The FPGA-forum committee has decided that there will unfortunately not be any FPGA-forum 2021.
The crucial assessment was that, as late as the end of 2020, we will not know anything about the pandemic situation in February 2021 or what advice and rules will apply then. Many decisions would have to be made and a lot of work done before that in order to hold the forum.
The speakers are the most important contributors to FPGA forum, and they invest a lot of time in making good presentations. We don’t want this work to be wasted. The exhibitors are also an important part of the FPGA forum, and they also put in a lot of preparation, so here of course, the same applies. In the middle of August we asked the exhibitors about their opinions and intentions, and received a clear feedback that the probability of not participating was quite high due to Covid 19.
We hope that the situation will improve and be under control in February next year, but even with such a wishful scenario, we believe that we would still end up with a significantly reduced FPGA forum both with respect to presenters, exhibitors and participants, – and we don’t want to waste the goodwill of all those contributing to a great FPGA-forum. The committee therefore unanimously agreed that a cancellation unfortunately was the right decision.
An on-line event has been considered, but since much of the value for the participants is network building, the social setting and the exhibition, and since from experience there will be significantly fewer listeners per presentation, we do not think an on-line event would be a good solution for FPGA-forum.
In conclusion, we are very happy that FPGA-forum 2020 was arranged as planned – just prior to the Covid 19 close-down, and we are now twice as much looking forward to FPGA-forum 2022 (9-10 February) 😊