What a year: The coronavirus changed a lot and kept CiA busy. In spring, CiA staff worked many days at home. This was a new experience with some obstacles. With the 2nd pandemic wave, we are back in home office with fewer challenges.

Most of the CiA meetings took place virtually and nearly all business trips were cancelled. The international CAN Conference (iCC) was postponed. I do not know yet, if the postponed iCC, will be held in Baden-Baden (Germany). The decision needs to be taken before the end of this year by CiA’s Business Committee. It could be possible that the conference will be organized as a virtual event or it will be postponed again. I have some doubts that a conference with more than 100 participants is possible in next June.

Regarding fairs, the Embedded World 2021, which we normally participate in, is organized as a digital exhibition with an online conference. I will present online my paper about CAN XL. The postponed Innotrans 2020 tradeshow has been rescheduled once more. Now, it is planned for 2022 in Berlin, Germany. Some of the CiA specification developments are delayed due to the fact that it was not possible or allowed to schedule face-to-face meetings. Usually, e-meetings are less effective than presence meetings. Especially, if we consider that the discussions during the breaks and in the evenings (in case of multi-day meetings) are very important for the progress of specifications. Nevertheless, CAN XL specifications made progress. Some of the CAN XL documents are close to be released CiA-internally as Draft Specification Proposals (DSP). Beginning of November, a first running prototype network was shown in a video at the end of a CAN XL meeting.

Our publications suffer from the decrease of advertisements. Nevertheless, the CAN Newsletter editors provide the readers with the same quality of CAN-related information. The number of visitors and downloads of CAN Newsletter articles have not been decreased significantly. We are looking forward to better times regarding the income from our publications. Then we will increase the number of articles to the normal level. The outlook to the next year is challenging. The Covid-19 pandemic is not over. I hope you and your family are not affected directly. The days up to the end of the year will be still challenging. Nevertheless, enjoy the holiday season, even if the restrictions in your country are hard. Stay healthy.