One suggestion to reduce travel requirements (but retain in-person benefits) is to adopt hub conferencing where a main event is hosted somewhere, but simultaneous online participation is coordinated in many satellite locations. I’m wondering which approach would give the better user experience for those online participants:
A) a number of large national hubs (e.g. rail-accessible university lecture theatres); or
B) a much larger number of small, local round-table groups, each with a ‘Meeting Owl’ (etc) in the middle of the table?