Adding greater possibility of virtual attendance could be a cool change assuming it is viable from a cost perspective
But folks who are not able to use VR in some way or another, be it disability or technological illiteracy, are still valuable parts of the conversation on climate change, so trying to do it all that way seems iffy to me
On the discussion more broadly, personally I find communication via video call about a million times harder than in person. I get that thats not the case for everyone but the communication is literally the entire point of having a conference like that. Trying to do it all over zoom seems like a good way to handicap thw effectiveness of conferences on a really important subject.
Maybe thats cause I have some auditory processing issues, maybe its because of social anxiety or neurodivergence and feeling dependent on lots of social information thats hard to read via video call to understand what people are communicating, but I think that kinda just adds to the accessibility being functionally important point, I imagine there are lots of neurodivergent folks in research. But maybe video calls are much easier for other people 🤷🏻♂️