The LED and Lighting team within the Advanced Technology Business unit of Endeavor Business Media has made the decision to delay Strategies in Light to Aug. 24–26 in Santa Clara, CA thereby making it extremely likely that the event can proceed with in-person attendees and exhibits. Concurrently, the Strategies in Light team has created a concept for a virtual overlay to the in-person event, whereby approximately half of the main-conference content will be presented online a few weeks after the live event. That virtual component will allow attendees who were not comfortable traveling to an in-person event to still have access to the acclaimed Strategies in Light content, and Strategies in Light sponsors and exhibitors will be able to reach more total attendees.
Ironically, Strategies in Light was the last broadly-focused LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) events held in person this past February as the pandemic was becoming a serious problem in the US. Other major events in the US and around the globe were canceled or postponed shortly after Strategies in Light took place. Our conference-planning team believes that the move to August could result in Strategies in Light 2021 being the first broadly-focused, in-person LED and SSL event held post-pandemic in 2021.
The team planning the event has exhaustively studied available data on the pandemic and plans for mass immunizations with upwards of five viable vaccine candidates that could get emergency approval in a matter of days. Still, it will take months for those vaccines to reach enough of the US and global population for immunity to tame the COVID-19 virus.
Strategies in Light 2021 was originally set in the traditional February timeframe and in its original home of Silicon Valley at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Back in the summer, our team realized that California would not be allowing in-person events by February 2021, and made the decision to shift the plans to June 22–24 at the same Santa Clara venue. The recent surge in coronavirus infections, however, has made it clear that only a widely-deployed vaccine will enable a return to in-person conferences, and that realization led the team to again postpone the event, but only by two months to the new August dates.
Our events team will have more details on the program in the coming weeks. The virtual overlay combined with an in-person conference is a new concept. We at Endeavor have gained significant experience in virtual events. Just in our LED and Lighting group, we held our Renaissance of Light Quality and HortiCann Light + Tech conferences virtually in September and October, respectively.
Strategies in Light 2021 will combine our proven experience in hosting both in-person and virtual events. It’s hard to replicate the networking experience an in-person event can deliver. And we will again deliver that experience in 2021. Moreover, new conference events including an executive roundtable, our famed workshops, and our multi-track conference will again deliver the most relevant technical information on the LED and SSL sectors. Meanwhile, we know some people will not be able to attend or will not feel safe doing so given the ravages of the pandemic. The virtual overlay will allow us to extend the Strategies in Light knowledge base to a greater number of people than ever before.
We also have some exciting new ideas for the exhibit floor. Our sales and marketing teams will be delivering those details. And in all cases there will be elements of the in-person event carried into the virtual overlay.
August is a long way off. But it’s really not so long relative to a tradeshow planning clock. We will be working hard to get you more details. And we are also preparing to announce plans for the Sapphire Awards program that has been delayed alongside Strategies in Light. Stay tuned.
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