ESC IBS Consortium Minutes 090120

ESC IBS Consortium Minutes from September 1, 2020 Meeting was called to order at 2:00 pm Eastern Time Attendance: Dan Price Atmos Energy Chris Cole DTE Audrey Okaneku Hawaii Gas Chris Stripplehoff Municipal Gas Authority of GA Marti Sawyer National Fuel Melissa Farrar Washington Gas Barb started the meeting by mentioning that Bill Cantrell, SGA, submitted his proposal to speak on our behalf at the 2021 IBS. However, he recently heard from NAHB that his request to present has been denied. The reason given to Bill was that due to the need to social distance at the IBS education sessions, they can only accept about 10% of the 550 requests that were submitted and his was not one of them. I let Bill know that we appreciated all of his efforts as it was no simple task to submit a request. IBS 2021: As you are aware this call and potentially all futures call will be pushed back from our normal schedule to allow Barb to listen on the monthly webinars NAHB has been holding for exhibitors. Although NAHB insists that their members want to have the 2021 show and plan to attend, there has been a lot more discussion of a virtual event or a physical/virtual event. NAHB has also been surveying their members and, since June, the percentage of members who say they are likely to attend has been declining while the percentage who won’t attend has been increasing. NAHB has also been extending the date by which exhibitors must notify NAHB if they plan to not exhibit in 2021; that date is now October 1. We have already made a 25% deposit in our space for 2021. If we choose to not exhibit that amount will put toward our space at the 2022 show. Again, NAHB has reiterated that they feel confident the pandemic will not have an impact on the 2021 show. That being said Barb wanted to hear from the members on the call and how they felt about a 2021 show and attendance. Here are the responses from our members: Chris Cole, DTE: They currently have a travel ban until further notice and will be working remotely until at least the summer of 2021 Marti Sawyer, National Fuel: They are currently working at home until January 8. 2021 Melissa Farrar, Washington Gas: They also have a ban on travel and are not allowed to attend any large public events. They have no date set for return to the office. Audrey Okaneku, Hawaii Gas: They also have a travel ban in place and Hawaii has a mandatory 14 quarantine period upon return for residents who travel outside the state. Dan Price: Atmos Energy: Atmos also has a travel ban in place Several members wondered if the booth would get more traffic if it were a virtual event since people would not have to travel. Barb said they could assign members time to work the virtual booth, and we could have links to all kinds of documents on electrification, site vs source, etc. that visitors could download once they entered the virtual booth. The next call with NAHB is scheduled for September 24th so our IBS call will be held on Tuesday, September 29th at 2:00 PM Eastern time. If anyone has any questions or concerns before then don’t hesitate to reach out to Barb. With no additional discussion topics our call ended at 2:33 pm.