Contingency Planning for VidUKon 2020

[vidukonnews]

 Greetings vidders and vid fans.

With the current concerns about COVID-19, we wanted to share what plans we have in place in the event that we aren’t able to go ahead as expected, and to hear your own thoughts as attendees and potential attendees.

While it’s unclear how things will develop from here, the con is still three months away, which gives us time to decide on the best course of action.

The options we’re currently considering are:

1. Running the con as planned. It may be that the situation will become clearer soon, and that the con won’t be affected. (However, in this case there could still be issues with international travel or with attendees missing out because of needing to self-isolate.

2. Delaying the con to a point later in the year. Up until 60 days before the con, we are able to move our hotel booking without too much trouble. However, this could negatively affect folks who have already paid for travel or booked time off for the con and cannot make new arrangements.

3. Moving the entire con online. Since VirtUKon has been in place for the last several years, we could give partial refunds down to supporting member level and run the virtual con as the main con.

4. Cancel this year’s con. Obviously this is our least preferred option, but if for some reason none of the other options were viable, we could cancel the convention entirely. We are looking into the possibility of refunds, or the option to defer membership to next year’s con.

We’re aware that attendees and potential attendees may have a range of perspectives on this question, so we invite you to let us know your thoughts in the comments, so that we can take them into account as we make this decision.