I am sorry about that turn of events, but I completely understand. I would also play it safe! Things do look slightly different from a Danish perspective, with 80% vaccinated and infection rates less than a fifth of those in the USA, and since any arrivee to Denmark needs to show proof of vaccination, we are able to move ahead with the DRUID conference more or less like normally.

Because of COVID-19, DRUID has had a very liberal cancellation policy this year, with full refund until September 15 and 50% refund until October 1. Unfortunately, after that date, we cannot offer refunds. We trust you understand that at this late stage, we have incurred costs towards your participation to the conference that we are not able to recapture.

We do not offer the option for virtual presentations, in order not to compromise the quality of engagement in parallel sessions and interrupt the particular intensity of the conference. I can see that you have three papers accepted to DRUID21, and each of those have a co-author (Nataliya Wright, Inês Black and Ramana Nanda) who has registered, so there is no need to pull any of those papers from the program -- unless you know something about your co-authors' participation I dont.

We look forward to hopefully seeing you at a future DRUID event!

Mark Lorenzen
Department of Strategy and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School
Director, DRUID
www.cbs.dk/en/staff/mlino
www.druid.dk

Fra: Druid <druid-bounces@druid.dk> på vegne af Koning, Rembrand (Rem) <rkoning@hbs.edu>
Sendt: 4. oktober 2021 19:48
Til: druid@druid.dk <druid@druid.dk>
Emne: [Druid] Conference attendance

Hi,

While I am *thrilled* for the return of in person conferences, I currently don’t feel comfortable travelling to Denmark for DRUID. I was hoping the situation would be different, the situation in the US is still not great.

If I didn’t’ have kids this would be different. While I am vaccinated, my 1 year old son and 3 year old daughter are very much not. While I am sure you all are doing everything to minimize transmission, I just don’t’ feel comfortable taking the risk right now. Especially because my son has asthma and was hospitalized when he was younger with a bad case of RSV.

I registered for the conference and was so looking forward to travelling to Denmark. My original hope was to bring my family with me so that we could enjoy Copenhagen after DRUID! Alas, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen this year.

I understand if you need to withdraw the paper I was going to present from the program. Alternatively, I would be happy to “zoom in” or send in a pre-recorded video. In fact, I have a video about the paper I sent to another conference that features my son that I think is quite entertaining and informative: https://youtu.be/S1_qhf1hx4w

Anyway, I apologize for not being able to make it and I hope to attend DRUID in future years---it sounds like a fantastic conference.

All the best,

Rem

---

Rem Koning

rem@hbs.edu

Assistant Professor

Harvard Business School

https://www.hbs.edu/rkoning