Last week, I attended LabPhon 18 online and co-hosted a satellite workshop with my co-author Paul De Decker on "Challenges for Change." We discussed 9 methodological challenges our presenters have faced during the pandemic, and we brainstormed solutions going forward. We had a very good discussion about what circumstances, types of studies, and populations benefit from online participation, compared to those that benefit from in-person work. The conference also had pre-recorded talks and flash talks (replacing posters) plus live streaming, live Q&A, and asynchronous chat. It was organized on the Whova platform with live interaction streamed through Zoom, which was a winning combination lacking the technical catastrophes of some recent online conferences. Overall, good!

Having a good time at virtual New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV), one of my favorite sociolinguistics conferences. I had two presentations: an invited panel discussion with my co-author Paul De Decker in Newfoundland about our work on remote audio data collection for vowel analysis, and a poster with my grad student Molly Landers about pre-lateral mergers in Oklahoma, where words like pull are pronounced like pole or pool, and words like dull sound like dole.
    It's a challenge to fit live morning sessions and watching pre-recorded talks into an otherwise normal mid-semester week, but I've decided I like the chance to mull things over a bit more compared to everything being packed into three full days in person. Plus, I can pause and go back over the videos and pore over posters before or after live Q&A sessions. The posters were presented live on Gather.Town, which is the best virtual poster format I've experienced over the many different options conferences have tried during the pandemic. And live Q&A worked very well on Zoom, which we all know how to use by now!  

The Acoustical Society of America fall conference was online this year. Five days of video presentations, iPosters, live Q&A, Zoom meetings, and socializing on Gather.Town -- quite a feat for a conference with thousands of participants.  Overall it was pretty smooth, with some manageable technical snafus. I like having access to talks and posters before and after the conference, both for managing scheduling during the week and digesting when not pressed for time. Of course I miss getting together with old friends in person, but it was still great to catch up any way we can. The next one in June will also be online, and I hope they'll continue to have some online components in the future - most of us can't make such big trips twice a year, but there's always lots of relevant work to connect with!

When the COVID-19 ​pandemic halted in-person data collection, my lab and others' turned to video conference call apps like Zoom or asked participants to record themselves on their phones or laptops.  To make sure these recordings are suitable for phonetic analysis, I've teamed up with Paul De Decker from Memorial University of Newfoundland, who has previously tested laptops, smartphones, and VoIP apps. This summer, we tested 7 devices, 3 apps, and 4 transmission conditions. Our results on vowel spaces, mergers, and nasalization were accepted as a poster for the Acoustical Society of America fall meeting, which will be online this December.  We also recently submitted two papers for a special issue-series about the effects of the pandemic on acoustics and acoustic research practices in ​the society's journal, JASA.