The 31st International Toki Conference (ITC31) was held online from November 8th to 11th. I - Mohammadjavad Faridafshin - had a poster to present in ITC31 and this is a short report about my presentation.
Participating in conferences are always good because events like this that so many experts gather around in one place at the same time, do not happen so frequently. However, I regrettably missed most of the conference because I was tested positive for COVID19 and I could just gather my energy to attend the second poster session in which I was supposed to give my presentation.
Thankfully, I was scheduled to give my presentation on Nov. 9th, the second day of the conference, when I felt way better than the previous day. The poster presentations were supposed to be given in "Remo", an online platform made for such purposes. The posters were located in 5 floors with around 20 tables set aside in each floor. Each participant were supposed upload the poster to the assigned table and everyone were free to come and see the poster from 13:00 to 15:00.
I presented my poster to four people in total in the 2-hour period. It was the first time for me to present in an online conference, and I personally think it was nice to have the chance to talk to the experts of Fusion science about my work. Finally, a professor curious to know about the basics of ultrasonic testing came to my table and asked me interesting questions. There I understood that you can not claim you know something, unless you can explain to people totally new to the subject in an easy to understand language. Of course it was not so easy because explaining (and understanding) something in English can be challenging for non-English speakers.
In the end, I had to go get some rest because I felt a little dizzy due to COVID19. To be honest, before the conference I was a little unhappy about this conference being "online", and that I felt I am missing an opportunity. However, now I believe that I would have missed even this chance to talk to these four people who joined my table, if the conference was not held "online". I can say the "online" event worked well for me, but I am not sure about the others!