What would a world without conferences look like?
What would a world with conferences being seen as natural Shelling points punctuating online discussions look like, with pre-registered forums dedicated to specific questions and at least two weeks allocated for every participant to familiarize herself with current literature? Like, I was chosen to participate, and I spend 14 days just reading up on the topic (and then give a free-to-attend lecture summarizing my understanding.) Possibly on weekends, if my institute does not agree to pay for that fortnight and I want to go badly enough.
And when I come back, I give another lecture on what was discussed.
I'm asking this as a follow-up to http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/, which was written a few years ago, and which I find very interesting.
Many of the arguments advanced in http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/ (especially inaccessibility) could just as well apply to conferences, too.
I'd also wonder - would you consider conferences to also be a terrible discussion forum? What do you think would be some good alternatives?
The audience for conferences is limited, and people seem to remember only a tiny tiny fraction of everything they've encountered in a conference. The ideas in conferences don't seem to do much for building up platforms of public discussions around the new subjects that are often announced in conferences (rather than, say, on online platforms).
I suppose one could advance the argument that ideas often get brought up/discussed at conferences that wouldn't be conveniently discussed in any other medium (for now..). But is this mostly because people are too comfortable with what they're been brought up with?