Maintaining scientific discourse during a global pandemic: ESO’s first e-conference #H02020

From 22 to 26 June 2020, ESO hosted its first live e-conference, #H02020, from within its Headquarters in Garching, Germany. Every day, between 200 and 320 participants around the globe tuned in to discuss the nature and implications of the discord between precise determinations of the Universe’s expansion rate, H0. Originally planned as an in-person meeting, we moved to the virtual domain to maintain strong scientific discourse despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we describe our conference setup, feedback gathered from participants before and after the meeting, and lessons learned from this unexpected exercise. As e-conferences will become increasingly common in the future, we provide our perspective on how they can make scientific exchanges more effective and inclusive, and also climate friendly