ABOUT US.
Safe meeting is a tool designed to give an area size for any gathering, based on the number of people and the desired personal space for each attendee. This tool will help anyone managing a gathering of people to provide a safe and healthy environment for their workplace, community event, school, or any other meeting environment.
​HOW SAFE MEETING BEGAN.
Town Moderator Mark DiSalvo believed freely available software could help to keep the distances recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) when laying out chairs in public spaces.
The resulting app, Safe Meeting, is now available to the public for free. Brothers Rich and Dave Kaufman wrote the code and helped with the design.
Most governments worldwide advise staying inside in response to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus, but many town governments, organizers, all employers, event planners, unions, and schools need to create a plan for a time when they are allowed to convene together again in a safe space, all the while maximizing the safety of every participant.
Recognizing that many Town Moderators, who have the obligation of running the oldest democratic gathering on earth, are faced with the difficulty of planning a safe site and process for conducting their Town Meetings. DiSalvo conceived of an app that would allow his colleagues to plan for such meetings safely. “In my case I once had 3,000 citizens attend our Town Meeting and I would have had to conduct that meeting in a seven-acre open field to accommodate the CDC guidelines. The equations are complicated to determine a safe radius for each person and discern the space required. This tool is a simplifier for any user needing to plan a safe meeting or work site.”
Safe Meeting has been tested and is now ready for a wider release and broader use. One user noted, “The tool Mark has put out there is useful to experiment with possible sizes of spaces that can accommodate different numbers of people and still (hypothetically) provide 6' between each one.
Professionals rave about Safe Meeting:
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“Now that is scary good.”
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“I’m bringing this to work! Much thanks to you and your friends for developing this.”
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“SAFE MEETING rocks.”
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“A cool tool.”
DiSalvo and the Kaufmans have no profit motive for creating Safe Meeting. “It deserves a wider audience,” stated the creators. They conclude it should be used by municipalities planning public meetings, employers creating safe working sites, unions looking to enforce safety protocols for their workers, schools, and universities planning classroom and lecture hall limits, sports and entertainment venues as they plan to reopen for business, and any person with the obligation of planning a meeting or event. As social distancing standards diminish, the tool can be adjusted to reflect future CDC advisories. Additionally, when we are all out of quarantine it can be used to simply provide comfortable spaces for all.