2021 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition to be Virtual with Regional In-Person Hubs Print
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 01:42 PM

Due to continued concerns for the health and safety of all members, industry partners, volunteer leaders, staff and other stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic, ASAE announced today that the 2021 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition that was scheduled to take place in Dallas, TX, will be held virtually, alongside smaller, regional hub meetings that can safely take place in person around the country. The dates for the reimagined 2021 Annual Meeting will be the week of August 16, 2021.

Throughout the pandemic, ASAE has relied on public health guidance, federal and state-by-state event restrictions and member surveys to gauge whether to move major meetings on its events calendar to virtual. Given the current pace of COVID-19 vaccine roll-out and member comfort in participating tied to whether they are vaccinated, ASAE concluded it’s not possible at this time to guarantee the success of an in-person, multi-day annual meeting and trade show in mid-August for the ASAE community.

Instead, Annual Meeting attendees can choose to participate virtually with additional options for smaller groups of ASAE attendees to meet face-to-face regionally. Hub locations have not yet been determined but ASAE anticipates that Dallas and other ASAE Alliance Partner destinations will serve as ASAE Annual Meeting hubs in August. Registration for the reconfigured 2021 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition will open May 3 with full details.

While this is disappointing—both for ASAE and its members, and for our scheduled 2021 host city Dallas—we are shifting all efforts to ensuring that this Annual Meeting delivers the best content and experiences possible for our many stakeholders. This will not be a retread of last year’s fully virtual Annual. In keeping with ASAE’s strategy focused on omni-channel content delivery, the combination of a virtual platform and regional hub events should be exciting and meet our community’s varied needs for learning, networking and business development.

The same external factors that contributed to the decision about the 2021 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition have led ASAE to move other major meetings on the events calendar to virtual through the beginning of June 2021. This includes the 2021 Marketing, Membership, & Communications (MM&C) Conference, which was scheduled to take place in Washington, DC, June 3–5, 2021. Currently, Washington DC is not allowing in-person gatherings larger than 10 people, so ASAE staff is reconfiguring this meeting into a fully virtual event June 2–4, 2021. The new MMCC website and registration portal will launch at the end of April.

Please note the changes for other F2F meetings taking place during this time frame.

  •  April CEO Symposium, April 19–20—Being delivered Virtually
     
  • May Exceptional Boards, May 6–7—Being delivered Virtually with a F2F option re-scheduled for October 13-15, 2021 - Hard Rock Hotel, San Diego, CA
     
  • Innovation Launch Pad, May 19–21—Being delivered Virtually with a F2F option rescheduled in 2022 (Date to be determined) in Salt Lake City, UT
     
  • Marketing, Membership, & Communications Conference (MMCC), June 3–5—Being delivered Virtually June 2–4
     
  • Executive Leadership Forum, June 6–11—Moved to September 22–24, 2021 Calgary, AB
     
  • XDP, August 15 as pre conference to Annual—Will premiere in August 2022 as a pre-conference at the 2022 Annual Meeting & Exposition in Nashville, TN

If you have registered or booked a hotel room for any of the above listed meetings, ASAE will cancel your registration and hotel room automatically. ASAE staff will be reaching out to those that are registered for specific programs directly.

Thank you for your understanding and for being part of the ASAE community. We hope to see you at the reconfigured 2021 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition and down the road at future in-person events when it’s fully safe for us all to convene!