23/05/2011
LS Retail Partner Conference 2011 Cancelled
We regret to inform you we have decided to officially cancel this year’s LS Retail Partner Conference.
As you are probably aware, we once again have a volcanic eruption in Iceland. This time it is the Grimsvotn volcano. Grimsvotn is the most active volcano in Iceland. It erupts every 4-5 years with eruptions lasting from 5 to 30 days. It usually does not have any effect on flight-traffic. This time it is different as this is the largest eruption of its kind for over 100 years. Keflavik International Airport has been closed since Sunday 8.30 am local time and will remain so at least until noon tomorrow. It is not certain when it will open. Furthermore the predictions of spread of ashes suggest that the entire Northern Europe Airspace might be affected as of Wednesday.
Because we cannot be certain that the participants can get to Iceland and back home as planned, we think that a cancellation of the conference is the right decision in the circumstances.
The cancellation will have the following effects:
• LS Retail will refund the conference fee
• We are currently contacting the conference hotels and cancelling all rooms
• We intend to record most of the presentations and release them on the Partner Web
• We will send out a package to each company containing the material, we had prepared for the conference.
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For those of you who are already in Iceland, or intend to come anyway, we welcome you warmly. We will organize a “Plan B” conference, with presentations on demand and meetings with the technical staff. A truly unique experience awaits those of you who have arrived, or will arrive in Iceland.
Please contact Eloise at Eloise@LSRetail.com if you intend to come anyway.
On behalf of the entire LS Retail team we are very sad that we had to take this step. We had put a lot of time and effort into making this a fantastic experience for all of us. We also had a lot of very important messages to deliver. It is too early to decide how we will communicate this, but we intend to organize extra visits to partners in Q3. A special edition of the newsletter and a more massive representation at the Microsoft WPC are among the measures we will be discussing in the coming days.
This being said, we want to assure you that only small areas of Iceland are directly affected by the eruption. There have been no human casualties and it will be business as usual for most Icelanders tomorrow and the next days - also for us at LS Retail.
Best Regards,
Magnús S Norðdahl, CEO
Carsten Wulff, Partner Management Director