SISO Update

As June comes to a close we recognize that more of you may be reading this email from your office, rather than just your home office. Welcome back! For some of you, it still may be a while before that next phase of reopening. No matter where your business or your country of business may be today, we hope you'll join us in Texas this August for the SISO Summer Conference (more on that below)!

We've got your biweekly recap of SISO activities, reopenings, coalition advocacy efforts, resources and more - read on.

SISO Activities

SISO remains busy, planning for you - our members - and how to engage and keep us all moving forward, learning from this (we all know what we mean by “this” these days) experience and planning for the future. Here's where you can catch up with us:

• SISO Summer Conference - In less than seven weeks we'll see you in Dallas, Texas. Register and make your plans to meet August 11-13! This year, registration is FREE for all SISO members. The Women's Leadership Conference will be held on the 11th.
• Catch up on SISO webinars from Town halls to interviews and our Small Business SIG.
• Reminder: SISO has formed a new Special Interest Group, “Online Revenue SIG”. The Online Revenue SIG was established to share ideas and best practices around online revenue opportunities for SISO members. Because SISO members manage engaged communities through live events, there are significant opportunities to leverage that event into new online revenue streams. While virtual events are of high interest due to COVID-19, the goal of the group is to explore and share all the creative ways SISO members are leveraging their live event community through profitable and complementary formats, and inspire innovation. All members of the SISO Online Revenue SIG are expected to share successes, failures and lessons learned to help expedite the success of their fellow SISO members. Interested in participating? Contact Anna Osnower.  

Moving Forward Updates

As more and more U.S. states and countries around the world have relaxed stay-at-home orders and/or slowed entering the next phases of reopening due to new spikes in numbers, we continue to look at the data.

See how the U.S. is trending and where there are successes:

• See How All 50 States Are Reopening - including a snapshot per state on what industries, health care, retail, recreation, and more have reopened along with graphics on COVID-19 cases and when stay-at-home places have expired.
• How We Reopen Safely - red light, yellow light, green light. See which U.S. states are trending poorly or better than others. This site provides a vast array of statistics, charts, and more to better digest the state-by-state comparison, and the many ways data is being aggregated and evaluated.

Coalition Updates

As the summer heats up so are efforts from Go Live Together on the federal front. Key legislative priorities include:

• Incentives to get attendees and exhibitors back to events, by way of a business tax credit to encourage attendee and exhibitor participation.
• Offset the expense for deep cleaning, by supporting the Clean Start: Back to work tax credit.
• Support insurance coverage for pandemics, including legislation that would include pandemic risk coverage in event cancellation insurance.
• Support travel incentives with support for the Travel America Act.
• Additional assistance for businesses and governments facing financial hardship, by supporting the RESTART Act and providing additional funding for disaster recovery programs.

Meanwhile, members of Congress have recently drafted several bills that support our legislative asks, including:

• PRIA (Pandemic Risk Insurance Act): requiring insurance companies to cover pandemics in business interruption (including event cancellation) insurance
• RESTART Program: expanding and extending PPP benefits for small and medium-sized businesses
• Clean Start Back to Work Tax Credit: offering a temporary tax credit to offset increased cleaning costs required to reopen safely          

Additionally, U.S. Travel has drafted its Travel America Act with provisions to encourage attendee travel to events, as well as funding for DMOs that can be used to promote meetings and events. The coalition is finalizing a draft of its own legislative language focused on incentives for exhibitors to participate in live events.

Resources

Continue to look to SISO for resources, best practices, and more as you plan for the coming year - and what your event might look like next year - and beyond. Visit our resources to address COVID19 page as well as these links.

• PPE masks for order by members! Order here.
• UFI's Good Practice Guidance: Addressing COVID-19 Requirements for Re-Opening Business Events
• “All Secure” guidelines endorsed by SISO
• IAEE's white paper, Essential Considerations for Safely Reopening Exhibitions and Events.

Q&A

Remember, SISO is your community. We cannot wait to see you face-to-face as soon as possible. Until then, stay engaged with our community through SISO's social channels. Members engage in our online member forum. Have questions? Send those to info@siso.org.

If your trade show or organization has created new guidance or resources that would be beneficial to your SISO peers, please share those on SISO's online community. Thank you.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay strong. Stay connected.