Dear IEC Friends,
After a recent reassessment of the situation in February, we decided to do this year’s IEC conference online and next year’s IEC live.
We truly wanted IEC 2022 in May to be an in-person conference and were looking forward to it since October, planning accordingly, having the hotel booked and 80% of the presenters confirmed coming. We have experienced the great joy, high quality energy and transformative power of the global in-person integral conferences that is essential for the integral movement.
Still now in February, 3 months before the conference we are at a point in time when we needed to do a last assessment if the live conference is doable or not this year. The covid situation is a messy affair and there is no clear sight of it from the media. For some it looks like we entered the coming down phase, for others it looks like it is on full power. So we needed to dig deeper: a team of 4 within the IEC team spent the last week studying the situation, including the travel regulations of the EU and Hungary and that of another 50 countries. Apart from the EU also including the US, Canada, Latin American, African, and Asian countries, and Australia. Some countries are easing up their regulations, while others are tightening them. The advice to travel to Hungary is okay on most countries’ list, but on a few but important ones it is not advised. In some countries the atmosphere suggests that we are coming out of covid and it is time to ease up, in others the general sense is that the situation is grim and serious and people should not travel.
Also, we have talked to integral people from different countries to see how dedicated or hesitant they are to travel, and what their situation is. It greatly varies. Some are determined to travel to IEC no matter what, others would come only if everybody is vaccinated, others are determined not to get vaccinated ever. We have all kinds of approaches, which are fine, but from the organizer’s perspective, it means too much unpredictability, without a financial base that would hold this uncertainty.
As a conclusion we see that the global average of the willingness to travel and the regulatory situation is not yet open enough to make IEC as well attended as it needs to be in order to make it viable. In other words it is still too risky to do in May 2022.
Refocusing on IEC Online for now
Our motivation comes from an evolutionary purpose: a deep conviction that the integral world is very precious and important for the future of humanity. Thus we are dedicated to keep organizing its main gatherings. We hope that the trends seen today will come true and 2023 will be a year where the virus will lose its grip on us and the WHO will announce the end of the global pandemic. Let’s hope so. The virus will go but our determination stays.
Until then there is much buzz and fun ahead as we focus on the upcoming online IEC in just 3 months! It is an opportunity for more people to join from all around the world, who might otherwise not be able to join in person. Also new possibilities open up for presenters as the call for presenters and application process starts soon.
As for the live IEC in 2023, we keep the program as it is, those who are already admitted as keynoters, speakers and workshop facilitators, stay in place.
Thank you for your continuous support,
Bence, Hanna, Csilla, Aniko, Agi, Norbi, Noemi and Gabor,
the IEC Team