As you may, or may not know, the ACA Secretariat has been facing some unique challenges in mapping out the technological infrastructure plan for next year’s ACA Conference in Charlottetown, PEI. These challenges have included:

Hurricane Impact: In September 2022 our conference host city, along with the entirety of Atlantic Canada, was hit by Hurricane Fiona. Understandably, resultant power loss, internet outages and destruction to property and lands have contributed to substantial communication and service disruptions across the province. For the ACA, these disruptions have detrimentally affected our communications with Global Encore – the 3rd party tech support company with exclusive rights to support conferences and events at the Delta Hotels by Marriott Prince Edward Island.

Corporate Merger: Further contributing to this current state of ineffective communication is the recent corporate merger by Global Encore of Freeman’s – the company previously servicing Delta Hotels by Marriott (PEI) and two other AV companies in Canada. Whatever restructuring is going on, the result has been a decrease in current capacity to meet client planning needs.

Financial Unknown: Due to the impact COVID-19 has had on the global tourism industry we are now seeing an extremely high rise in conference planning costs. Because of lack of communication, we haven’t yet received service quotes from Global Encore even though they are aware that our conference budget planning work is being undertaken now. Our fear is that by committing to a hybrid conference format under these conditions, we commit to paying tech support costs which will: a) require us to significantly increase conference rates for 2023 in order to cover yet unknown tech and labour costs; and b) potentially still leave us in a financial deficit.

Due to these challenges, we’ve had to make the decision to facilitate our 2023 Conference as an in-person conference only with no hybrid component. While folks may not have expected next year’s conference to be hybrid, due to the positive feedback received from members regarding their hybrid conference experience at last year’s Vancouver conference we had hoped to provide a hybrid experience in 2023.

As per our Equity Commitments (see Commitment #4, p. 11) the ACA’s 2024 conference will be a fully virtual event.

Thank you for your understanding. If you have any additional questions please don’t hesitate to email me directly.

Warmest regards,

Erica Hernández-Read, M.A.S.

President

Email: acapresident@archivists.ca

Web: http://archivists.ca