First, we want to apologize for the lack of communication.  At the same time we want to assure everyone including our attendees, speakers and sponsors that we have been working hard to figure out how to bring RVAsec back even better than before the world imploded in early 2020.

COVID has lingered far longer than we expected.   While now is not the time to lower our guard, the downward trend in Virginia is very promising.  Further the distribution of the vaccine is progressing and Virginia now has launched a website allowing residents to pre-register.  With this positive news we are planning to move forward with an in-person event this year.

This year marks the 10th year of RVAsec.  We had previously made some major decisions prior to COVID to mark the occasion.  We are now finally able to announce our plans moving forward.

RVAsec is moving to the Omni for the next three years.  While we are extremely sad to be leaving our original home at VCU, this move gives us the entire hotel to take the conference to the next level.  

Again, the conference will be held in person November 4-5, 2021 at the Omni Richmond Hotel.

Previously purchased tickets for 2020 will be automatically transferred to the 2021 conference. More communication to follow on this.

We have been working closely with the hotel and will continue to be in touch with them to ensure the event is run in a safe manner, while still providing the best security conference experience.  For those that are unable to attend in person, we are hoping that we will be able to stream the conference.

Over the next couple weeks we will be in touch with sponsors soon to discuss details on the event, and we will begin to publish additional information and timelines.

We thank you for your flexibility and we look forward to seeing you all in person later this year!

-Chris and Jake

On July 1, Virginia officially entered into Phase 3 and began to further reopen the state. Governor Northam’s face covering requirement for indoor public spaces remains in place, and guidelines for indoor events changed to allow up to 250 people to attend RVAsec. 

Even though Virginia has been in Phase 3 for some time, we have still been proceeding cautiously. While Virginia has done well so far handling COVID-19 compared to many states, in the last few weeks it has become clear that it’s in everyone’s best interest to revise our plans for October. We are still working through the details, but we will not conduct RVAsec 9 in person as we desired, but rather we are working on plans to hold it as a virtual summit with streaming talks before the end of the year.

The RVAsec 9 Virtual Summit will be completely free for attendees, which will allow us to reach a broader audience and bring new members to the community.

We are in the process of setting up a chat server (using Discord) for our community so we can have active discussions during the streaming presentations, and we’ll also be leveraging this going forward to keep the RVAsec community in touch and socializing. Lastly, we are also looking at ways we can resume our monthly meetings in some virtual fashion.

Previously purchased tickets for 2020 will be automatically transferred to the 2021 conference, which will be held in person on June 3-4, 2021, regardless of any price increases.

While going virtual is a huge disappointment for all of us, the safety of the community that’s grown over the last nine years is paramount. We thank you for your flexibility this year as we work through brand new challenges, and look forward to being in-person again in 2021 at our brand new venue. 

We will be following up with more details about the Summit, and a huge announcement about plans for 2021.

See you in the virtual!

-Chris and Jake

As we shared in our previous update on the COVID-19 situation, RVAsec is committed to providing a safe environment for our attendees, and we will always act accordingly as we figure out the best way to move forward. 

As security people, many times we are frustrated when people won’t listen to expert (our) advice. Now it’s our time to listen to the experts at the CDC and numerous other government sources, and follow their recommendations.

Thus we have made the difficult decision to postpone RVAsec 2020. While working closely with VCU through the process, we came to the unfortunate conclusion that it would not be possible to host RVAsec at the university later this year. This issue made the process even more challenging to quickly reschedule the event, however, we now have a plan in place!

RVAsec 2020 will now be held at the Altria Theater on Wednesday, 

October 14 and Thursday, October 15 2020.

We’re grateful for the patience and support of our attendees, speakers, and sponsors, as well as our hosting partner VCU, while we weighed our options. Postponing the event to a much later date we believe is the right decision that allows us to ensure the safety of all attendees as well as making sure that RVAsec lives up to its name and what the community has come to expect.

We understand that many questions will remain, and we have a ton of work that needs to be completed in order to properly communicate more details and next steps. At this point, all registered attendees and sponsors have been rolled over to the new dates. We will follow-up as soon as we have concrete details for next steps, and any other actions that you may need to take including how we plan to address scheduling conflicts.

We wanted to communicate this decision as quickly as possible, so if you have any pressing questions, please feel free to contact us directly at info@rvasec.com and we will do our best to respond in a timely fashion. We plan to send out a more detailed FAQ about the date change, tickets, CFP, hotel information, and other key points as soon as possible.

We hope everyone stays well and we look forward to seeing you as soon as we are past these unprecedented times.

We also want to express our thanks to Hope and VCU for their amazing response and efforts, Sarah and Altria for working with us, and to thank our community for their continued support of RVAsec so we can bring the conference to Richmond for many years to come!

Regards,

Jake and Chris