Meet and Greet

When COVID-19 hit (man, has it already been over two years?), one of the first things to get scraped by the zoo community was travel.  Partially this was to save money, as we had no idea how long the shutdowns would last and we needed to save every penny we could.  Mostly, it was to do our part to not spread the disease.  Even with the rollout of vaccines in late 2020 and early 2021, when every zoo was open again and almost every other aspect of zoo life was back to normal, last year most conferences moved to a virtual format for safety and economic reasons.

This year, we're starting to see the first tip-toeing back to full normalcy.

This week, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums is holding its first in-person conference since fall of 2019.  The conference, hosted by the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, is an event that has many folks excited.  I know I am... but also a little conflicted.

You see, conferences are a blast.  You get to go and see friends that you might not have seen since last year, do some wheeling and dealing, sit in on all sorts of presentations that you might otherwise have missed out on and learn all sorts of great things, and visit other institutions, often with special access that visitors never get to experience.  I always leave conferences energized and invigorated to an extent that I never was before, sure that I can do so much when I get back.

The thing is, conferences also cost money.  There's the registration.  The hotel.  The transport.  The meals.  It adds up, to be sure, which is a big part of the reason why few people get to go.

Over COVID, we still had conferences, but they were virtual, and in some cases, free of charge.  Anyone got to go.  I "went" to the conferences that I would normally go to, but I also "went" to ones that I never would have gotten the approval or budget to go to before.  It was great - I was able to learn so much, ask questions, network, and all in all, have a great time.  It was disappointing not getting to see friends in person, or visit the zoos and aquariums and see the animals, but hey, the price was right.

Now that another conference - in person - is coming, and I'm talking with friends about the will-you, won't-you aspects of attendance, I feel a little sorry that we're losing the accessibility of online.   Not every zoo has the budget to send people, which is understandable, but still sad.  True, online isn't the same - when I listen to an online conference session, I'm usually also doing something else at the same time, like record entry or emails, so I'm kind of only half listening and not getting the full benefit.  But that's certainly better than the zero benefit of not going.  At the same time, I know that if conferences were in person AND online, a very large number of people would opt to only go online to save money, which in turn could make it difficult for the conference in person to be cost effective.

I am excited for the next time that I travel and reconnect with the people and ideas and experiences that have inspired me so much in the past.  Many of the my best non-animal zoo memories come from these conferences.  I just wish everyone got to experience them whenever they happened, not just a lucky few now and then.