Never Graduate Week will be held remotely and other precautions for COVID-19

Update: As of March 11th we are temporarily moving all operations online.

This is our response plan to the ongoing situation with COVID-19. We will update this post as the situation develops.

Our priority is to ensure the safety of our employees, current Recursers, and alumni community, while helping to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Precautionary steps we’re taking

Canceling public events. We are canceling previously scheduled public events. This includes our March Localhost talks, company meet & greets, and the biomimicry panel we were scheduled to host later this month. We hope to resume hosting Localhost and company meet & greets later in the spring.

We are evaluating private events we run inside the RC community on a case-by-case basis. We’ll keep Recursers updated via our internal calendar, forums, and chat.

Allowing optional work from home for all employees and Recursers. We are pausing our normal policy that current Recursers should come into the space every weekday. All RC employees and Recursers are welcome to work from home, and anyone exhibiting symptoms (fever, cough, sneezing, shortness of breath) is required to stay at home.

Stopping work travel. We are canceling work travel for employees. This unfortunately means our San Francisco events planned for April are canceled. We will reschedule our SF events later in the year when it’s prudent to do so.

Continuing to run batches, but changing how we start them. Our next batch will begin as scheduled on March 30th, however, we are redesigning the experience of our first day to avoid large groups in tight quarters. If you are in the upcoming batch, you will receive full details later this month as the start of your batch approaches.

Following best practices throughout our community. This includes encouraging all Recursers to wash their hands regularly, sanitizing common surfaces more frequently, and recommending friendly waves in lieu of handshakes.

Our biggest event will be held online

Never Graduate Week, our annual alumni reunion, is scheduled for May 11th-15th. This is our largest and most important event, which last year brought together nearly 400 Recursers from across the US and over a dozen countries around the world.

We will not be hosting our reunion in person this year. Given the situation and how quickly things are changing, we think it would likely be irresponsible to host such a large event in May. We also know that waiting to make a decision until later this spring would be more disruptive to people’s travel plans.

Many Recursers look forward to coming back every year for Never Graduate Week. For RC staff, NGW is a highlight of our year. Catching up with friends from years past is energizing, inspiring, and fun. NGW is special because it’s the only time such a large portion of our community has the chance to come together.

Rather than cancel NGW, we’ll take this as an opportunity to try something new. Instead of hosting it in one centralized place, we will be organizing NGW online and supporting small groups of alums to meet up and join in from around the world. There are significant drawbacks to not being able to come together in person. But with careful thought, hard work, and the support of our community, we believe we can organize an excellent NGW online.

Community and bringing people together is even more important in times of uncertainty. We look forward to this opportunity to learn how to do this in a more accessible way online.