Last weekend, the organisers of the TwitchLDN community events announced their first IRL event in two years.
In a throwback to that last event in November 2019, the venue will once again be London’s iconic Leake Street, the tunnel road famed for it’s street art.
The announcement leaves me with mixed feelings – after 18 months of ‘virtual’ meet-ups, it will in theory be great to have the opportunity to meet people again, share our collective interests in gaming, streaming and content creation more broadly, as well as travel down to our vibrant capital city.
However, these feelings are countered by concerns. It is hardly possible to say the UK is on-top of the COVID situation despite the impressive vaccine rollout, with around 30,000 new cases and around 100 deaths reported a day still typical.
I also remember how compact the venue felt with around 2,000 visitors last time, so it will be interesting to see what plans have been made to handle the threat of COVID and the numerous variants which are now in circulation, as well as monitor how the national and London data trends as we head into the winter months when viral infections tend to become more prevalent.
At the moment I am preparing to go – I have already booked a reasonably affordable hotel nearby for two nights and train tickets, both of which I can cancel up-to a week before the event.
I am sure there are many that are also having these feelings – it’s been a rough 18 months mentally for us all and the chance to get to meet others and socialise again has a great appeal, however despite being fully vaccinated, there is still the threat a handful of irresponsible people could cause serious problems for many others.
I imagine Fred and Emily recognise in embarking on this event they are taking a calculated gamble – I would guess there are certain financial and possibly commercial forces pushing for an IRL event to happen. Hopefully they don’t find themselves in the position they found themselves in back in March last year, having to cancel an event barely a week out as lockdown came into effect.
Fingers crossed…