Why are online conferences rare in the chemical sciences, and what can other chemical communities learn from the education community’s experience with 20 years of ConfChem? Is there a role for ConfChem–like communications in other fields of chemistry, and how can this model of scientific communication be adapted to the needs of other fields? In the The fact that one can attend an online conference without leaving one’s home institution is probably the most obvious difference to a physical meeting. The advantage to this is reduced expense and the ability to attend the conference without compromising other professional commitments. The later aspect is also a disadvantage because attending an online conference adds to participants’ normal workload, while attending a physical conference is a chance to focus on the conference topic. Online participants also have different schedules and span multiple time zones. The ConfChem model needs synchronous components to keep discussions focused on specific papers and asynchronous components to account for attendee’s different schedules. Although multiple types of schedules have been used, the most common is to discuss one paper a week, running from Friday to Thursday. Over the first three days, participants are invited to read papers and submit questions to the authors, with the following Monday–Thursday scheduled as general discussion days, during which participants can interact with the author and each other.