With health and safety concerns presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Product Stewardship Society has elected to hold PSX 2020 online, from September 15–17 2020. Both the Board and staff believe that participating in a virtual conference setting offers distinct and valuable benefits. Aside from the obvious convenience of attending PSX in one’s own home without travel time and expense, another perk of this year’s virtual PSX is the significantly reduced cost of attendance. Out of respect for the organizations which have had to cut their professional development budgets during this difficult year, and in recognition of PSX’s own reduced expenses, registration rates for Virtual PSX 2020 is less than it was to register for past in-person conferences.

Advance registration for the full three-day conference costs $495 for premium members, who registered for $895 during past conferences. Attendees who register by August 10th can save up to $100 with the advance registration discount. Single-day registration options are available as well, to give attendees more flexibility with their schedule.

PSX 2020 is also worth attending for the networking opportunities. Past PSX attendees have rated networking at the conference as just as important as educational events. Accordingly, the Product Stewardship Society is making every effort to guarantee that this year’s virtual platform will provide plenty of opportunities for attendees to engage with one another. PSX 2020 will offer an experience called the Virtual Exchange through its online conference platform. This will allow for one-on-one online chats between partner company staff members and attendees, virtual lunch and learn sessions and product showcases occurring at times that don’t conflict with educational sessions, and trivia games and other fun activities.

Knowing that virtual conferences encourage attendees to remain sedentary for hours, the Product Stewardship Society is in the process of designing health and wellness activities to get attendees up and moving.

Attendees seeking knowledge and best practices in product stewardship can expect the same quality of education and diversity of topics from the virtual education program. The conference’s basic schedule won’t radically change from past years, aside from the postponing of the pre-conference workshops, formerly set for September 14th. After the opening general session on the morning of September 15th, education sessions on topics related to product stewardship will occur in three formats over the next few days, before the conference closes with a closing keynote. Standard sessions will last for one hour, express sessions for 30 minutes, and deep-dive sessions, which will go into the details of the topic, will last an hour and a half. This allows attendees to tailor PSX to their schedule.

To learn more about PSX, register for this year’s conference, and view its schedule, visit the conference website.