The Pandemic is taking its toll.

After thinking about it for weeks turning into months, and trying to put off the inevitable, I've finally succumbed and faced the facts: There will be no European Textile Forum in 2020.

I'm really, really sad about this, as this week of absolute textile research craziness is one of my highlights each year, but the situation worldwide is still insecure, and there's no way to predict where we'll be in November, and what things will be allowed, or possible, or sensible. In addition, though it's a small conference, it is one where we are a very international crew and work closely together - including physically close. This, together with the shared space to eat, sleep, and work, are part of the charm of the Forum, and play a large role in making it as effective and special as it is.

With all the tools and materials, sometime quite exotic, that are brought either by myself or by other participants so that everyone can work together on a project, and with the hands-on approach to so many things, there is no good way to just lift this over into virtual space either (as many other conferences have done). My own personal ample experiences with video meets and webcams have also shown that they won't be really suitable to showing things in high detail, which means that sharing ongoing work with each other would be much harder than just handing over the thing, or having someone else come over and take a look.

So rather than bending our concept and trying to make something work that is not suited well for the virtual space, we'll take a break, and hopefully everything will be under control enough for a normal Forum in 2021.

I'll miss it, though. A lot.