​​My conference has a sneeze - Practical help in winding down a troubled conference
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​​NOTE: THIS DOCUMENT WAS WRITTEN UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT UNDER SOME CIRCUMSTANCES, EVENTS COULD HAPPEN AND EXPLAINED HOW TO BE READY FOR A CANCELLATION. YOU SHOULD NOT RUN CONFERENCES CURRENTLY, BUT IT IS USEFUL TO WIND THEM DOWN WITHOUT PANICKING.

​​Intended audience

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​​Community organisers running and planning events of the size of 50 to 400 people. For lack of better definition, I’ll define community organisers as:
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  • ​​People working on their own budget running an event not directly connected to another commercial entity
  • ​​People running events at the cost between 100 and 400 EUR
  • ​​People personally liable for an event as well as representatives of small limited liability orgs (such as small non-profits, or one-off companies)
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​​The first and foremost goal of this post is to avoid financial damages with lasting repercussions. 
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​​This document does not consider alternatives (like remote conferences, etc.), but focuses on potential impact instead. This document also is mainly written with outer circumstances like a sudden economic crash or - say - a pandemic in mind.
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​​This post focuses on the monetary side of things not for the reason that I find other reasons less important - quite the opposite. Fear of monetary loss and the shame associated are a frequent source of bad decision-making.
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​​I am also not going to get into detail on how to properly handle a “maybe” cancellation.
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​​Still, the experience may apply to other people or circumstances as well.

​​First of all: take responsibility

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​​Cancelling a conference impacts a lot of people:
  • ​​Attendees that have spent ticket money
  • ​​Speakers relying on your reimbursements (or fees)
  • ​​Sponsors that were relying on you
  • ​​And, finally: you!
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​​Running a conference also makes you responsible for all of those people, especially their health. 
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​​This isn’t to make you scared, but be aware of this: You, as organisers, are in the unique position to address all of their needs. I’ll give an example:
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  • ​​You tell all speakers to cancel their flights
  • ​​You end up with 2000 EUR in collected cost of all of them
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​​For you, this is a budget point that you can go find some way to offset it with. Every individual speaker would have to ask their employer, family, friends to get that money. The obvious way to offset it is to pay out of your budget. If you don’t have budget left: I have my own section for that.
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​​Working with time: concern is not panic

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​​Check what’s incoming: currently, we’re in the ramp-up phase of COVID-19, classified of by the WHO as a pandemic. Even pandemics are not the end of the world, but gatherings of people are a primary source of spread. The most important thing to note here is that pandemics are temporal - they have a ramp-up phase, they will get in check, and they will have a ramp down. Assessments about the current state of affairs are luckily easy to get in the age of the internet.
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​​Don’t get caught by the debate that there’s currently an inappropriate panic. COVID-19 is not fully understood and we’re ramping up on health-care for it. Any avoidance of infection helps the process and frees resources for those in need of treatment.
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​​You are responsible for your attendees health and well-being, at least on a moral level. This is not a bad thing. Making the hard call to cancel is caring 100 times more as having an ice cream truck at the venue (no issue with ice cream trucks, but that’s for a different document).
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​​Public assessments give you your boundaries. If there’s a hard ban on 1000 people events, it may still make sense to cancel a 500 person event. This number may drop at sudden, but also general care makes sense.
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​​Luckily, working with those assessments is rather easy: check how far out your conference is and determine the point where you need to start spending your money and conference budget. If this point is still a while out, use that time and consider the situation at that time. Avoid setting anything in stone until that time, though.
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​​As an example: You run a conference in July. The venue can be cancelled until 30 days before. You can wait until end up April to make a hard decision. That gives a lot of margin of error. You can wait as long as your situation as an organiser doesn’t get worse.