The Plan To Come Back In Person
The DDD East Midlands team met last week to determine if we are going to try and run an in-person event in 2021. Last year we needed to postpone in order to keep all the attendees and supporters of the conference safe. This year, the situation is still uncertain but is definitely more hopeful. With vaccinations being rolled out and the government announcing their plans for getting back to a new normal, we’ve decided to aim to have an in person conference this October.
There are a number of considerations to this decision and we will have some back up plans and be revisiting this decision throughout the year, leading up to the event.
Our Considerations
As we stated last year, our highest concern is the safety of all those involved. This is solidified by the fact we have a member of our team who is clinically vulnerable.
We may need to put some restrictions in place to help ensure the safety of all those at the conference. Alongside the government recommendations of hand sanitizing stations and potentially wearing face masks, we are also going to ask than anyone attending has been vaccinated. Again, all of this will be assessed and confirmed closer to the time of the event.
Asking Your Opinion
To help with our decision to go ahead, we asked you to fill in a survey. The results (shown below) were inconclusive, which is to be expected with all our current circumstances still being uncertain. The trends looks like, if the situation is safer and more certain, then many of you would be interested in attending an in-person event.
We will be sending out more of these surveys throughout the year to hear from you, and whether you think this event should go ahead. We thank you for all your input to help us with the decisions we need to make going forward.
Back Up Plans
As we still don’t know what will happen later in the year we have a couple of back up plans.
- First, we are aiming for a full event same as what was hosted in 2019.
- If government guidelines closer to the time suggest we need to implement social distancing and other precautions, the venue is set up to help us with this.
- Finally, if the worst happens, we have confirmed a date with the venue in March 2022 that we can postpone to.
We will try to be as transparent with all of our decisions going forward as possible.
Thank you.
To our amazing sponsors
Thank you to our Gold Sponsors for supporting the event.
To You
From all the team, thank you for all the support you have shown the event, and to us. We have had a number of challenges in the last couple of years. We can’t wait to host a fantastic event in 2021 that you will all submit to, attend and enjoy.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to any of the team.
