React Finland

As discussed in our earlier posts, due to the on-going pandemic situation we decided to run a series of online mini-conferences and push the physical portion of the conference by a whole year. Anyone who moved their conference ticket to the next year, will have full access to the online series.

React Finland 2021#

Although not all details are clear yet, here's what I can tell about the next conference:

• It's going to take place 24-28.05.2021. The workshops will run 24-26.05 and the conference 27-28.05.
• We'll follow a similar format as earlier so the conference will be on a single track although we'll likely branch during the breaks into more impromptu sessions, QAs, and relaxation.
• We're aiming for a similar composition of speakers although only time will tell as the situation progresses. That would mean a healthy mix of speakers arranged around specific themes instead of topics.
• It's likely our experiences from running the online events will inspire the physical one so I would expect improvements related to this especially in terms of online production.
• We're prepared to scale the conference depending on the pandemic situation.
• The price of the conference portion begins from 399 € (inc. VAT) and it's available now. Once these tickets run out, the late price is going to be 499 €.
• Unlike usually, this time we have less tickets available, roughly 150 in total. That's due to ticket transfers to 2021.
• The workshops will be announced at a later time, likely during the Fall, as we have more information available.

React Finland 2020 - Refund Progress#

As discussed earlier, we'll begin refunds based on your preferences at the end of the May. After announcing our scheme, we found out that our ticket provider doesn't support multiple separate refunds against one order. That led to a dilemma as it means you would have to refund everything at once. At the same time, due to the way the VAT system works, you'll have to pay VAT as you receive income and can receive it back only after refunding. In our case, that's a significant amount of money (24% of sales).

To be able to accomplish all the requested refunds (close to 100k € in total) and to pay different parties, we've decided to handle refunds in two batches. The first one will occur now at the end of May and the second one later in June or early July as we can afford it. We'll refund the oldest orders in the first batch and the newer ones in the second one.

From the organization point of view, the pandemic struck as at the worst possible time as we moved from an association to a co-operative form for this year in addition to moving to the VAT system due to the change.

When you run conferences through the same organization, you'll gather buffer for situations like this but given we were starting from scratch without having the chance to run one year with the new organization, there was no possibility to gather buffer. Thankfully the community, including you, have been supportive and understanding and especially the support from our sponsors will help us to get through this difficult time.

Conclusion#

Despite the current challenges, I hope 2021 will be a better year. I believe running the online events will serve the community while evolving the concept of React Finland during these difficult times.