Things really changed for Mediate.com during March 2020 when Covid hit the U.S. with a fury. As shown below, I was scheduled to offer a seminar on “Optimizing Family Mediation – Today & Tomorrow” on March 20. It was on or about March 10 that all of the Covid alarms were blaring.
Michael Aurit, a good and determined friend, took my call to discuss whether, under the circumstances, it really made sense for me to fly down to Phoenix for this session. I had noted to myself that everyone else scheduled to attend the seminar would be driving. I would be the only “flyer.”
I had hoped for, if not expected, a bit more compassion and empathy from Michael (a 3-year President of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators – APFM), who was coordinating our Maricopa County event. Yet, Michael’s first statement was, “the show must go on, right?” It was then that the concept of not exposing my own family flashed across my consciousness and I strategically said, you know, let me talk to Carmen (my wife) which I figured would at least buy me 24 hours.
Well, fortunately for me, nearly everyone else, even Michael, joined me in going a bit hysterical over the next couple of days and the seminar was thankfully postponed. Phew!
It was also at this time that we needed to make decisions about Mediate.com’s 25th Anniversary Conference originally scheduled for July in Sunriver, Oregon. We had a $10,000 deposit on the Sunriver conference space. With everyone going a bit crazy in mid-March, we started to receive a number of conference registration cancellations. It was just about this time when the Oregon governor declared an emergency and that gatherings of more than 10 people were prohibited. At this point, I successfully negotiated with the Sunriver Resort to declare “Force Majeure” and have our conference contract fully cancelled.
Things actually turned out remarkably well. Rather than having 150 participants in Sunriver, mostly from the western U.S., we ended up with over 800 total participants for our 25th Anniversary Online Conference from a total of 37 countries. Covid and the new availability of Zoom rapidly proved to everyone at Mediate.com that the future of mediation was going to be “more online than ever.”
It was at this point that I also scrambled and suggested to Colin Rule that we move up his taking over the CEO position at Mediate.com from the fall to as early as June 2020.
Mediation 20/20 Conference – Day 1 Video
Mediation 20/20 Conference – Day 2 Video
Mediation 20/20 Conference – Day 3 Video
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