Agora.stream is an online platform developed by Remy Messadene and Alain Rossier, two PhD students in Mathematics at the University of Oxford, which aims to facilitate the organization of seminars and ensure that researchers from all over the world can come together to interact and take part in symposiums in your field of research. Seminars are specialized and engaging courses for training in scientific inquiry, where participants actively interact and take part in debates.
Remy Messadene told us what was the starting idea for this project: one of the best aspects of doing research in our age is the ease for researchers to interact on an international level, in particular thanks to the connection between places allowed by the advent of the World Wide Web in 1989. Through conferences and seminars it is possible to solidify networks of contacts between scholars interested in the most current topics in a given field, creating fertile ground for the development and realization of new ideas. Nonetheless, Remy and Alain found that there is untapped potential in current technologies to allow researchers to promote their work at scale.
Emphasizing the importance of seminars both for those who take part and for those who organize them, these guys have developed a virtual platform where researchers can get together.
The dual purpose of agora.stream is both to facilitate the preparation and management of seminars for organizers and to provide users with a single place to find similarly structured symposia. Carrying out research is increasingly a social activity that matures through the exchange and discussion of ideas. Remy and Alain recognize that meeting other scientists often stimulates new ideas and this has led them to think of those who find themselves in disadvantaged situations, such as scholars in isolated research centers where it is more difficult to get in touch with other specialists. The creators of agora.stream have thus set themselves the goal of bridging this gap and allowing as many researchers to carry out their research in the best possible way. The pandemic situation and the difficulties in organizing seminars without a clear and common structure have contributed to making the two creators feel the need for agora.stream for the entire scientific community. Remy and Alain are researchers first and foremost and have used their experience to develop the platform to meet what they have found to be the needs of scholars.
Agora.stream officially opened in the summer of 2020 and you can already find virtual seminars on the platform from groups of various leading research institutes, such as Imperial College and the University of Oxford in the UK, but also Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and The Alan Turing Institute. Remy stated that the product was presented to various universities that are adopting the platform, gradually developing the founders' vision of offering users a unique system through which they can virtually participate in seminars in various fields. A strong point of agora.stream is accessibility: every community that wants to use the services and place their seminars on the platform creates an agora. Agoras make it easier for coordinators to do things like publish videos, promote events, and manage event registrations. Logistics are standardized and organizers can focus on developing seminar material and maximizing interaction with attendees. agora.stream is open to researchers in any field, from STEM subjects to humanities and arts. The standard account on agora.stream allows you to use all the main functions and is free to ensure that everyone can access the most advanced meetings. There is also the option to upgrade to a premium account to take advantage of additional benefits, such as an increase in the limit of people who can take part in a live seminar.
Remy and Alain are thrilled with how the project has been positively received by the scientific community and they are continually including new features on agora.stream: pre and post event networking opportunities and the integration of LaTeX directly into the live chat. The intent is to offer a complete experience as close as possible to the one you would have by physically participating in these events.
I think this is the potential of agora.stream: its usefulness goes beyond the current pandemic situation, so virtual conferences have become a necessity for scientists to continue interacting. On agora.stream it will be possible to participate in seminars physically far from one's workplace and thus even those who are in more isolated places will be able to make the most of the available resources. Furthermore, participating in the seminars virtually would allow for a reduction in the environmental impact associated with travelling.
