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The Firewall in the Mind (Slide 42)
Webheads and teaching professionals: the idea of online participation at conferences

Recently, as you may be aware, my colleagues and I have extended the Webheads concept to the community of applied linguist professionals.To this end, we have formed a YahooGroup and presented at numerous conferences recently where we invited the world to attend live and online. Perhaps you, or some of you listening in today, might have attended one or more of our presentations.

I had an idea and a problem just recently. My idea, one of many I can assure you, is that conferences like this one need to have online components to them. It is becoming a bit anachronistic in an era of easy connectivity to hold conferences and expect everyone to buy plane tickets and each get a hotel room when it is possible to offer components online. There are in fact many successful online conferences these days, some becoming established after a several years' track record; the Teaching in the Community Colleges Conference, for example, has just held its sixth annual conference, all of them completely online. Although there are added benefits of getting together for a live conference, as we are today, it is feasible to extend the opportunity to participate to others in remote locations.