As of Jun 4th (Japanese version of this announcement can be found here; 日本語バージョンはこちら)

This is an announcement from the RubyKaigi 2020 organizing team regarding the conference status and policies in response to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

We've been continuously monitoring the COVID-19 situation and after a lot of discussion, we have decided to CANCEL our in-person conference, RubyKaigi 2020. All the events that were planned for Sep. 3–5 are cancelled.

While we regret to inform you of this decision, we have started to plan an alternate online event during the same Sep. 3–5 dates, though we may shorten the schedule. We will make an announcement regarding this alternative event on our Twitter account in the coming weeks.

(UPDATE (Jul 22): RubyKaigi Takeout 2020, Sep. 4–5 has been announced: https://rubykaigi.org/2020-takeout)

Note that RubyKaigi 2021 is still planned and scheduled.

Please refer to the following section for further details about how we reached this decision, the new schedule, and the policies regarding existing registrations, talks, and sponsorships.

> Decision Background Decision Background

Since we're now at 3 months before the scheduled conference dates, we need to resume our preparation for the conference. Because the COVID-19 outbreak situation still remains unclear and we need to take caution, we discussed whether or not to hold the conference as planned.

Since February, we have felt attendees will remain anxious before and during RubyKaigi, and the number of participants, including speakers, has decreased. Furthermore, there is a possibility that we would have to limit the maximum occupancy of the venue due to a request from the government or the venue itself.

Additionally, RubyKaigi is a large international conference in Japan, which was to be held far away from Tokyo this year and would involve a lot of movement between cities. Recently, the Japanese government issued a request to avoid visiting other cities and we cannot be sure that this request would be lifted during the conference. Considering the people living in Matsumoto, the planned location for RubyKaigi 2020, we concluded that holding the conference away from Tokyo was not a good decision.

Overall, we believed that we would not longer be able to provide the same quality and value that we try to provide at the conference, which led us to the decision to cancel the in-person RubyKaigi 2020.

We believe this decision works the best for all participants and the Ruby community. We hope you stay healthy and safe, and that the world recovers from the outbreak.

Thank you for your understanding and support; this was a tough decision to make. We will continue to aim to deliver you the same top quality event as usual at RubyKaigi 2021. We look forward to seeing you in 2021.

We will discuss our policies about existing registrations, talks, and sponsorships below.

> To attendees To attendees

You will receive a full refund of your purchased ticket. We're currently working on setting up the bulk refund process as quickly as possible. We plan to announce the status of refunds via our Twitter and an email through Doorkeeper.

> To speakers To speakers

We regret to inform you of this, but all accepted talks have been cancelled. We are sorry that you won't be able to talk in person as scheduled. We understand that every speaker has worked hard on creating great talk proposals and presentations and that this decision will come with disappointment.

We're working on planning our alternate online event, but we expect it there will be a huge difference from original RubyKaigi 2020. We cannot guarantee that we can provide talk slots to all speakers as usual.

To sponsors

All sponsorship applications have been cancelled and we will refund the amount you have already paid. For details, please refer to the email we have sent to you.

We may call for sponsors again for the alternate online event, but we first need to work on revised sponsorship packages and benefits. We would like to ask our sponsors for support again, once the new packages are ready. We plan to make an announcement in the coming weeks.

04 Jun 2020 18:00 JST: We decided to cancel the in-person conference.

29 Feb 2020 16:00 JST: We decided to postpone the conference.

26 Feb 2020 20:10 JST: We decided to keep the same policy as of Feb 26th.

20 Feb 2020 14:30 JST: Correction. We're considering the refund policy for sponsorships in the case that we decide to cancel RubyKaigi 2020, not withdrawal from sponsors. This fix is only needed in English version.

20 Feb 2020 12:00 JST: Initial revision

Past revisions are available at https://esa-pages.io/p/sharing/68/posts/1021/ba5ef1d2f05b3161ac72.html