Some members were confused by the cancellation of the Southern Ohio Regional and thought the notice was about the National Meeting in Dayton. The 2020 National Convention is still scheduled for the end of June and we are all hopeful that the Covid-19 crisis will be in the past by then.
Hello Tom, I posted this on another thread you are not watching. Perhaps you might have something to add or an update on the National. It would be impossible to reschedule a meeting of this size. I can almost guarantee you the convention venue is book up for a year ahead. There are many other factors in play also. Generally the host will have made a substantial deposit on the facility; there may or may not be a cutoff date to cancel the event and receive a refund of the deposit. Because most contracts have a disaster cancellation clause, it may be possible this will be in effect for a period giving some leeway to the time frame. While it may be a bit early to cancel, the host committee and the venue should have a firm date for when a decision must be made AND the members should be informed that a decision will be made on that day or sooner. I can tell you that I will not be attending because I must protect my partners health as well as mine. I am very unhappy that I will miss the National if it does occur; I suspect many others will stay home for the same reason. We must take into account the advanced age of the vast majority of our members. As co-Chair of the Mid East Regional, I can tell you this is not an easy task in the best of times. I hope this gives everyone some idea of what is involved in scheduling these meetings.
The 2020 National Committee has regular phone conferences each month and will be assessing the situation this month. I agree that if it cannot be held on schedule due to meeting size restrictions or any other factors it would be cancelled rather than held later. It is too big an operation to move.
The members of the 2020 National Committee received this email from Rich Newman the Chair of the BOD Sunday morning. Rich asked me to post it here as a heads up for the members. Please pass it on to your friends.
If the event is cancelled, everyone will be offered a refund. If it is not cancelled, you need to notify the Pre-Registration Chair (me) that you will not be attending and I will have the treasurer issue a refund, unless you would prefer to just donate your registration to the NAWCC.
I would like to inform our members who read the message board that your NAWCC Board of Directors has decided to cancel our National Meeting which was scheduled to take place June 25-28, 2020. Your Board did not take this step lightly but we unanimously felt that, given the present COVID-19 crisis, it would have been unwise to think that we could safely ask our members to attend such a meeting at that time. I would further like to announce that if you made a reservation at the Crown Plaza Hotel under our special rate, and mentioned that you were coming for the NAWCC National convention, we have made arrangements for all of those reservations to be canceled by the hotel at no charge to you and with no work required on your part. This does not apply to reservations made at other hotels or to reservations made at the Crown Plaza which were outside of our special pricing arrangement. You will responsible for canceling these yourselves. We will be sending out a message to all members who have made advanced reservations about how refunds will be handled etc in the next week or so. Please pass this information along to any members you know. There will also be a formal letter posted on the home page of the NAWCC website tomorrow which will explain this all in more detail. Thank you for your understanding in this matter and good health to you all
Thank you John, I just received an email from Jim Price with the same info... I appreciate all ya'lls work and wisdom. I was looking forward to the meet, but not the facilities. I have a convention that has been held there the last 2 years and both the Crown and the Convention center are going to pot. They both need major work or replaced. I was there the 1st week of March this year and the Convention center had 5 gallon buckets or trash containers sitting around the breezeway and 3rd floor catching water that was coming through the roof!
