The tips and suggestions given here are based on our experience as organisers from Language Academy, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in conducting our first virtual seminar, The Virtual Language and Communication Postgraduate International Seminar (2020). We hope these suggestions will help others who are planning to organise a virtual conference.

1)       The Team

Get a group of people who are tech-literate. This is essential for any virtual conferences as it requires people who can visualise how the conference can be conducted and what platforms can be used as well as people who are able to mitigate or overcome technical problems and provide alternative solutions.

2)        The Communication

As we are currently advised to practise social distancing due to COVID-19 pandemic and some of the team members are away from Malaysia, most of our meetings were conducted online through WebEx and WhatsApp. At times, it is difficult to monitor the teammates’ progress, thus, a regular online meeting is recommended. The head advisor and head of the organising team have to play an important role to make sure everyone in the team is communicating to update each other on their progress and doing their job accordingly.

3)        The Platform

• Website: Make sure the information is clear, sufficient, and up-to-date so that people who are interested to join or to know more about the conference, can get clear information and instruction to follow.
• Video platform for the conference: It is advised to do a trial run before the actual conference day. Make sure the host (organising team) has a good internet connection for the event to run smoothly.
• Advertisement: It is suggested to use current trends for publicity such as TikTok, Instagram and Facebook for regular updates about the conference.

4)         The Participants

For an international conference, it is advised to be mindful of your participants’ locations. The time difference can be a huge barrier. For example, we had participants from Iran (5/6 hours behind Malaysia) and they couldn’t use WebEx. To cater to this, we scheduled our Iranian participants’ presentation in the afternoon session and we opened a Google Meet platform for them.

By: Farhana Abu Bakar & Nur’ain Balqis Haladin