Griffish Isles 2020 cancelled; GI 2021 scheduled for November

Twitter thread here announcing the news.

Officially this is being called a postponement, and I understand why the Griffish Isles people have used that term – but in the everyday world away from careful contractual language it's a cancellation. Though frankly one pretty much everybody I know was expecting. GI 2020 had been scheduled for October, and the situation in the UK is such that a convention in October is very much in "not happening" territory.

The Twitter thread does state that GI's new venue "could have accommodated us within government social distancing rules" – though I must admit I'm at a loss as to how any indoor gathering of several hundred people would have been permitted in Manchester. Maybe they were planning on having it all in the hotel car park with one person per alternate space! Okay, not a serious suggestion.

GI have said that they're now going for the weekend of 21st and 22nd November 2021 for their con. The May date used in previous years isn't practical as UK PonyCon 2021 will be then... if that can go ahead, which of course is itself up in the air right now. (For what it's worth, I think UKPC is a possible if a lot of things go right in the next few months, but it's well short of being a surefire bet.)

The dates GI have chosen is roughly the time the now-no-more BronyScot convention used to happen, so people in the UK are used to doing cons in November. The venue has agreed to the new date, as have the guests. So we'll see how it goes. I enjoyed my half-day at GI in 2019, so I may be open to attending this. If and only if, of course, I consider that it's sensible for me to do so. 

One other point: unlike many other conventions, Griffish Isles have chosen not to do an online version of their event. There isn't really a reason given for this beyond "we are interested in providing an in person event" – which is a bit of a non-answer really, as they're not mutually exclusive. But as I said the other day, maybe the online con field is a bit saturated by now anyway.

This blog isn't really the place for me to go into detail about my views on the wider health, societal and political issues connected with Covid-19, but I think it's fair to say that November 2021 is so far off right now that nobody but a fool would claim certainty about what that date will bring. It'll be great if the con can go ahead in recognisable form. I do have hope that it will. But as ever, time will tell.