Video in Scholarly Communications: Issue #3

May 4, 2021

What’s New at Cadmore

Spring is finally in the air, and while plans are in high-gear for new events, new features, and new clients, it also seems like a good time to reflect on a full year of pandemic learnings. Thinking about the events and projects we worked on, a few themes emerge:

Every author is now a potential video creator. Academics got a crash course in giving virtual lectures and presentations, and it’s likely to continue to be part of how the curriculum is presented in the future. For publishers, this means contributors are comfortable with video and understand the benefits.
What to do with all this new video content? Being virtual for so long means almost all organizations have at least some video content now. Getting video projects started used to mean getting over the initial hump of video content creation and collection. Now that so much content exists (webinars, conference presentations, podcasts, and more), there are a lot of possibilities to turn that content into new products. We’ve seen standalone publications and products, video embeds with the associated paper/proceeding, used for learning products… the possibilities are eye-opening.

There’s a developing consensus over when to pre-record and when to run a live event. Event organizers are pre-recording single-presenter lectures and panels and using live options as opportunities for interaction and networking.
Expectations are higher, especially around networking and chat options. Virtual attendees were very understanding of technical glitches early on, but now that most everyone has attended a few events and knows what is possible, organizers find themselves creating more sophisticated experiences with more customization.
Societies are seeing a significant opportunity with the globalization of access to conferences. They are spending time addressing specific challenges (time zones and bandwidth, particularly).

Re: virtual events, of course they are here to stay, but we are all eager to see people in person! I’m hopeful that I’ll get to see some of you in person later this year with the continued vaccine rollout. Until then, I’d love to hear from you.

Violaine Iglesias, co-founder and CEO