[Projectleiding] Covid related info

[Elger Jonker]

Hi Aschwin, Walter, Content team,

These are the questions that are being investigated as need be in the upcoming period, and we hope to answer most of these questions before the ticket sale starts in a blog post about this subject.

To give a heads up, i'll answer the things that can be answered with the state of now, and you may read more on it on the PL mailinglist archives. I'll respond inline.

> On Oct 11, 2020, at 20:30, Aschwin Marsman via Projectleiding <projectleiding at lists.ifcat.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Projectleiding,
> 
> In our Content meeting yesterday there were some questions about Covid and how it impacts MCH2021 in general and our team specifically. This email contains my personal opinion and questions, other team members might have different opinions.
> 
> Currently we have 20 submissions and that’s nothing to worry about, the closer the deadline the more submissions are done (and also past the deadline). Bringing the CfP and the event to the attention of potential visitors and speakers always helps, you see a rise in submissions so more communication about the event and the CfP would be welcome.
> 
> Team Content has regular meetings and the team is in good shape.
> 
> When approaching speakers Covid is almost always a topic. I have some questions about this, e.g.:
> 
> - What measures do we have in mind for the event? Blog posts about those measures would help us. During the field days I liked the way this was handled but not everybody was there and potential speakers have no idea how serious we are in that regard. Can Projectleiding / Team Safety communicate about this? Then we can refer potential speakers to those posts.

We've been extremely serious in taking both required and extra measures to ensure a safe field day. For the event itself the seriousness will be the same, taking into account anything we can do to create a safe event.

We assume there will be measures, we assume it will impact the budget and ticket price. The event will likely be different, and attending will be just as worth-while as usual. Team:Safety can confirm social distancing & hygiene measures such as more space around people and many more places to wash your hands. Their their First Aid coordinator has experience with larger events and dealing with then-relevant viruses such as the norovirus, which require many similar measures to curtail a (any) virus. Other measures are yet to be determined. But measures are not our greatest worry: those can be bought, implemented and organized: whatever they may be.

The field day shows how we ('MCH') dealt with measures in the past, but there is no guarantee that those measures will be either exhaustive or overkill. In either case there will be an event with adequate measures taken.

> 
> - When will there be a go / no go for the event from Projectleiding? 
> 

The organization / event is in "go" shape: people, teams, sold vouchers, terrain, permits, municipality, vendors etc. So that's good, and this needs to continue as usual. The national government is in "ad-hoc" shape, which gives a lot of uncertainty: exactly that is our biggest concern.

To deal with most covid concerns, we have put a few measures / checks in place. Those will be detailed into a longread blogpost that will be public before the ticket sale starts.

For now, in short: PL has "breakpoint" meetings, next to their regular meetings. During those breakpoints they evaluate the situation and future as much as we can. The meetings are now scheduled at around the 1st of december and 1st of april. PL assumes the NL government will create "levels" as near countries are doing, so we're inspecting those to get a glimpse of the future. We also know that the coming weeks or few months will be bad here in NL, but better in for example Germany. 

Our request is: "Don't let the short term dictate what the future will be". Our rationale: we've seen a mild summer for example where our event would have been perfectly possible, we've seen others have similar scale outdoor events and we had our event on a small scale(!). Keep your spirit high and just go for it. That's the only way to ensure the organization creates the best MCH possible.

> Some more communication would be very welcome, also to keep the spirit for the event alive.

Yes, this action is on the todo list of the info team. Both in general and specific to Covid.

Regards,
Elger / Stitch
PL