The world has certainly moved a long way since our last post on 14th of March. Then, we anticipated still holding a meeting in SilverStar in January 2021. We struggled to conceive of a pandemic that might disrupt minor aspects of our lives for a short period. Now, there are so many “known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns” that we are adjusting to a completely different set of expectations for at least a couple of years.

International travel to a conference is outside our expectation set for the first half of 2021. Even if travel to Canada were possible, things that make APE special (face-to-face discussions, indoor and outdoor activities, buffets …) are not flavour of the month under COVID19.

This leaves three options; we can evolve to a COVID19 friendly model, we can give up and accept extinction, or we can hibernate.

Option 1: An evolved APE to meet COVID19 social distancing notions would probably mean Zoom hosted discussions. This does not have the same appeal as face-to-face meetings where the snow is falling outside and your legs are feeling the effect of recent adrenaline-laced adventures. One of the main features of APE is that we take ourselves away from the day-to-day, we get fresh perspective and free ourselves of a few of our limiting beliefs. In my experience, this is not really a possibility in a Zoom meeting…

Option 2: Extinction of APE – something we are not ready to contemplate.

Option 3: It is the third option that seems most sensible at the moment. Hibernation is equivalent to what is happening with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and many other events. If we poke our heads up in 2021 and find that we are still in “iso”, we will re-evaluate.

Please let us know if this makes sense to you, have other ideas, or just want to say “hi”.