Hi,
With our conference date approaching we would like to update you on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) issue as related to the conference. We plan to provide more updates in the next few days.
For now, the NetDev Society board would like to state the following:
We understand that as part of human nature some people are very concerned about the risk to health, and that some other events have been cancelled or switched to a remote-only model and infact some companies are putting corporate travel restrictions into place. However, it remains our view that there are significant risks in both under-reacting and over-reacting to this complex and developing situation, and as we are not epidemiologists or public health experts we will follow the evidence-based advice of those that are.
At the moment, conference registration levels are continuing at the expected rates as previous two netdev conferences.
We also note that two *larger* conferences are happening in Vancouver at the same time frame and neighborhood as us and we are monitoring them. We are in particular paying attention and communicating with our friends at the IETF drawing guidance from them. IETF has a much larger staff than us and we are grateful and lucky that we can draw on their resources to guide us. IETF is reporting that their registration is also continuing per expectation.
More importantly we are constantly monitoring the guidelines provided by World Health Organisation (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019) and Public Health Agency of Canada (https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavi...) neither of these organization are recommending cancelling meetings. https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1269109/retrieve
We are working very hard to explore and weigh various backup options and over the next few days we will keep you posted.
cheers, jamal (on behalf of Netdev Society board)