Plans were set! Speakers were selected! The Hilton Hotel was booked, and airline tickets were purchased. Then the unthinkable happened. Covid-19 swept through the country and with it went our hopes and dreams of the in-person 2020 IANDS Conference in Salt Lake City. The IANDS Board decision to cancel the conference was difficult and the disappointment was intense. However, it was the right decision.
Now we have an unprecedented opportunity to have a different kind of event: The IANDS 2020 Live Online Conference, Unlocking the Healing Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences. We have taken our rich and diversified line-up of speakers and discussion groups and transported our conference to the Internet. Someone suggested that we have a simple pre-recorded webinar, but undaunted, we chose to create a phenomenal, complete conference experience with a multitude of speakers and panel presenters available to everyone online for the first time this year, premiering on August 14-16.
We took the bitter lemon of Covid-19 shutting down our in-person conference and made lemonade of the opportunity to go Live Online! As we have moved through this development process, the benefits of the new online format have become apparent.First, our attendees will be truly international, with IANDS members and friends from South and Central America, Europe, Asia and Africa being able to join with our IANDS Family to experience the conference from their own homes. Second, the affordable Early Bird price of just $99 for the full conference plus 90-days of Video on Demand after the conference is a tremendous bargain. Compared to the total travel plus conference costs of an in-person event, our Live Online Conference will be affordable for a much wider audience. Finally, speakers and panel members can more easily bring their NDE accounts and research to us from North America and beyond because they will not have to contend with lengthy travel.
