What would a good ICM talk look like?

Now that the ICM has (unsurprisingly) become a virtual event, it might be worthwhile thinking a little bit about what would constitute a good talk in this new setting. There’s a certain electricity to talks given in person, and I think that many speakers give better talks when they have an opportunity to read the audience. Certainly the zoom talks I have most enjoyed watching are those where I’ve been able to interact with the speaker, but that clearly becomes impossible once the audience is large enough.

So an ICM of zoom talks (on a St Petersburg schedule in the middle of the night in Chicago) does sound a little uninspiring. But what would be better? pre-recorded zoom lectures sound even worse. The idea of a polished video presentation has some appeal, but possibly it is also unrealistic. The sound and audio quality of a standard zoom lecture are OK if you are interested enough in the material, but I think one should expect a general ICM audience to be a little less forgiving. (Yes, plenty of people give terrible colloquia, but at least there are usually cookies.) And even with access to high quality audio and video, is it just going to be someone standing in front of their blackboard?

I have tried once to make a mathematics video which was something other than me giving a lecture, and honestly, it took me a lot of time and didn’t turn out that great. But as Tim Gowers says on Terry’s blog, this should at least be an opportunity for speakers to try something.

Any thoughts? I guess the speakers have a few months to come up with some ideas!