Following a successful experiment in online conferencing coinciding with the 2010 Singapore conference (http://icaconference.wordpress.com/), the 2011 Boston conference will feature a full-fledged excursion into 21st century conferencing.

The Singapore experiment attracted 531 registrants, many of whom were not at the physical conference, and it has continued to attract visitors - a total of 4436 hits as of July 13. The online conference included a variety of features: a "keynote lecture" (taken from a previous academic conference), a number of papers (some of which received scores of hits and downloads), a publishing workshop, and a book exhibit.

Approximately half (48%) of the registrants were faculty members; 29% were graduate students Registrants represent 63 countries, with the largest number from the US, but sizable contingents from the Philippines, South Korea, China, and Japan. While 56% of the registrants are ICA members, of the 233 who are not ICA members, nearly all indicated an interest in joining ICA. Most said they registered online because they could not attend in person. Comments from registrants on the registration form and a postconference survey showed a high degree of satisfaction and support for the effort.

For the Boston conference there will be three separate formats in which competitively selected papers will be presented: the familiar panel sessions, the increasingly familiar interactive (aka poster) sessions, and a new format: a virtual overlay online stream. Programmers will thus assemble the Divisional and theme sessions into these three formats, depending on the content and nature of the papers and the coherence of particular groups of papers. The virtual overlay (VO) will thus present paper sessions, which will include comments from respondents, and which will allow for commentary and discussion by readers and authors.

The VO option will be opened prior to the start of the Boston conference, and remain open beyond its close (although not much longer, as authors may wish to submit their papers for subsequent publication). Papers could be submitted to this portion of the program, especially if authors wanted to take advantage of the affordances of online presentation (image/sound/video, etc.), or they could be assigned to the VO portion much as they now are to the poster session of the conference.

Depending on the preferences of Division programmers, there could be live session at which the authors of these papers would be present to discuss their work with conference participants, much as now occurs with the Poster Sessions. However, in the case of the VO papers, there would be more time for participants to look at the work prior to the live session, and the online papers could be playing on laptops to supplement the discussions.

Like the poster sessions that have become standard, but so far not entirely satisfying, at ICA conferences, this allows us to take pressure off of the panel sessions, while still satisfying the demand for program presence. This will allow a degree of creativity and dialogue not frequently found in the poster sessions, and would represent an engagement with the newer opportunities afforded by technology that seems entirely appropriate for ICA. The virtual component will also provide a vehicle for streaming and disseminating sessions at the conference - plenary speeches, for example - to a far wider audience. Finally, the VO is fully consistent with ICA's efforts to move towards more environmentally friendly modes of operation, and it will be a solution in instances where authors are prevented from travelling to the conference to present papers that have been accepted.

Wiley-Blackwell, our partner in this online endeavor as in print publications, is committed to expanding and developing this new dimension for scholarly communication. In addition to the paper sessions and other program elements that can be carried via the VO, there will be an expanded book exhibit and outreach component that should benefit ICA as well as our publishing partners. The virtual component of the Boston conference will also be able to utilize Twitter [which was the largest referrer of visitors to the Singapore online site], blogging, and, perhaps, some new online application now slouching towards Silicon Valley to be born.