Office hours

I'm experimenting with public office hours to talk with anyone about open access to research — my area of specialization.

The idea is to pick some dates and times, open an online videoconferencing room, and invite any/all who are free at the time and interested in the topic to drop in to chat. I'll make the dates, times, and URLs public on Twitter.

I'll start the experiment on Zoom.

• To make it easy to drop in, I won't require passwords or advanced sign-ups.
• To reduce the risk of Zoombombing, I'll start with certain settings (such as the waiting room) and tweak them in light of my experience. If I can't sufficiently reduce the risk of Zoombombing, then I'll modify the experiment (say, requiring sign-ups and/or passwords), drop it, or move to a different platform where it might be safer.
• I'll probably use a different Zoom session URL for each meeting. But I'm still thinking about that.

I'd like to make this convenient for people in different time zones. But there's no getting around the fact that I'm in the Boston area. Depending on the season of the year, that's EDT (UTC-4) or EST (UTC-5).

If you have ideas on how to make this experiment work, or if you'd like to set up a meeting, please let me know.

— Peter Suber