Due to the restrictions imposed by covid-19, in-person conferences have not been able to take place this year.  The European Association of Forensic Entomologists normally hosts an annual conference.  As this could not take place, Dr Jens Amendt, from the Institute for Legal Medicine in Frankfurt, decided to host the 1^st Digital World Conference of Forensic Entomology using Zoom. The conference took place from 15 – 17 September 2020 with 260 participants.  It was very well supported by researchers and students from South America – making up half the delegates. Dr Kirstin Williams of the Natural Science Department gave a full length presentation as the invited speaker from South Africa. She spoke about the research that has been done in South Africa in the past 20 years at the Southern African Forensic Entomology Research (SAFER) Laboratory that is based at Rhodes University where she is a research associate.  Dr Williams also presented a poster talk (a short presentation) on her work with colleagues on the discovery of a beetle new to South Africa and the first description of the larvae.  Although most researchers are hoping to go back to in-person meetings in the future, digital conferences like this one, give opportunities to particularly students, who don’t have the funding and wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate in a conference.