Every ICF Annual Conference before this one has happened in a room somewhere — a hotel ballroom, a convention hall, a college campus in the summer between semesters. On July 21, that changes. The ICF Annual Conference 2020 runs entirely virtual, and after a spring of smaller webinars, this is the first time we're taking the whole event online at once.
We want to be direct about what that means, because a conference isn't just its sessions. It's also the parts that don't fit neatly on an agenda: the conversation in the hallway between talks, the informal comparison of a cave humidity log with someone from three states over, the moment a newer member finally puts a face to a name they've only seen in committee minutes. None of that translates cleanly to a screen, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.
What we kept, and what we couldn't
The session content itself carries over close to intact: make-room practice, food-safety planning, a business-practice track for owners, and a judged tasting segment that's been reworked so panelists evaluate samples shipped to them in advance rather than gathered in one room. Presenters have had extra weeks to adapt their material for a screen rather than a stage, and a few have told us the shift actually forced them to tighten material that used to run long.
What we couldn't replicate is the unstructured time. We've tried to build some of that back in deliberately: smaller breakout discussion groups organized by region and by business type, rather than one large chat running the whole day, and a standing informal video room during lunch breaks that anyone can drop into. It won't feel like a hallway. We think it beats nothing.
We're not the only association making this trade-off this year. A number of food-industry trade groups have moved their own summer gatherings online rather than cancel outright, and the general lesson coming out of those events matches what we've been hearing from our own presenters: structured content translates fine to a screen, and the organizers who do best are the ones who stop trying to recreate the in-person format exactly and instead redesign around what a virtual room is actually good at — smaller group discussion, recorded material people can revisit, and a lower bar to attend in the first place.
Registration looks different this year
Because there's no venue cost and no travel required, registration is priced lower than a typical in-person conference year, and we've opened it to members who've told us in the past that travel was the barrier keeping them from ever attending. If you've been an ICF member for years and never made it to a conference because a multi-day trip didn't fit your shop's schedule, this is the year that excuse doesn't apply. Sessions will also be recorded for members who can't make a live slot work around a summer staffing schedule.
A member who runs a small retail counter and has skipped every conference since joining told us the lower price and the recorded sessions were what finally tipped her toward registering this year. That's exactly the audience we hoped a virtual format would reach, even if it took a genuinely difficult year to get there. We'd rather have built this access on purpose than by accident, and we're already talking about which pieces of a virtual track — the lower cost, the recordings, the smaller breakouts — are worth keeping once we're able to gather in a room again.
Registration is open now through the Events Committee. If you have questions about which track fits your operation, or whether the judged tasting segment requires anything from you in advance, reach out and we'll walk you through it before July 21.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.