Due to public gathering and travel restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizers of RDD 2020 have made the decision to cancel the RDD 2020 conference that was scheduled to take place April 26-May 1, 2020 in Palm Desert, California; however, RDD 2020 will go ahead in a digital format of some sort. The associated IPAC-RS symposium that was set to follow RDD 2020 in the same location has also been canceled.
According to Richard Dalby, one of the organizers, the team is working as fast as they can to determine exactly how Digital RDD 2020 will work, and they are asking delegates to give them several days to work out the details, including how registration will be handled. Once they have a better idea of the format and logistical issues, they will contact all delegates with an update.
“We’re kind of excited that it’s the first time that we’ve had a digital Respiratory Drug Delivery meeting,” Dalby says, “and we feel quite fortunate because unlike most meetings where there is no content before the delegates show up on site, we have the peer reviewed speaker papers already printed, and we have somewhere around 100 poster abstracts already printed as well, so we are going to find a way to make all of that available electronically.”
A statement posted on the RDD 2020 web site says, “Digital RDD 2020 will be our best attempt to provide our delegates with the information and ideas already developed by speakers, poster presenters and exhibitors, while facilitating interactions among Digital RDD 2020 registrants. . . . We plan to augment these resources with additional materials solicited from Digital RDD 2020 speakers, poster presenters and exhibitors, and make it all available online by April 26.”
Although the exact format is currently up in the air, Digital RDD 2020 is unlikely to include any live component due to the geographic distribution of delegates and speakers in 30 or more countries over four or five continents, so it is more likely to be something asynchronous, Dalby explains. However, he says, the organizers are committed to running Digital RDD 2020 in the same timeframe as was planned for RDD 2020 “because we have a lot of very up to date information, and we feel like it’s important to get that out.”
Dalby also says that they are taking all of the different stakeholders into consideration. The plan is to ask speakers to make digital versions of their talks, with their slides, and to also make digital versions of the Platinum sponsor seminars and the posters. In addition, he says, “We are going to make sure that our exhibitors are prominently in whatever digital approach we take.”
“This is not the way I would have wanted to take our first step into the digital world, but it’s going to be interesting,” and the switch to a digital format does present some opportunities Dalby suggests: “My thinking is that in the future what we learn from this will augment the more traditional RDD meetings that people have known for the last 30 years.”
Read the RDD Online statement regarding RDD 2020.
