Upcoming ESIP Meetings
ESIP meetings will be virtual until July 2021
The ESIP Board met on Monday April 20, 2020 and made the difficult decision to move our in-person meetings to virtual conferences until July 2021, when we plan to reconvene in Burlington, VT. We do not take this decision lightly, but we are prioritizing the health and safety of our community members, staff and local partners who are struggling with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
ESIP is a strong, vibrant community and will rise to the occasion. Our community will thrive together virtually and when we do come back together, we will all appreciate our face to face collaborations even more.
Read Erin’s full letter to the community here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this comply with the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance?
This is the CDC guidance for gatherings and ESIP is right on the cusp of the 250 person gatherings: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/large-events/index.html It is impossible for us to know about at-risk populations within our community, but we should assume we have them and we should protect those folks. There would also be significant travel for this meeting and CDC guidance is to limit non-essential travel even when risk is minimal for disease transmission.
Why did you move the July 2020 Meeting?
In the near term, we did not feel that we met the CDC guidance or could provide adequate social distancing in the conference venue. In addition, non-essential travel is not recommended and it is unpredictable when travel restrictions will be lifted across various ESIP partner organizations.
Why did you move the January 2021 Meeting to a virtual meeting already, isn’t it too soon?
While the January 2021 ESIP Winter Meeting seems like a long way off, we feel it is infeasible and irresponsible to commit to the financial liability associated with the venue contract and efficiently organize the ESIP Winter Meeting with so much uncertainty. We want the ESIP community to be able to focus on getting back to the new normal.
In person meetings provide more engagement. What will you do to try to replicate that serendipitous engagement?
We all highly value the ESIP community and the serendipitous ways that the in person meetings provide chance encounters to others with similar problems. Knowing that the next 15 months will be entirely virtual for the ESIP community, gives us time to invest in a more robust collaborative infrastructure and an opportunity to experiment and push the envelope on building these connections online during our virtual conferences as well as during the normal ESIP operations.
Will this just be another webinar? Will it be a full day of webinars?
No! As we take this opportunity to move both events to virtual conferences, the ESIP staff and our Meetings Committee have begun to dive into specifics of what that will look like. We will be providing more details in the coming weeks on what the ESIP Summer Meeting will look like and we will learn from our experience with the Summer Meeting as we plan for the Winter Meeting. It will definitely not be full day GoToMeetings and we are exploring ways to provide additional engagement, so I do not expect this to be a passive experience.
I want to help plan this virtual conference. How do I share my ideas?
If you are interested in shaping this new format, we invite you to join the Meetings Committee call, next Monday, April 27 and last Mondays monthly. These are open meetings and all are welcome! Call-in details are on the telecon calendar.
When is the next in-person ESIP planned?
Our plan is that we will go to Burlington, VT in July 2021. We are very excited to engage with the local UVM community when we are able to meet in person. We also hope to use the next several months to build additional partnerships in the Northeast that we will leverage.
