# You are invited to give a talk!

**URL:** https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/t/you-are-invited-to-give-a-talk/134
**Category:** Academia
**Created:** [30 September 2020 09:30 UTC](https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/t/you-are-invited-to-give-a-talk/134 "2020-09-30T09:30:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![anton-akhmerov](https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/user_avatar/forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/anton-akhmerov/32/4_2.png) [@anton-akhmerov](https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/u/anton-akhmerov)
#### Post date: [30 September 2020 09:30 UTC](https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/t/you-are-invited-to-give-a-talk/134/1 "2020-09-30T09:30:10Z")

</div>

![image](https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/uploads/default/original/1X/5e2c31f7ba68de10f8173142c590d96106b75d4f.jpeg)

**tl;dr** we launched a seminar series where you can present your research any time, and I invite you check it out and apply [here](https://virtualscienceforum.org/#/speakers-corner).

## Online seminars now

Thanks to the lockdown, in the past months we learned that onine talks are actually quite alright.  
They work at all scales: conference sessions, colloquia, and informal group meeting talks.  
Many researchers prefer good old offline talks, but I doubt anyone would claim that the online ones are actually unworkable.

At the same time the online talks are a carbon copy of the offline ones, and follow the same routine.

- Somebody runs a series of seminars or a conference session
- They think of a speaker they’d like to invite
- Typically this speaker is senior
- The speaker likely has a talk ready, and probably has given it a couple of times in the last couple of months
- The speaker accepts, the organizers send an announcement, the talk continues, and we’re back to step 1.

 ![image](https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/uploads/default/original/1X/65be16485ba16df4589e0b51188c934777f1443c.jpeg)

OK, the image is a gross exagerration, but my point is that the whole thing could be better.

## Flipping the online seminars

#### Consider: when would it make most sense for you or anyone else to give a talk?

I believe the moment is when you have something worthwhile to say. For example you just finished a research project and put it online.

#### Who should decide that you should give an online talk?

Clearly you know best when you’re ready, so you’re the one to decide. Offline talks are hard to organize: availability of the room and a packed schedule make it impossible for you to give a talk whenever you like. But online there are no obstacles!

#### How should this talk be organized?

While online talks are easy to run, they still take effort. You need to reserve a zoom room. If the talk is public, you want participants to register so that you avoid zoom bombing. Then you need some place to publish the recording, etc.

#### So? What’s the summary?

It would be great if:

- We had a place that any research could use to give a talk
- That place would take care of most of the routine

So instead of waiting, we made it!

The [Speakers’ corner seminar series](https://virtualscienceforum.org/#/speakers-corner) are exactly what I described. Whenever you have a story to share—register there, invite your audience, and tell it.

Some extra remarks:

- To avoid too _exotic_ presentations, we moderate the content by requiring that each talk is based on an arXiv preprint
- I think a cool application of this is linking the talk video from the comments section on arXiv. Because who has patience to read nowadays 😉

## About us

The Speakers’ corner is a part of

> **[Virtual Science Forum](https://virtualscienceforum.org)**
>
> A platform for scientific conferences going fully digital

We are a volunteer organization accommodating, organizing, and searching for best practices in online seminars.

We’re supported by

 ![image](https://forum.kavli.tudelft.nl/uploads/default/original/1X/065c2f9200084926106e2891731a2472cccf4dd9.jpeg)

❤