Over the past two weeks we have been monitoring the development of the COVID-19 pandemic and, for the safety of the SIPS community as well as the various other communities to which we all belong, we will no longer be holding the SIPS meeting in-person, in Victoria, BC, in 2020. It is with regret that we communicate this news, as we have seen tremendous value come from the social and interactive nature of past meetings. Nevertheless, we plan to still convene as a community in a remote version of the conference, on the original dates (June 21-23).
We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused for those who have made travel plans that cannot be changed or refunded. In an effort to mitigate some of those costs, registration for the remote conference will be free of charge. If you have previously registered for the conference, you will be refunded unless you indicate that you would prefer to donate your registration fee to SIPS. Please complete this brief form if you would like to donate your registration fee.
We are just beginning the process of determining what this remote conference will look like. Likely it will involve some combination of content communicated via video (e.g., pre-recorded workshops) and other content that involves interactive video-conferencing (e.g., live hackathons). We will let you know more as this planning takes form, and are excited to see how this new meeting takes shape in the hands of both the SIPS leadership and the SIPS community.
The pre-SIPS repliCATS workshop has also been canceled. Questions about repliCATS should go to repliCATS-project@unimelb.edu.au. Please direct any remaining questions to sips@improvingpsych.org.