cities.multimodal‘s 5th project meeting was naturally not spared from the unexpected circumstances caused by the current world situation. The project meeting that was planned to be held in Tartu (EST) and Pskov (RUS) was transformed into a virtual two-day project meeting held during 22nd and 23d of April. Despite not meeting in person the cities.multimodal consortium took part in different sessions using a variety of tools and methods.

Some presentations that normally would have been given live were recorded prior to the actual meeting. The positive thing about pre-recorded videos is of course that they can be watched whenever suitable, the less positive is that the possibilities to interact and collectively discuss the content are limited. Luckily, an online chat was opened specifically for the project meeting and there were several possibilities for asking questions and interaction during the live sessions.

Aside from videos and chat threads, the cities.multimodal consortium also depended on the Jitsi platform for live plenaries and Google Jamboard for virtual collaboration. Jamboards are like virtual moodboards that can be used for writing and uploading visual content, they work especially well for online meetings since many persons can effortlessly edit them simultaneously.

Because of the uncertainty of when ‘everything will get back to normal’ the cities.multimodal consortium is in the midst of exploring options for adapting the final events into virtual ones. The events are planned to be held in September so stay updated for more information about how, when and where.

Author: Sini Lamoureux