Two weeks ago I published a post about upcoming conferences I will be presenting at. Well, things have changed…
The last few weeks have been hard on all of us. The stress, the fear, self isolation, all kind of new restrictions and more. On top of that, conference organizers needed to decide what to do and how to handle the situation.
Conferences in Europe were the first ones to be cancelled, but US and Canada were relatively calm and things seemed to be okay. But then cases started to increase in North America, and the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.
Until that point, the conference organizers were debating and didn’t know what to do. But then all of them (myself included) realized that it is just irresponsible to hold a conference while this craziness is going on (proof below).
First was UTOUG. I got the message less than a week before the conference was scheduled to start, and right after the WHO declared a pandemic. I was really looking forward to seeing many people there, but to be honest, I was a bit concerned. I am not in a risk group and my parents live back in Israel, so there is no risk of infecting them. But I do have a family here. I didn’t want anybody to get infected, and definitely didn’t want to be a person who brings something like that into my community.
Next we had a few discussions about our BCOUG conference that was supposed to be on April 30 and May 1. As you can guess, it’s not going to happen. I also have to say a huge Thank You to BCIT. We booked a few rooms at BCIT campus in Vancouver for the conference. And when we cancelled it we knew that there would be a cancellation fee. As we are a non profit organisation based on volunteers, this is a big expense, but we didn’t have any option. BCIT, due to the situation, waived the entire fee and I’m grateful for this.
Yesterday I got a mail that says that NEOOUG‘s GLOC conference is cancelled as well.
Still waiting to see what will happen with KScope at the end of June.
As a conference organizer, I can explain what lead us to cancel our conference:
- First, and most obvious, is the public health aspect. As we all know, all infections and the first cases in every place happened from travelers (either local that got infected abroad and came back home, or tourists that brought it with them to a new location). So a conference is a “perfect” place for the virus to find a way to get to new places.
- Even if the conference is a local one (like many of the cancelled conferences), speakers are usually from different places.
- With non-local speakers and the uncertainty of travel bans, there was no way to know whether people would be able to come and speak at our conference.
- During this entire crazy time, I couldn’t see myself promoting a conference, asking people to register and attend, while everything is completely unknown.
In my opinion, cancelling conferences is the right thing to do (even before the travel and mass gatherings ban and flights cancellations). We cancelled ours about 1.5 months before the scheduled date, and I hope this allowed people to cancel their flights and hotel (if they managed to book these already). I received emails from almost every speaker, saying that they fully support the decision and it was the right one (and I did the same when I got cancellation emails from other conference organizers).
If you are still not sure how conferences can help spread this, apparently there was a huge dentist conference in BC just before BC banned gatherings of over 250 people. The conference had 15,000 (!!) attendees in the first week of March. Apparently, there were a few attendees that had COVID-19. Yesterday, BC announced that multiple new COVID-19 confirmed cases are linked to this conference and strongly suggested any dentist who spent time at the conference to self isolate themselves. This is a clear example why conferences are rightfully cancelled.
We can’t know when this will be over, but in-person conferences are something I really enjoy (Robin Moffatt wrote a very nice post about it). I hope we will be over this mess soon. I also hope that all of the sponsors and other resources will assist all of us to get back on our feet and organize more conferences.
Stay healthy everybody, keep safe and I hope to see you soon!