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Background on the ARSTM@NCA 2020 Virtual Preconference: What, How, and Why

Guest post by ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference chair, Dr. Lauren Cagle

As the 1st vice president of the Association for Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine, it is both my honor and my responsibility to organize the annual ARSTM@NCA preconference. I am sincerely excited to share the 2020 call for papers on the theme of social justice.

This year’s ARSTM@NCA preconference is, by necessity, not the usual. Typically, the organization holds a 1-day preconference the day before the National Communication Association’s annual November conference. Our preconference is co-located with the NCA conference, and we also have sponsored panel sessions and our business meeting during the regular conference.

But as we all know, this year is different.

Travel and in-person gatherings are both dangerous, especially for people with particular risk factors, such as age and disabilities. Many of us work at colleges and universities whose budgets have been slashed, leaving us without funding, even if we could travel. Parents are figuring out how to do their jobs and be parents when schools are remote and childcare isn’t an option.

To be quite frank, I believe it would be unethical to hold an in-person professional event, given how many people would be excluded from it.

That said, I didn’t want to cancel the preconference outright. The ARSTM preconference provides unique value to RSTM scholars and to the field as a whole. A non-exhaustive list of the preconference’s benefits includes:

  1. Opportunities to present work to a knowledgeable and interested audience,
  2. Opportunities for graduate students, junior faculty, and senior faculty to connect their work with each other’s,
  3. Networking and recruiting for ARSTM, other events, research collaborations, job openings, and graduate programs,
  4. Establishing evidence of national impact and reputation for presenters, and
  5. Articulating a shared vision for the field.

In consultation with other ARSTM officers, I decided to plan a born-digital preconference that hopefully provides much of this same value. However, simply replicating the in-person preconference online wouldn’t do that. Not to mention, 8 straight hours on Zoom is not my idea of a good time.

So instead, we’ll have a virtual preconference that replicates some in-person elements, reinvents others, and strips the whole thing down. As described in the CFP, we’ll open the live preconference with a keynote panel to set the stage. Inspired by the flipped classroom model, we’ll ask authors to share their work in advance, so we can focus our synchronous time after the keynote on discussion of and Q&A about that work. We’ll build in optional informal networking breakouts, so folks can meet each other, catch up, or wrap up an energetic conversation rolling over from a Q&A.

Thanks to the virtual format and generative theme, the ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference is also an opportunity to invite new members to the organization. We’ve made a number of choices to maximize the preconference’s accessibility for both new and returning members:

  1. Virtual format. The preconference will be fully virtual and accessible via a free-to-use video conferencing platform.
  2. Live CART captioning. The entire preconference will be live-captioned by a certified captioner and the full transcript will be available to ARSTM members afterwards.
  3. Free registration with membership. Attendees and presenters with up-to-date ARSTM memberships will have free registration for the preconference.
  4. Membership payment reminders. ARSTM leadership will review membership rolls to ensure all members who would like to attend are up-to-date on their memberships in advance of the preconference.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share more details here on the ARSTM blog about membership fees, opportunities for marginalized and precarious scholars to participate, and our line-up of keynote panelists. Subscribe to the ARSTM listserv for email notifications when these details are available.

And let me add, one last time, an invitation for everyone to read the CFP and consider submitting an abstract. Whether or not you’ve been involved with ARSTM before, we’d love to have you participate in November!