As of January 2021, EMDC has taken a more public position on our security protocols. We did not make this decision lightheartedly. In fact we did not choose this at all. Covid-19 affected EMDC in two ways:
It shut physical EMDC down for 2020 (and maybe longer)
It made real security basically impossible because of the reasons given below.
Our physical meetings may never be as secure as they have been again: contact tracing, facial recognition, required tracking apps, required submission of a list of conference attendees to the government, and more. What’s more, it is harder to get an exit visa, entrance visa, manage the quarantine times (going and coming), and many economies have been damaged for a long time.
One thing we do not want to do is "wait" for the return of "normalcy" and miss opportunities that we could easily see--- if we would only stop hoping and pretending that “all will be well soon.”
EMDC Online is enrolling many new people who were not previously on our EMDC mailing list. Many of those newly-enrolled may not even have the freedom or resources to attend future EMDC in-person events.
Our more open public presence allows us to consider having blogs, social media, podcasts, and other potential opportunities. This results in many more people having access to our community and resources.
In the spring of 2020, it was written in an article, “After the virus blizzard, we are all start-ups now.” So, the EMDC leadership decided that we do not want to re-start as the same thing (something that can be shut down at any time from terrorism or virus). We decided to redefine EMDC … reminding ourselves that we did not abandon our principles and policies – it was the world that changed with tracing technology and the virus.
This shift has not taken us away from the core beliefs and guiding principles of EMDC. We still believe that “No one else can do what you do, where God has placed you, and it is our goal to help you equip yourself for that task.”