SAQA Virtual Conference a consequence of coronavirus

Crazy World

We live in a crazy world this year.  Bushfires, extreme summer, day after day of heavy smoke.  But whilst that was all happening here where I live, on the other side of the world a new virus appeared.  Initially there was no thought of the possible consequences here in my little bit of paradise.  And today it is a  different story. Before you go anywhere consider whether it is essential we are told.  To slow the spread of coronavirus we all have to distance ourselves.  As of midday today all pubs, clubs, indoor sporting venues, churches, restaurants are closed.  As yet we are not confined to our homes .  Right across the world country borders are closing..

SAQA 2020b M0SAiQA Conference, Toronto

An organisation I belong to – SAQA or Studio Art Quilt Association, had planned its first conference outside USA in Toronto.   A couple of weeks before its commencement  the hardest decision was made to cancel the conference as it was not going to be possible for people across the globe to travel to it.  A miracle happened.   In a very short space of time they changed it to a virtual conference to occur at the time the conference was to have taken place.  With a few twigs to the program they had it ready to roll on my Friday morning last week – Thursday evening in Canada.  They opened it up to those that had not registered to go as well.

I decided this was a golden opportunity to experience a SAQA conference as it was too far and too expensive to go to it from Australia for me.  So I enrolled in the SAQA 2020 MoSAiQA Conference (Toronto)

2020 MoSAiQA Virtual Conference

What a wonderful weekend I had despite having to get up at 2:00am to participate.  I attended every session.  It was unbelievable what could be done virtually.  Thanks to the Zoom platform it was a fantastic experience.  We listened to talks using webinar technology.  We reassembled for break out groups by logging into another screen from where we were tossed into meeting rooms for small group interactions by technology.  It was all done in a random way.  Some people you met once, others more often depending in which ‘room’ technology turfed you.  We were even taken on a fabulous tour of the exhibition that was put together especially for the conference to show case Canadian textile artists.  Two full days of interesting program from 2:00am to noon for me.  At the end they even crowned the new president virtually.

We listened, talked, laughed and whilst we may not have made new friends, we definitely have made new acquaintances.

What is more amazing that this was all put together by a group of women.  Thank you SAQA.