Kathryn M. Rybka
Dear ABC colleagues,
We are quite excited to announce that our 2023 Association for Business Communication (ABC) Annual International Conference will be held in Denver, Colorado USA! We are still finalizing the hotel contract, but the conference will be scheduled for either the third or fourth week of October.
Our hotel will be in downtown Denver with a wide variety of nearby dining options, shops, museums and more. The well-known, pedestrian-friendly 16th Street Mall is a short walk away. Plus, the beautiful Rocky Mountains serve as a stunning backdrop to downtown. The Denver International Airport is the third-busiest in the world and 23 airlines operate from it. A public transit train is available from the airport to downtown. Denver is a vibrant city with much to offer and will serve as a wonderful location for our 2023 conference.
Thank you for your patience as we have been working to identify a location for 2023. We had originally planned to hold a joint Korean Association for Business Communication (KABC)-ABC conference in Seoul, South Korea in June 2023 and a smaller ABC event in October. This past spring, our KABC colleagues and I were closely monitoring COVID-19 trends and by early summer decided it would be best to postpone the Seoul conference until June 2024 when it is expected that South Korea will be almost restored to a pre-COVID environment.
A short list of U.S. conference locations was quickly identified but then the “California Travel Ban,” that focuses on certain discriminatory laws a state has enacted, not only began to be more strictly enforced but many states were added over the summer. The Ban means that if an employee of the State of California attends a conference in a state on the list, they will not be reimbursed for their travel expenses. All of our potential locations were in states covered under the ban (https://oag.ca.gov/ab1887). The ABC Board discussed this situation and voted to support our California state colleagues and not hold our 2023 conference in one of the 23 states now on the list.
At the same time, many hotel properties remain in recovery from the effects of the pandemic. This has translated to ongoing staffing shortages, limited-service offerings, and at least one property we considered moving into financial receivership. Currently, there is also pent-up demand for leisure travel and hotels are finding this to be a lucrative market, and many have placed a cap on the number of conferences/attendees they are willing to host.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Details about the dates and hotel will be shared with you soon. Thank you again for your patience. Look forward to seeing you in Denver next October!
Take care, Kathryn
Kathryn M. Rybka, Ph.D.
Interim Executive Director
Association for Business Communication
