The Diversity and Inclusiveness Beat is running a mini-series called “Why I Support the Virtual APA.” This post marks the fourth and final installment. The mini-series was organized by Colin Marshall, who serves as Program Chair for the 2026 Pacific APA.
You probably don’t need me to rehearse all the benefits of virtual conferences, but I will anyway. Virtual conferences accommodate people who cannot travel for a variety of reasons—disability and illness, financial constraints, family obligation, immigration difficulties, safety concerns. Virtual conferences also help reduce the carbon footprint associated with travel. Moreover, because virtual conferences allow people who cannot travel to attend, they also allow us to meet those whom we wouldn’t otherwise meet.
Cards on the table—I am privileged enough to not be affected by most of these considerations (except for climate change, which affects us all), and I hate virtual conferences. I am easily distracted when sitting at my computer. I can never figure out how eye contact works over zoom. My usual tactic of joining a conversation is to physically move next to somebody, which I can’t do virtually. I spend most of my conference evenings catching up with friends long past midnight. I even enjoy people-watching at receptions. I love in-person conferences.
Yet none of the reasons I prefer in-person conferences nullifies the reasons to have virtual conferences. What do we do? I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know how to weigh the relevant pros and cons. Luckily for us, my lack of imagination does not limit other people’s ingenuity. Luckily for me, there are people who are more intelligent, more dedicated, and have more bandwidth than me who are willing to spend time and energy to figure out how to make virtual conferences just as rewarding and enjoyable. Since I am expecting to benefit from their labor, the least I can do is to be willing to try out whatever proposal they come up with. This is why I will keep attending virtual conferences and think you should too.
It is tempting to talk about virtual conferences like we already know all the pros and cons and are making a judgement about what goods we are willing to sacrifice for the sake of other goods. But talking about sacrifices is depressing, and there is a case to be made that one should attend virtual conferences regardless of how one currently weighs the pros vs. the cons. I prefer to think about it like an investment—I am investing my engagement so that somebody else has the incentive, resources, and feedback necessary to make things better in ways that I cannot yet conceive of, because I think the cause is worth the try.
Speaking of investment, let me also briefly mention the matter of registration fees. There are many reasons that virtual conferences charge registration fees: Zoom isn’t free; the platform on which programs are hosted isn’t free; the IT support isn’t free; many of the APA’s other endeavors throughout the year are funded by meeting registration fees. If you really want to find out how the finances work behind virtual conferences, I encourage you to get involved in organizational work and make these systems run better. However, not all of us are able to be the change we want to see. For the rest of us, the least we can do is to trust in each other’s judgment on these matters.
You don’t have to like virtual conferences. I still hate them. But hating them is part of the process of figuring out what works and what doesn’t. One does not solve a difficult problem by conjuring up the right answer straight out of thin air. We must be willing to experiment, to fail, and to be willing to stick around and try again afterwards.
Kino Zhao
Kino Zhao is an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University. She completed her Ph.D. at the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at University of California, Irvine. Her work focuses on methodological questions in the statistical social sciences.
