ELC content may not be lost

Before the storm known as Sandy shut down most of Washington, D.C., it caused the cancellation of the 2012 Executive Leadership Conference – the annual gathering for the government IT community that was scheduled to take place in Williamsburg, Va.

The announcement came on the morning of Oct. 28, some eight hours before the three-day conference, put on by the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), was set to begin.  While the weather had not yet turned in Williamsburg, Bob Suda, IAC’s vice-chair for finance, said conference leaders did not want to risk stranding attendees at the event.  “A number of us... sat down and made the decision to cancel it for safety reasons,” Suda said.

ELC is central event for ACT-IAC, and a large budget item for the organizations, but Suda said that insurance would cover most, if not all, of the cost of cancellation. Attendees will get registration-fee refunds, he added.

“We're still working with the insurance company, so I can't provide any kind of detail,” he said.  “But I don't expect us to take any loss when it's all said and done.”

The real loss, Suda said, was the opportunity for federal officials and others in the tech community to gather and exchange ideas.  There are no plans to reschedule what would have been the 22nd annual ELC in its entirety, but he said discussions are already underway to “take the content from ELC and put it into half-day or full-day conferences in Washington, DC.”

“A lot of people put in a lot of time” in planning the panels and overall agenda, Suda said.  “We don’t want to lose that content. We will be doing something.”