Dear Colleagues and Friends,
As previously announced, we have been constantly monitoring the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the events industry.
Although the lockdown measures in Italy have made it possible to control contagion across the national territory, this is unfortunately still not the case for many countries worldwide. Moreover, restrictions on face-to-face interactions still apply, as well as pervasive travel restrictions.
After careful consideration, and in light of the above, we have made the decision to convert SUM 2020 to a fully virtual conference. The decision is also based on the positive vote of our conference contributors, where 66% are in favour of such digital event and 68% consider virtual meetings a good alternative to in-person meetings, as they are more flexible, cheaper and easier to attend.
The overall Symposium structure will remain the same, but all conference contents will be made available through a fully web-based platform provided by a company specialized in online meetings.
As organizers we are excited to invest our efforts in this new format, as we deem it can fundamentally change the way we share and present our science, bringing about clear advantages such as making the event easily accessible from any place around the world, engaging a broader audience, and helping us reducing our carbon footprint.
While nothing can compare to the power of in-person, we are confident that event marketers will be leaning into virtual conferences as part of a larger hybrid event strategy - that combines both in-person and digital experiences - also in future, post-COVID-19 crisis times. And we are keen to start this new era at SUM 2020!
Registered participants will be able to:
• Listen to all presentations - whenever and wherever you wish
• Join live discussions and Q&A moderated chats
• See all e-poster presentations
• Network with your colleagues – Browse the list of participants and click on their name to contact them
• Access the conference platform after the event - The content will be available on-demand for a period following the congress dates
• Visit the virtual exhibition hall
More information on all the features of our virtual conference will be available soon.