The reverse–zoom design aims (1) to encourage collaboration and debate before collective live events and (2) to create accessible, durable resources to engage a broader audience. The schMOOZ design reverses the standard conference design, where a small group of organisers announce a topic, set a deadline for submissions, then approve/disprove and sort the results. Participants prepare materials that are not seen until the day of the session, where limited time rules out the possibility of extended discussion, even though virtual conferences have no space–time limits that mandate these restrictive practices. The schMOOZ design reverses the standard design by creating discussion groups that autonomously develop topics and form revised views through debate and review. Formality is stepped up, from brainstorming to public symposia, where presentation materials are available beforehand thanks to YouTube archives and full papers made available on the Internet. Conference sessions clear the way for discussion among group members, invited critics, and the audience.
For a shorter overview of the idea, see this position paper, The Reverse-Zoom Idea.
schMOOZ design
The plan in brief: (1) Zoom® to brainstorm an idea; (2) have additional sessions where critics are invited to comment on increasingly formed ideas; (3) develop presentation materials to create an “archive” that the public can visit; and (4) hold a seminar, symposium, or conference where others are invited to present and the public can visit the archive before live sessions, reserving time for discussion, debate, and speculation.
1 / brainstorming
One advantage of the global pandemic has been the necessity imposed on most active academics, of teaching and learning on Zoom and similar platforms. The difficulties of this new way of collaborating are not exaggerated, but there have been advantages. Geographical location is no longer significant; participants are limited only by time–zone mismatches. Presentation of graphic materials — PowerPoint or Keynote shows can be shared directly on screen — and linking to Internet resources is simpler than hooking up to equipment in classrooms and conference hotel session rooms. Audiences may come from anywhere with bandwidth.
Zoom–style interaction requires new skills to coordinate free discussion, but it favors an anarchy natural to “brainstorming,” where the lack of the hierarchy usually provided by the architecture of the classroom or conference room “rounds” the flow of ideas. The strength of the zoom platform is the equalization that is essential to any free discussion of ideas just beginning to take form. Its weakness is this same anarchy, when technical issues, unprepared speakers, or too–rigid management hobble the flow of an event. By putting zoom’s “best foot forward,” the schMOOZ design reverses the standard conference logic by having topics develop from autonomous groups who brainstorm, then invite critics, then prepare formal materials made available on the Internet, then hold public sessions.
Brainstorming is critical, so it is first in the reversed schema. Control and timing are determined by the group itself, with minimal guidance from event organisers. Each schMOOZ group identifies and invites its own external critics, helps each other publish texts and videos for public consumption, and profits from several open sessions where ideas will be critiqued, reviewed, repaired, and re-designed.
2 / invited critics
The traditional conference design claims that its centralized control is essential to maintain the authenticity conferred by blind review. Despite the relative secondary status most institutions confer on conference participation, conference organisers act as if they are essential to academic integrity in promoting new themes and strictly regulating the quality of presentations. The experience of conference participants contradicts this view. The profitability of large conferences has promoted the practice of accepting most proposals. Space and time restrictions restrict presentation duration and time for discussion to the extent that sessions are packed with dull PowerPoints while chairs in the room are empty. Attempts to raise standards with stricter reviews depends on finding reviewers, whose conception of the topics of the conference becomes the limit on new ideas. The quality, dedication, and responsiveness of reviewers is uneven, at best.
In the current model of live conferences, the idea of continuing discussions from year to year, with a flexible group of scholars who stay in touch and are familiar with a set of ideas and methods, is impossible. Centralization mandates that conferences will be themed and streamlined. The cadre of reviewers will add another level of restrictiveness. The participants themselves, working without any collaboration up to the day of their presentations, will be astonished to find that they have been grouped with other presenters who seem to share little. The session will be lax, and presentations going over time limits will disadvantage those that were perfectly time; discussion time will be eroded to the point that anyone with questions will be directed to the coffee bar.
The conversational theme of most conferences is complaint about the expense and thoughtfulness that has gone to waste on an event that seems to favor only a small elite of keynote speakers and conference organisers who will claim credit for publishing “proceedings,” prefaced by over-optimistic assessments of the achievements of the few days’ events.
The standard conference design depends on incrementalism: the idea that scholarship develops through slow small steps where discipline is strictly maintained at every level. Incrementalism is, fundamentally, a design derived from text translation, which must alternate between levels of meaning affected by context, contemporary use, etymology, and literal meaning. Scholarship can benefit from understanding things “to the letter” only when paradigms have reduced theoretical volatility to the point that “texts” can be said to have some kind of determinate, though never “literal,” meaning.
If the aim of such conferences is to salvage authenticity by restrictive admissions through blind reviews, the result is mediocre because they confuse the protocols of incremental determinacy for authenticity. Authenticity is iterative, not incremental. The increment flows in a single direction; iteration is a movement back and forth.
The schMOOZ model begins with free discussion, where minds change voluntarily; then dialectic, where questions are asked that must be answered. These exchanges lead to debate, where views have formalized to the extent that positions can be said to win out over others. But, this is not an end. Rather, the process creates a new platform, a new basis from which research “starts all over.” While each session involves incremental development of ideas, it simultaneously demands an iteration, first supplied by free exchange. A second level, however, involves inviting external critics as an audience to the group’s first attempts to articulate its interest in its topics. The critics confer some objectivity, but the point of this second level is to introduce a new level of difficulty — and, hence, integrity — to the back–and–forth iterative exchange.
At a middle point in the zoom group’s development, one, two, or more “external critics” are invited, to participate in the group’s discussion, present their own views, and to pose challenges. The critics’ own work may be essential to the group’s growing understanding of “the problem.” The advantage of engaging critics early in the process is that the final “session,” the live session at a formal symposium, can include critics as discussants in round-tables or even as keynote speakers.
3 / available archives
The main advantage of zoom–style scholarship is the production of e-versions of papers and presentations that are normally not available beyond a small group of organisers, reviewers and authors. In the standard conference design, after a good presentation, some audience members ask for “copies of the paper.” They will rarely have any access to the visual materials that have been used in the presentation. With zoom conferencing, the technological logic is reversed. Presentations must be digitized, but this process is rarely used to maximum benefit. “In theory,” a PowerPoint/Keynote presentation can be made public before it is officially presented, but “in practice,” this is rarely done.
What if a conference session began with “Now, are there any questions?” This presumes an ideal that will rarely, if ever, exist. Few in the audience will have taken the time to watch a presentation in full, although some may be interested to download a position paper. However, if presenters prepare short summaries of their positions, with engaging graphics, a session is cleared for an exchange, a debate. The trade–off in this “front–loading” of presentations and papers is the (potentially) lively discussion that invites the audience to participate or at least witness “engaged thinking.” The loss (the full presentations) is only in some cases cause for disappointment. But, this also has advantages. An archived video need not be limited. It can run as long as the author needs to make it. The written essay may be as short as a page or as long as a monograph. It can include links, illustrations, and extensive bibliographies. The conclusive advantage, however, is that the e-presentations and e-essays are permanent, author-controlled, and publicly available. Although the organisers have given over control to the participant–authors, they have gained back time wasted in restrictive reviews, policing formats, and scheduling. At the same time, the responsibility turned over to the participants has been balanced by the early introduction of external critics, who are engaged at several levels.
The organisers are not responsible for archiving, but they can centralize and distribute technical assistance for participants less familiar with digitizing their presentations. They can maintain servers for written papers. They can enlist technical support from their universities, or simply hire a few experts who answer their emails.
4 / the schMOOZ symposium
Once the autonomous small groups have formalized their ideas to the point of constructing archives of (voluntary) presentations and archived writings, a public symposium can take place. Unlike the standard in-person conference, where limited space and time imposes a strict regimen of concurrent sessions, forcing attendees to choose what sessions they attend based on the limited evidence of the program, a zoom conference can be held with sequential sessions. It can be stretched out. It can distribute itself to optimize time–zone differences. Better: it can record each session so that no one is forced to miss a key discussion.
The main advantage of the schMOOZ design, however, is that each session has required full presentations and papers to be made public well in advance of the live event. Audiences may preview which speakers and which groups they wish to hear. They may fast–forward through materials of lesser interest but watch and re-watch those that engage them; they will have time to form questions and pose challenges. The standard conference design generally allots 80% of its time to presentations, 20% to discussion (in the best conditions). The schMOOZ design reverses this. Twenty percent is allotted to presenters’ short summaries, with or without illustrations. Eighty percent is given to comments from invited critics, responses from participants, questions from the audience, and extended debate.
Given the expense of travel, lodging, and conference fees, it could be argued, on the grounds of economics alone, that the standard model offers little at high costs. The schMOOZ design, in contrast, is thrifty if not to say cheap. The majority of participants are self–funded, but their expenses will be minimal and their resources and materials recyclable. Assistants should be hired if necessary, but many institutions can be persuaded to provide these services and personnel. Fees, if any, can support students willing to offer technical assistance.
Thanks to the ability to record sessions and materials, the conference/symposium lives on, in cyberspace, as long as the servers that support it are kept running. This, if anything, provides a higher level of scholarly review. Work is exposed, flaws as well as achievements. Authors will be compelled to defend or revise their publicly available materials. Where in the standard design bad work is simply rejected into private darkness, the reverse zoom encourages “bad work” in the form of speculation, ersatz conjecture, and brainstorm–level half–baking. The difference is that not all errors are errors. Some conceal a new and better idea. But, without exposure to discussion and review, this novelty source will go unused. “Working in public” optimizes the variety without which scholarship withers and dies