On 20 April, the SGroup Executive Committee had a Zoom online meeting and agreed that the 2020 LO&GA meetings should either maintain their current face-to-face format or be postponed to 2021 since the personal interaction is in many ways more important than the presentations as such. Even so, we hope that the meeting will be able to take place at the end of October, but perhaps with some modifications. The Executive Committee will take a decision by the end of June.
If the SGroup decides to go forward with the meetings in Guimarães, we will make sure that safety will be a top priority. Much will, of course, depend on the travel restrictions imposed by the European countries and the additional safety measures. Here are some of the solutions that are being considered at the moment.
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limiting the number of participants (1 person per institution, so that we would be no more than 50);
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having the meetings within walking distance from the hotel (so as to avoid buses) and therefore keep it in only 1 city;
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squeezing the GA and LO meetings into two days instead of three;
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shortening the social programme or, if necessary, cancelling it altogether.