloids (Solanaceae) that, even being a more specialized and restricted group, currently included the participation of almost 50 researchers from America and Europe. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, many other researchers are exploring the idea of starting virtual seminar series, or joining existing ones, to stay active. Here, we describe our story as just one of many ways to continue to engage in the research community despite geographical and financial barriers, with the goal of encouraging other researchers to pursue these collaborative events.