Dear colleagues and friends,
The towel has been thrown in the ring, I’m afraid. This Friday, UCL will be closing all campus buildings (besides labs that work on COVID-19 related research). Senate House (our conference venue) have also called last night to cancel our booking as they will also be shutting down. This leaves us with no other option but to postpone MET2020 until there is a clearer picture about this global epidemiological scare.
I am so sorry that we will not be able to offer you MET2020 at the scheduled time, but I do promise that we will come back stronger and with even more exciting content and opportunities. After all, we technologists understand that troubleshooting and problem-solving always introduces new opportunities for deeper learning and the development of exciting solutions. I have personally learned a lot about the lightest Linux distros on old laptops as well as teleconferencing technologies this past fortnight in trying to deliver MET online.
We aspire to reshape MET into a predominantly online conference, in line with Sempre’s recently published environmental policy (http://bit.ly/sempre_ep). For that reason, we will be asking for your input so that we can collectively create something exciting and useful for researchers, students, practitioners and enthusiasts. An online survey about this will become available soon, but in order to begin the discourse, I will be chairing an online recorded discussion this coming Monday, 23 March 2020, at 10am GMT (London, UK) over Zoom (the online conferencing technology).
Please register for this online discussion here:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/vJUkc-ygqTwui0t5n1EJ79-k4oPoxn3RHA
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity and thank all of you for your positivity, collegiality, enthusiasm and support without which MET wouldn’t have been a continual success.
Keep well, stay positive, wash your hands, and please avoid seeking epidemiological advice on Facebook… the most valid information source is the World Health Organi[s]ation: https://www.who.int/
With all my best wishes,
Evangelos
Dr Evangelos Himonides FRSA, FBCS CITP
Reader in Technology, Education, and Music
University College London
MET conference Chair