Due to the dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases, NORDUnet has made the tough decision not to go ahead with the Nordic Technical Workshop (NTW2021) scheduled to run 30 November – 2 December. Making this decision is very sad; we were really looking forward to getting together with the community again.
We have been excited to see the huge efforts that session chairs and the entire community have put into planning a great program for NTW2021 and we have considered many ways to go ahead with a physical event. However, we have not found a way to balance the safety of the community and delivering the the unique value of the NTW. The Nordic Technical workshop is all about the community and working together, and the safety restrictions introduced would limit the social networking and informal ad-hoc collaboration that have become an integral part of NTW.
We will still do all we can to foster community collaboration. We will work with the community and in particular the NTW2021 session chairs to organise virtual events in January. We know it will not be the same as NTW2021, but we also know that there is a strong will to work together and develop the community. We trust that we can find a way to benefit from the hard work going into NTW2021 preparations.