Suppose you knew that you were going to meet with a group of people regularly, half the time in real life and half the time on-line. Armed with that knowledge, how would you organize the series of meetings?
Clearly there are things for which real life is better. People have a much greater intuition for each other when they can see and hear each other in the same room. Subtleties of intent and mental state can be effectively conveyed in person. Those same subtleties are often simply lost on-line.
But on-line is good for other things. Let’s look at just one example among many.
Suppose you wanted several dozen people to each give a presentation, complete with visuals, within an hour. Theoretically that could be done in person, although much of the time would be wasted just moving people around.
Yet on-line that is not a problem at all. People could just take turns sharing their screens in a Zoom call. I’ve done this sort of thing, and it works great.
So that suggests a possible structure: Have free-wheeling discussions in person, followed by more formal presentations on-line.
But that’s just one strategy. I suspect there are many others. And I suspect that in the years to come, we are going to have a lot more experience with all this.