Hello AALAS,
I hope you are all well and that you, your families, and your teams have been safe during this unprecedented time. I can say with absolute certainty that I could not have fathomed a scenario that would have us where we are right now; that is saying a lot from a strategic planner who spends A LOT of time looking at the future and the “what ifs” that come with that. Yet (as the meme says), here we are.
So now what? There are many uncertainties surrounding us regarding COVID-19; all of the states have started to transition into reopening. What will that bring in the coming weeks or months? I don’t know and honestly do not think the scientists and specialists know. All this uncertainty touches every part of our lives every single day. Is it safe to go to the grocery store, can I get my hair cut, can I schedule an appointment to see my dentist? At the same time, AALAS leadership is asking the question: What about the National Meeting?
As Ann Turner said in her recent letters, we do not know what will happen in October. I can tell you we have been looking at different scenarios (playing the “what if” game if you will) and weighing the ramifications of making decisions, when to make decisions, and how to proceed.
The Board of Trustees (BOT) will meet online on June 12. The National Meeting in Charlotte will be discussed in detail then. In the meantime, I want to provide a bit of information to help you understand why the Executive Committee (EC) has decided to wait until the scheduled BOT meeting before making any decisions.
Based on our existing contract with the convention center in Charlotte, as well as with the hotels, if we choose to make changes to the National Meeting now, AALAS would lose a large amount of money. There is a clause in most contracts called “Force Majeure” that deals with “unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract.” If there are national, state, or local restrictions on travel, Force Majeure would be in effect and allow AALAS to nullify our contracts, thus avoiding major financial losses.
The AALAS office has worked hard to discuss scenarios with representatives from across our membership; for example, when do exhibitors need to ship items for display in the hall or what does travel look like for facilities in the fourth quarter of this year? We have learned that there is no benefit to AALAS to cancel now versus making a more informed decision later in the summer (but before exhibitors would incur costs to ship materials). As you’ve probably seen in the news over the past couple of days, Charlotte is also supposed to host the Republican National Convention (RNC) in August. That event brings a lot more people to a city than our meeting. Given that, Charlotte is doing a lot of work to develop protocols for hosting a sizable convention. We can learn a lot about whether a city can safely host a conference as the RNC planning continues.
I want to remind you of our #1 Goal:
Provide education, training, and certification that facilitates professional development in laboratory animal science and enhances recognition within the research community.
We have a responsibility to our members to provide training and the National Meeting is a main deliverable for us. To meet that, our “what if” takes us to examining alternative methods to provide National Meeting content to members if travel is restricted. The Program Committee has laid the foundation for a fantastic educational program; abstract submissions are still coming in, so the poster and platform planning will begin in earnest next week. Your peers have submitted content to be included in the program. We all have information to share. I want to make sure we provide training and respect the authors that have worked hard to submit their content, but I want to make sure we do it safely.
If this note seems to oscillate back and forth between what we should do, welcome to my world. The EC decided to proceed with this topic on the BOT agenda because we do not have the information to make an informed decision right now. We will certainly have a robust discussion and have more to share after that meeting. That meeting is only 2 weeks away and we know that is a long time in the information cycle for this virus. We will share more with you after the BOT meets. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me, Ann Turner, or any member of the EC or BOT with your questions or concerns at
info@aalas.org
.
Sincerely,
