CONGRESS 55
toration, dairy pastures of the future
- including nutrition and cultivated
pastures, next-generation/4th industrial
revolution advances in rangeland management,
game farming, nature conservation
and tourism, water production
and fire management in rangelands and
research project proposals. Interestingly,
attendance was similar across all
these disciplines.
That there were no parallel sessions no
doubt allowed for greater attendance of
all the sessions. Delegates appreciated
the wide range of topics covered and
considered them highly relevant to the
Congress theme and considered them
of high quality. It is intended to make
session packages available for purchase
in order to extend the opportunity to
people to participate in the online congress
after the actual event.
Some of the session chairs found it challenging
to juggle listening to the presentations
(especially if the sound was of
poor quality), monitoring the chat and
question and answer box and preparing
for the next presenter.
Unexpected were the comments received
from many members who expressed
the opinion that a virtual
congress was a format which is long
overdue. The lower costs of the registration
fee due to the online nature of
the congress and the savings related to
travel and accommodation costs were
appreciated by many delegates, especially
at this time. The lowered environmental
impacts of a virtual congress
compared to a physical congress were
also appreciated.
Despite these advantages, congress
attendance numbers were lower than
anticipated: 141 delegates from nine
different countries in comparison to an
average of 193 delegates per annum
over the last five years. It is felt that the
lower than expected attendance was
directly related to the economic implications
of the pandemic rather than the
virtual format.
Going forward the Society will consider
an online format for congress which
may even result in the development of
a hybrid format of a physical and online
congress.
Maintaining an online congress would
help the Society to meet its objectives
of growing its southern African and
off-continent contributions with other
rangeland groups and help to profile
the GSSA beyond its current membership.
Given the travel challenges in
Africa even in normal times, a hybrid
congress would allow for much greater
intra-African connectivity and reach a
much wider and very important audience.
The newer technologies facilitated certain
aspects of congress. For example,
the automatic reports generated by
Zoom ® greatly facilitated the collation
of delegate session attendance and
hence the calculation of CPD points required
to generate the CPD certificates.
Similarly, we were able to offer electronic
‘goodies’ for the delegate ‘swag
bags’ which proved very popular with
the delegates. ‘Goodies’ included electronic
books, magazines and vouchers
to tourism facilities.
Key lessons
Internet connectivity remains the most
important consideration in hosting a
successful virtual congress. This will
remain a challenge in South Africa for
the immediate future. In the absence of
reliable data connectivity, backup plans
need to be made, such as making the
sessions available for later viewing. This
also alleviates other potential problems
such as electricity supply disruptions.
Similarly, redundancy needs to be built
into the system and must include items
such as having more than one internet
service provider in the event of system
or streaming errors occurring during a
live event, so that it can be switched
rapidly to a different provider if needed.
Having the videos pre-recorded was
very useful, however, when the systems
failed on the first day, this necessitated
having to request the affected session
speakers to present live. Having presenters
forewarned and prepared to
present live is a useful redundancy. One
needs to be ready to ‘adapt on the fly’
as the challenges arise.
Whilst there was a choice of software
platforms available to host the congress
Zoom ® was selected because it
is software with which many people are
familiar. Indeed, several participants
commented on picture quality and the
interactivity between several people in
a single session being better than that
of other commonly used platforms. That
more people preferred Zoom proved
invaluable given the short time available
in which to organise the congress.
Zoom ® also offered the best value for
money: an essential criterion given the
current economic situation in RSA.
Hosting an online-only event presented
some novel challenges for integrating
all events normally associated with
an actual congress. For example, the
awards ceremony usually takes place at
the gala dinner on the last evening of
Congress.
Because this was not possible, the
awards ceremony was moved to the Annual
General Meeting which was held
online the day after the congress. The
AGM is usually only attended by GSSA
members and not necessarily all Congress
delegates.
This meant that congress delegates did
not automatically know who the award
winners were. This also had the effect
of extending the duration of the AGM
and extra-long meetings are not always
popular.
It is important to try and make the event
as interactive as possible. The Zoom ®
meeting host and the session chairpersons
have a vital role to play to ensure
that all questions posted are attended
to and raised hands are acknowledged
and people are given an opportunity to
ask questions.
We found more questions were asked
than during a physical congress as a
level of shyness was removed with delegates
being able to type in their questions.
Ensuring a full programme, even
during the breaks, ensures continuity of
the programme. In this regard, the virtual
tours worked well during the breaks.
To simulate a live environment, presentations
were acknowledged by playing
a clapping recording at the end of each
presentation. Some participants felt
that this made the presentations somewhat
artificial.
Despite the COVID ‘curveballs’ thrown
this year and inexperience in hosting
an online conference, especially under
lockdown conditions, the event
was hosted successfully. In conclusion,
the authors would like to thank the organising
team for all their hard work in
making the 55 th Congress a success, as
well as all our sponsors for supporting
us. We would also like to thank the delegates
for their patience and tolerance
of the ‘glitches’ which occurred.
REFERENCES
Reshef, O., Aharonovich, I., Armani, A.M., Gigan, S., Grange, R., Kats, M.A. and Sapienza, R. 2020. How to organize an online
conference. Nature Reviews Materials 5:253-256. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-020-0194-0.
Grassroots Vol 20 No 3 September 2020
08