Welcome to a new BFS IOA year after a very different and difficult 2020. As for the moment, corona situation is still very much with us, but we remain hopeful for a normalized post corona era with effective vaccines and lifted travel restrictions. That said, it is still difficult to make firm plans for live events in 2021.

In 2020 fall, we had 2 well attended webinar events, with 2 sessions each to accommodate different time zones as best as we could. Based on positive experience from these events and the very good feedback we had from our participants, we will no doubt plan further webinars going forward.

Hence, based on our learnings from 2020, the current corona situation and hopefully a better 2021 in regard to corona, we plan following activities in 2021:

Webinars in 2021

We are planning at least a spring webinar scheduled for April 15th and 22nd. In addition, we are also considering a summer webinar in June, depending on our ability to attract speakers on new relevant topics. More information to be announced.

Live events in 2021

We have decided to postpone all live events into fall 2021, when we hope corona situation allows us to carry forward with our traditional face-to-face events. As there will be planning challenges to make 3 live events in the fall, it is most realistic to aim for 2 live events during the fall in Europe and either US or Asia/Pacific followed by either US or Asia/Pacific early 2022. We will based on the corona situation make decision on our live events latest by June and announce accordingly.

Call for presentations

We invite our members to suggest relevant presentations for our upcoming events, or even better, to volunteer to present on new interesting cases or developments relevant for BFS industry. Please connect with the board on this.

Points to Consider update

The BFS IOA board is continuing the work to update our Points to Consider and some live and virtual workshops will be planned during 2021 to carry this work forward. Stay tuned for more info.

Membership 2021

Membership invoices are currently being set out to all 2020 members. As earlier announced, all our members from 2020 will receive 50% corona discount on their 2021 membership. New members pay normal membership fee, which remain unchanged as per earlier years.

Website user improvements

In order to give our members a better user experience when using our website including relevant notifications from e.g. our member forum, we have initiated project to enhance user self-administration. This will also allow you as users to invite colleagues within your organizations to access the website, which we hope will help us to better maintain, update and grow our BFS user universe going forward. More information will come, when these new features are deployed.

For our members - by our members

We hope we in 2021, despite current corona challenges, will be able to offer a relevant platform for BFS operators and companies closely affiliated to the BFS industry, either as brand owners of BFS products or critical vendors to the BFS industry.

BFS IOA membership is not only an ‘access ticket’ to participate in BFS IOA events only, but as earlier stated many times; BFS IOA is an interest group for our members, by our members as per our mission. Therefore, we always seek our members’ input on matters you think are relevant to share with other members or that you wish we as an interest group should address on behalf of an united industry towards authorities or other stakeholders. Together, we can united influence BFS technology for the future!

We thank you for your continued support and look forward toward an active 2021.

Stay safe and greetings from the BFS IOA board