SEPA 2021 Virtual Meeting

SEPA will be having a short, virtual meeting this summer on Friday, July 30th and Saturday, July 31st . Modeled after MAPS’s virtual meeting this summer, the dates were chosen to span part of a weekday and part of a weekend to try and make it more accessible. Adam Thanz has graciously agreed to organize and moderate the sessions. We will hold our Annual Business Meeting on Friday, July 30th, at 3:00pm. At this meeting we will be voting on some revisions to the by-laws. The proposed changes will be emailed to the current SEPA membership no later than May 30th, 60 days before the Business Meeting as required by the by-laws.

Some preliminary details about the virtual meeting are below.

Dates:

Friday, July 30th, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. (ish)
Saturday, July 31st, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Registration:

There is no registration fee to attend. A Zoom link will automatically be sent out to all SEPA members in good standing as the dates near. If you are not a SEPA member and would like to attend, you can email Adam in order to get the link.

Presentations:

Each day will consist of two presentation sessions, with a break in between each. If you’d like to give a 10-minute presentation, please email your talk title and short abstract to Adam Thanz (AdamThanz@KingsportTN.gov) along with your contact info.

There will also be four 5-minute vendor sessions each day, with each vendor being limited to one slot. There is a $100 vendor presentation fee, which will go directly into the SEPA Professional Development Fund. Vendor spots are limited, so if you are an interested vendor be sure to contact Adam at the email listed above soon! Update: Vendor spots are SOLD OUT!

The deadline for all vendor and delegate submissions is Friday, July 23rd at 5:00pm EDT.

Sharing and Social Time:

There will be two long breaks for social time, as well as some social time at the end of each day.

There will also be a Structured Group Session, wherein attendees can sign up for 2-3 minutes of time to share anything they like about their professional experiences since the start of the pandemic: a status update, valuable lessons learned, words of encouragement or advice to those whose domes are still closed or a fun anecdote that colleagues would appreciate. We are trying this structured signup method rather than an open session in order to give everyone who would like to speak the opportunity to do so. This will be a moderated session and, time-permitting, may become more open near the end.