February has brought new and unique challenges to DeDe and Barbara as the planning of SESUG 2022 continues. The Omicron variant is starting to subside, bringing hope to committee members and conference attendees, alike, that we will finally be able to meet again after being apart for over 2 years. The shared knowledge, comradery, and (let's be honest, here) humor/woes of our community are best felt when interacting in person, something very few of us have been able to do since the change from 2019 to 2020. Though February may have shown us that there may, indeed, be a light at the end of the tunnel, that light still illuminated the many obstacles that lie between where we are now, and where we need to be.
February - Is it really almost over?
In the past, SESUG Executive Committee members usually have a site visit the Summer of the year before the conference and a Winter Meeting around January of the conference year. Given the Delta variant in the Summer, the site visit was pushed into the January Winter Meeting. Then given the surge in Omicron, this site visit + Winter Meeting was postponed to mid-March (given that Mobile is where the first Mardi Gras in America took place, we definitely couldn't schedule it during their party month!). When the postponement first occurred, we were only planning on having maybe one absent member of our 11 member team. Unfortunately, given developments in the personal lives of several of our team members (including the fact that children under age 5 still do not have a COVID vaccine -> which affects your beloved Operations Chair), only six of our team members are able to make the trek to Mobile in a couple of weeks. This means these members will need to cover more ground than usual, while the remaining four of us (another member will be out of the country) will endure full-day meetings at home, in front of our computers....with our families and household expectations wait patiently to greet us the second we are done (this is not said in malice, we love our families!).
Over the Fall and Winter of 2021, Barbara and I worked hard to get a head start on as much material for the conference as possible. It really seemed like we were getting ahead of the curve. Before SESUG 2021 had even happened, Barbara and I had created drafts of most of the materials, budget items, timelines, schedules, and website features that we could. We wanted to hit the ground running and keep the pace. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on whether you are a glass half empty or half-full kind of person) my son's transition into the "terrible-twos" and my husband's simultaneous transition in job / work environments created substantial delays in my ability to work effectively.....in any regard. Being so far away from family (>10 hours at minimum) meant that the pressure of my many hats needed to be worn without reprieve. As anyone who has ever done research on multi-tasking will tell you, this does not for an effective work environment make (<- you read that right, my brain just stopped processing things correctly). I will spare you the tear-stained details, but will leave you with this - what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger...at least theoretically :).
Picture of my favorite distraction / travel - restriction:
Mobile App Woes
Another interesting development of the past month, is our newfound need to hunt for a new mobile app. Before COVID came in to our lives, many Regional User Groups used Attendify as the mobile app platform of choice. Unfortunately, Attendify was one of the companies consumed over the 2-year break (bought out by Hopin). While talks with Hopin were promising at first, we quickly learned that the acquisition of Attendify would result in the application no longer being available, and being replaced with Hopin's own mobile app. After a brief review of Hopin's features, we quickly decided to go in another direction. We reached out to colleagues, friends, and family members for ideas, explored the options, and are relatively sure we have settled on a comparable mobile app platform that will be comfortable for everyone to use. Further updates will be provided in later posts, once we have finalized our decisions, but for now, we can saw that we are optimistic.
Keep your eyes on the prize -> being together!
Our individual conference committee teams have continued working hard to make sure that content is up and ready for hungry community members to start planning their trips out to Mobile, AL. In fact, Call for Papers will open shortly after this post is published! We look forward to seeing what everyone has been working on since we have been apart!
Our creativity has been in overdrive as we negotiate and integrate a new and unique line-up of events into the SESUG event menu. Get ready for games, networking opportunities, open-source exploration, and more interactive presentations.
I hope you are ready for Mardi Gras and Boats! The conference team will be posting lots of Mardi Gras and River Boat themed pictures on Social Media. We invite everyone to join in on the fun! Mardi Gras is March 1st, so I hope you are ready :).
We are continuing to work with SAS to ensure their valuable support and presence at SESUG 2022. We will continue to update as plans become more solidified. We are also working with a variety of potential sponsors so that we can provide even greater value to our attendees. We will continue to share our progress and hope all of you will be along for the ride.
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