Running An Event In A Pandemic – Worse Than Bungy Jumping But It Gets You Thinking About The Future Of Meetings

I've done many things in my life - bungy jumped, tandem skydived, climbed Mount Kinabalu, trekked many trails, ran into armed gunmen in Thailand, rolled down a jeep in Namibia, contended with a scorpion sting in the middle of the night in Bostwana - but I've never ever run an event in the midst of a global pandemic.

So I guess it's worth writing about.

At the time we decided to go ahead with our little event in Penang, Malaysia, things were still fairly calm. There was one case of Covid-19 on the island, local tourism and convention authorities declared Penang safe, and our event was fewer than 100 people in a government building with plenty of outdoor spaces (one of those lovely old colonial homes with huge gardens), plus it was a largely local event with a handful of overseas speakers - so we thought, let's soldier on.

These are testing times for small businesses which our WiT Indie event is aimed at, and we needed to come together to talk about survival for our businesses, which support livelihoods on the ground.