Organize a conference
You are an academic and would like to run a carbon neutral virtual or face-to-face (or both) conference about your research field but not spend all your time on organizing? CarbonFreeConf developed all the tools for you to create your webinar in a few minutes (in brief, it is a mix between Zoom, Slack, Indico and more). We will automatically create a website for your conference (see an example) where interested participants can come and subscribe. Our tools can be used for free to organize any conference: website creation in one click, managing participants, handling abstracts, making the conference program and many more tools. You can also decide to run the meeting with us. In this case, meetings with less than 50 participants for one day are free for you and your participants (i.e., it is most workshops). In a few clicks, you can schedule your program with co-organizers and the program committee, contact your participants, invite them to give talks or reviews, customize your conference room, set-up a powerful chat room...
CarbonFreeConf Is Evolving
We have now run many very successful conferences and polled our participants. Here is what they recommended we do and that we indeed implemented:
- All our tools to organize conferences can be used for free, even if you run a face-to-face meeting (e.g. admin panel to manage participants, create a website in one click, make your program easily, manage participants' abstracts, ...)
- Conferences can now be hybrid (i.e. virtual and face-to-face at the same time)
- Tutorials have been added to guide you through all important steps
- Each virtual room can be completed with its own coffee-break virtual room (with interactive games for participants)
- There is a new payment option where all costs of the conference are shared equally across all participants (20€ per person)
- We added tools to better vizualize the program - in a timeline fashion - or the conference - with a map showing all the different rooms and posters
- The conference website has been improved (e.g., more customization, search bars to find abstracts, posters, more options to control who sees what, more pages including one to see shared documents)
- The admin panel has now more option (e.g., possibility to see Questions & Polls asked during the meeting) and is much more easy to use (e.g., possibility to sort the participants, ...)
- We added the possibility to notify the speaker about the amount of time left by the click of a button
- New tool to collaborate in real-time on a written document
- Many new options in the virtual conference rooms (e.g., "see what's next" to check the coming talks, addition of a coffee-break virtual room, improvement of the Questions & Polls tool, and much more)
Some words from the founder
Dear colleagues,
I am an academic myself, working in Astrophysics . I developed CarbonFreeConf because I came to the realization that it was important to reduce our carbon footprint as researchers and still be able to share
our research results. Traveling to the other side of the world for each conference and flying hundreds of people there might not be the wisest solution . That is why I now propose a new and easy solution to create carbon-free virtual conferences
that fits in quite well with the current Covid-19 situation because we cannot see each other in person at the moment. The idea is to try to make our virtual gatherings more efficient than in-person meetings
thanks to the power of technology. Even more than that, we can reduce our carbon footprint by orders of magnitude when gathering virtually while still
reaching the same goals, i.e., learn about new results in our field, share our new findings, meet new people, network, ... To be sure that the carbon emissions of the
virtual conference is really zero, we offset all carbon emissions produced via a company specialized in capturing CO2 from the air . You can offset the emissions
directly on their website or we can handle it for you as it may be easier. I decided to give the opportunity to make most meetings free (except for the carbon offset, which is very important to
not participate in global warming ). However, for bigger meetings requiring multi-sessions and a large
number of participants, there is of course a fee associated with it because CarbonFreeConf has to pay for, e.g., running multiple large Zoom-like conference rooms with hundreds of participants while maintaining an excellent streaming quality as well as providing support during conferences when needed . The fees can be shared across all attendees and it is also possible to
make a profit that can be assigned to more offsetting or paid to you (though it is not recommended unless you state exactly what you will do with the extra money to your participants, e.g., offsetting emissions at your institute, conference prize, ...).
Our Best Features
We list here our strengths and why you would want to use our platform to make your online webinar. We are the first to provide this service for researchers across the world. Even when Covid-19 will cease to be an issue, we will need the webinar solutions provided by CarbonFreeConf to organize, plan, advertize and share an upcoming conference and hold it online in the best conditions - or in a hybrid fashion - and in a carbon free fashion.
Carbon Free
We are the first company that makes virtual conferences totally carbon-neutral by offsetting their emissions.
Gain time
A workshop can be created in a few minutes, which leaves free time to schedule the conference program and invite participants.
Record talks
The whole conference can be recorded, stored, and viewed on our platform. You decide if you make it public, want to post it to YouTube, ...
Ergonomic conference room
Our meeting rooms do not require any software download and are easily accessible and secured. participants can use a white board, chat, send questions to presenters, tweet, add handouts, share screen, videos, connect from mobile phones, ...
Organize for free
You can ask for a fee to your participants (for non-free meetings), which will make up for the offsetting and our fees but could also end up with some profits. You can decide to assign the profit to offset more emissions (altruistic vision) or to be transferred to you after the conference.
Automatic conference website
Do not waste your time making a website, we create one for your conference from all information you provide (see an example). It has all necessary information on it and participants can register/pay via your conference website.
All the tools necessary to manage and record your conference from your desk
We provide easy emailing to participants, a program scheduler. We handle abstract submissions, participant fees, talks recordings, ...
No download to access the conference
Your participants can join your conference directly on our website without any complicated unnecessary software download.
A conference website
We create a website (see an example) for your workshop with all necessary information for your attendees. They can register and pay (if not free) for your conference on this website.
Carbon neutral
All our conferences offset their emissions so that researchers can still disseminate their results without impacting the total carbon budget of the Earth (see our carbon emission calculator).
Pre-upload slides and/or videos of the talks
Your participants can pre-upload their slides or posters in the conference room so that it is accessible from moderators and can be put on the conference screen very quickly without losing time. If your attendees are absent, they can also pre-record their talk on our platform.
Ergonomic conference rooms
Your participants can connect from computers, tablets, phones and have access to a series of handy features, such as a whiteboard, share screen, share handouts or videos, ask questions, tweet, chat...
Proceedings
If your participants need to write a proceeding after the conference, we handle everything. They can type it in on our platform and we will then store it ang give access to it via our website
Invite participants easily
You can decide that the conference is free for some participants (e.g. review or discussion talks, young participants with no funding, ...). This is all doable in one click.
Organize large conferences also for free
You can decide to make your participants pay fees to participate to your conference. In this case, we will collect the money for you and transfer it to you when the conference is over (or you can be altruistic and decide that the extra money goes towards more offsetting). For instance, if you ask for 40 € to each of the 100 potential participants, it already covers the expenses for the conference (about 280 € for five days) and CO2 offset (about 110 € for five days) and leaves a profit of about 3200 € (that could be used for conference prizes or to offset more carbon emissions or for reorganizing a carbon-neutral conference for free for your participants or to employ someone to help organizing it).
Be pragmatic and see behind the scene by yourself
Create your conference
Make your own conference in one click
How to manage your participants?
Accept and handle the participant talks, send a group email, ...
How to make your program?
Add one talk, a poster or lunch session in a few clicks
Make your conference website in one click
A conference website is automatically created including dates, presenter abstracts, registration page, payment section, ... (see an example)
See what posters look like
You can see the poster, upvote it and ask questions in a dedicated chat room
See what chat rooms look like
You can create private groups, contact persons individually and much more...
See what your webinar room will look like
Participants can chat, share screen, record, ...
Check out the live Q&A section
Participants can ask live questions to the speaker, upvote them, ...
Super interactive live polls
The speaker, participants, moderators, ... can poll other conference attendees and be polled. They see the results as a bar chart when the poll is complete.
See the latest tweets about your meeting
Participants can tweet during the conference and check the latest tweets from others live!
Participants can subscribe on your website
Participants can ask for a poster, talk, or just attend the conference via a simple form on your website
Participants pay the fees on your website
If the conference is not free, participants can pay directly on your conference website
What is CarbonFreeConf for?
What can you do with us?CarbonFreeConf is a platform to organize virtual research conferences. It is aimed at being carbon free by offsetting emissions that are produced by conferences.
How to use CarbonFreeConf?
Check out our Tutorial!It is very easy to create a conference and just requires a few clicks. Your participants will not need to download any software. If you need help, you can follow our 10-minutes tutorial.
Access to archival conference videos
Go to the archivesYou can look for and access previous conference videos. This is really a gold mine for researchers and you should go have a look now as you may be able to learn a lot about your research field!
CarbonFreeConf in a few words
CarbonFreeConf was created by researchers for researchers! It allows you to create online conferences, where all participants (presenters, organizers, attendees)
are gathered in a virtual classroom. They can then communicate online via audio and video and do not need to download any software to access
the conference room.
Each participant can watch the online presentations, and participate interactively, with questions or remarks that can be up-voted by other participants. If participants cannot attend, they can pre-record their talk on our platform, which will then be played during the meeting.
It is a novel way of bringing
our research work to reality, while avoiding the costs of travelling as well as too much carbon emission.
Just imagine how much CO2 a single commercial flight releases into the atmosphere? And now 50 or a 100?
Attending online conferences can save carbon emissions associated with travelling to meetings, workshops, and
research schools. Organizing virtual conferences will still produce a slight amount of emissions but CarbonFreeConf
offsets this emission using the services of companies specialized in pumping carbon from our atmospheres.
We also provide all the tools to make the experience unique and organize your conference as easily as possible by only
clicking on a few buttons that will create your conference or meeting website (see an example), which will be used by your attendees to register
or connect to the conference on the big day!
Note that you can ask for a small participation fee (for large meetings that are not free) to each of your attendees
to cover the conference expenses. We also allow you to make profits. You can decide to use it in an altruistic manner and offset more emissions than produced by the conference, or for the money to be paid to you (but it is not encouraged unless it is for a good cause to the benefit of carbon emissions or e.g. young researchers) and we will send you all collected money (minus 10%) to your bank account.
As a conclusion, these online conferences are an efficient way to be communicate our research work, save time and money, and most of all, to reduce our carbon footprints!
How different is CarbonFreeConf from platforms such as Zoom?
Zoom et al. are not developed to handle a conference from start to end, here is a brief list of what you can do on CarbonFreeConf that is not possible on other platforms
- There is
no downloadto access the conference room, your participants just go on our website and it's done. - You can organize the whole conference from A to Z by yourself or as a team in no time.
- In the conference room, participants can
draw, use a white board, chat, send questions to presenters, send new results on twitter. There are Q&A, polls, the possibility to add handouts, share screen, videos, connect from mobile phones without download... - From the information you give us, a
complete website with all the required pages is created for your conference (see an example here). - Participants register to your webinar on your conference website, they
add their abstract and you can decide to validate the talk/poster/attendance or not. - You have an admin interface to
add your participants, send emails to them, make your conference programthat will be visible on your website. - When the conference is over, the participants can write their
proceedings(if needed) on our website where we store them and give access to them. - You can
record the conferencethat would then be stored on our side and accessible via our website and/or youtube if wanted, which would be a gold mine for researchers in your field and an opportunity for presenters to share their work to a larger audience than usual. - You can also
upload the slides and/or postersof your attendees and these can be public or private to the rest of the world as chosen by the participants - Your attendees can
pre-recordtheir talk if needed (e.g. they cannot attend on a specific day). - You can ask for a
participation feeto your participants (when the conference is not free already) to cover the expenses or even make profits. You can decide to be altruistic and use this extra money to offset more carbon emissions directly with us, or that it is paid to you (but if you do you could advertize to your participants where that extra money would go, e.g. offsetting emissions at your institute or a conference prize, ...). For instance, asking for a small amount of 30 € to each of the 100 potential participants already covers the expenses for the organization (about 280 € for five days) and CO2 offset (about 110 € for five days) andleaves a profit of about 2300 €. - And the
MOST IMPORTANT, we offset the CO2 emissions (see our carbon emission calculator) provoked by this virtual conference using trusted companies.
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