Cancelling Camp Boom
I’m so sorry to announce that I’ve made the absolutely heartbreaking decision that there will be no Camp Boom 2021.
This decision comes after talking to the venue and discovering their restrictions under Red - instead of being seen as one group, everyone at Camp would be seen as their own group, so it’d be all masks all the time, everyone keeping a metre apart, no buffets and more. This would not be the intimate & joyful experience Camp is supposed to be. People would feel anxious to be there, and Omicron spread through the community makes it likely that some of y’all would need to be isolating and couldn’t come. Maybe the person isolating might even be me, and then there’d be no one to run everything. So Camp isn’t happening, and I am so sorry. Our safety is too important to compromise.
I’ve been living and breathing and planning Camp Boom 2021 for over a year now, so no one is more disappointed than me. Having already had to postpone once - which has cost a lot both in refunds and a huge amount of brain space and work to find new speakers, I just do not have the resilience to postpone again, especially when everything is uncertain. It isn’t fair to you all either to have to ask you to rebook travel and time away from family. Maybe Camp will come back in 2023, I don’t know. If someone would like to create their own event, I know an amazing bunch of speakers you should hire.
Your Camp tickets will be refunded over the course of this week, beginning with those who paid via credit card, because I can refund those easily through Shopify. I’ll be in touch with the rest of the ticket holders to ask for your bank account details, and your postal addresses. I will also be returning scholarship money to those who provided them.
Thank you so much to all the speakers who had agreed to be part of this special event, to all the amazing people who signed up to come along, and to everyone who contributed scholarships and support.
Fat joy and community is even more important in a pandemic, and I’m so sorry that I have failed you all. I can’t apologise enough.