JOINT CONFERENCE 2020 Update as of 29 September 2020

NAPARS is the host to the Joint Conference this year. Sadly, COVID killed the in-person aspect, but we’re moving forward with a virtual training event, FREE for the members of the five groups, specifically NAPARS, NYSTARS, NJAARS, MdATAI, and NATARI.

Each day for 7 days, we’ll have a 2-hour online training presentation. Each presentation is scheduled for 2 hours, to start at 1pm eastern time. The program looks like this:

     Oct 5 - Wade Bartlett – Motorcycles 

     Oct 6 - John Daily – Rollovers 

     Oct 7 - Greg Russell - Crash testing 

     Oct 8 - Dr Jeff Muttart - PRT at various types of crashes 

     Oct 9 - Matt DeSogra - Chip-level data recovery 

     Oct 12 - TJ Tennant – Tires 

     Oct 13 - Wes Grimes, Greg Wilcoxson and Dave Plant - Using new Freightliner data in A/R

There is no “sign up” page – there is no way we can vet 1,000 people in a timely fashion at the start of each day’s presentation - anyone with the URL will be able to log on to watch the show, but Zoom only allows up to 1,000 participants. That’s a limitation in their system that we can not exceed. They offer a larger plan, but it costs $24,000, and we can’t justify it for this one event. So, the first 1,000 people to sign in will be the ones who get to attend. We will only be sending this log-in URL to members of the 5 groups.

ACTAR has approved each presentation for 2 CEUs.

For attendance and ACTAR purposes, viewers will be asked to sign in twice during the event with their NAME-AFFILIATION-EMAIL-ACTAR # (if applicable). If you don't remember your ACTAR number, please look it up in advance.

If you view the event using a computer, the chat function is pretty easy to find, and is how we'll have viewers sign in. The ZOOM app on a phone or tablet should allow this chat functionality as well. It is not clear if participants using the "call-in audio only" option will be able to complete this sign in process, so we are encouraging people to not do that. 

On the morning of the presentation, NAPARS will send an email to members of the 5 groups with the URL to sign in to ZOOM for that presentation. We do not know how many people will try to sign in, so we don’t know if we’ll fill all 1,000 slots or not. We hope not. 

Viewer's microphones will be muted by default. Video-recording or audio-recording the sessions is prohibited, and that ZOOM feature will be disabled. Presenters will be given the opportunity to share their presentations in PDF format, posted online as soon as practicable.

This whole process is new to most of us, so please be patient. We are cautiously optimistic that process will open up new training opportunities that have not been exploited before to benefit our members going forward.

More news as it comes available.

Peace. -W