Social Media and Scholarly Communication: – How to make Academic Conferences a success?
Social Media is a web based technology which turns which turns communication into an interactive form. There are various forms of social media including the magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blog, photographs or pictures, videos, etc. With the advent technology, the social media like facebook, twitter, orkut, myspace, skype, etc plays an important role in the purpose of communication. This form of communication leads to an interactive session with a person or a group of person. Today, everyone especially the younger generations is hooked to the social networks to be connected with their friends and family. The most important advantage of social media is the sharing of the knowledge and information among the various groups of people. The sharing of information online also leads to enhance the communication skills among the people especially among the various students of the educational institutions. On the other hand such online social tools are misused by many people who are basically engaged in illegal activities such as hacking and misusing of the information. Such issues pose a threat to the ethical aspect of the use of such media.
Apart from personal communication, professional and business communications are also performed via social media. The business houses are busy in promoting their products and services through social network. The business houses are always aiming in serving their customers with the best possible service thereby maintaining a healthy relationship valuing their trust on the particular brand. Every brand is aiming to embrace the social media for the promotions of their particular business as it provides a promising means of publicity. This helps the brand to achieve and retain a stronger position in the minds of the customer.
Table of Contents
How to organize an academic conference?
The general expectation of what constitutes a good conference paper differs in every discipline. The conference presentations should be discussed with experienced presenters in the particular field as well as it should be reviewed by the experienced figures of the particular field who has worked on the particular subject. The chances of being an effective presenter depend on continuously and consistently trying to imitate the good features one has observed and avoid the bad aspects.
Organizing a conference is a really great thing and one has to have certain knowledge in order to master the skill. As the organizer one has to have access to the papers collected early in their development stage, which is to be a part of the future direction of one’s field, have some nice ideas with high level keynote providers, and get to reveal in the glory of a well-run event that sticks in the minds of one’s peers and sub-ordinates.
1) One has to be organized: This is a time taking process, and probably some resources beyond one’s requirement. One has to make sure that the line manager is in agreement and that one has to specify more resources than it has been thought earlier. Finally, one has to make sure that all these are recognized as part of one’s workload.
2) One has to grab a professional help: As an academic one probably has certain connections at management and organization. One has to abide by the academic side of things, by selecting special papers and keynotes and managing the creation of paper sessions periodically. From the practical side of things also, one has to get help from an experienced source. There are various professional conference arrangers and companies out there who are there to guide an amateur academician and one has to use them.
3) One has to look from a delegate’s perspective: The main motto of an academician should be that he should be honest with all the data and information provided in the paper. On the other hand they should go and meet other researchers as well, in order to exchange ideas and increase the network. The high quality papers are actually the blue print around which one must build a lot of breakouts. One has to make it easy for people to meet and exchange ideas.
4) One has to decide on the budget: Nothing comes for free. One has to exchange a considerable amount of money in order fulfill a successful academic conference. A basic expense budget should be prepared. Again one has to build in the registration fee required for the cost per delegate for the professional help. Budget should consist of the costs which will hold the entire expense of the academic conference.
5) The form should be kept tight: The success of conference does not necessarily depend on the number of people running it. One can run the infinity conference with two people – a chair and an organizer. One makes final binding academic decisions, the other organizational ones. There may be others doing the stuff as well including the local organizers and selection committees.
6) One has to be selective: As with the greedy publishers there are more or less voracious conferences. This sounds great and one can talk to the high administrator about running it, then it turns out to have to charge a fortune.
7) One has to hold it somewhere nice: One who wants to attract people to come and visit the conference and enjoy the conference. But at the same time one should take care of the fact that not so much pleasure should be taken that they slope off and not attend any sessions. Holding the conference on campus is usually the best thing to do.
8) One has to take the full advantage of the technology: One has to make sure of the fact that every room has audiovisual technology and are secured between sessions. One should know the use of a conference organizing software or conference maker site, to receive, manage and organize papers and journals, and distribute to reviewers, arrange sessions and so forth.
9) One has to keep a track of time: One has to abide by the time slot. There is nothing worse than someone taking forty-five minutes for their allocated twenty minute presentation slot. The time management should be done effectively and should be strictly followed.