A note from the ACA Executive Director:
Why attend the ACA annual conference virtually? Although the COVID-19 pandemic has made travel and large gatherings a challenge, we learned that it had little impact to agriculture claims in 2021. The ag claims industry requires support and the ACA is committed to meeting the training, education, and support requirement for companies and professionals in the industry. Like so many organizations, we have adapted; the team successfully executed a virtual mini-conference in December with 90 attendees. In the interest of safety and to avoid the risk associated with trying an in-person conference, we are taking what we have learned and conducting this year’s annual conference virtually. We incorporated lessons learned from December, along with comments and suggestions from previous conferences, and developed a virtual conference for the industry that replicates our annual resident conference as much as possible. This year, attendees have to opportunity to participate in all events by conducting each session twice during the conference. Many of the topics are suggestions from previous attendees or requests the ACA received from the field. We have leveraged technology to allow networking and access to sponsor companies, albeit differently than when we are face-to-face. We have also drastically reduced the cost of attendance and intend to conduct two virtual mini conferences annually to increase support throughout the year. We know you have a choice of a number of events hosted annually by different organizations and hope what the ACA provides differentiates us from the others.