The spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, is taking its toll on the Ocean State.
As of Monday, 21 Rhode Islanders had tested positive for the virus, per the Department of Health. And effective Tuesday, bars and restaurants are limited to takeout and delivery, and crowds of at least 25 are banned statewide, Gov. Gina Raimondo announced. The state government has declared a state of emergency, as have several municipalities.
As Rhode Islanders seek to limit their movements in order to slow the spread of the virus, some in the startup community have had to get creative.
Venture Café Providence has taken its programming online. Last Thursday, the nonprofit organization launched the "Virtual Venture Café," a remote version of its staple Thursday Gatherings hosted over Zoom. (Rhode Island Inno's Rowan Walrath spoke with Venture Café Providence's Amy Erickson for a remote fireside chat on the future of remote events last Thursday.)
Venture Café Providence will hold its Thursday Gatherings—office hours with experts, networking opportunities, panel discussions and lectures—virtually until early May, in accordance with the latest guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"It was our duty and our public service to close and stop the spread."
Meanwhile, its sister organization District Hall, which operates a coworking and event space at 225 Dyer St. in Providence, has scaled back significantly, closing both its first- and second-floor public coworking lounges and severely reducing the capacities of its meeting rooms and event spaces.
District Hall had previously closed only its first-floor public lounge, but as Venture Café Providence Executive Director Tuni Schartner told Rhode Island Inno on Monday, the situation had to be reevaluated "hour by hour."
"Last week, I was back and forth between feeling like we were doing a public service by keeping it open, since so many people were working remotely and not everyone was set up to do that," Schartner said. "But as our governor said yesterday, it’s day by day. We’re making decisions day by day as more information becomes relevant. Last night, I decided that it was not longer a public service to stay open. It was our duty and our public service to close and stop the spread."
No cases of COVID-19 have been reported in association with District Hall, the organization noted in an email to subscribers.
There is a silver lining to all this. The launch of Virtual Venture Café means that even once Venture Café can hold live, in-person events again, it can also bake digital and remote programming into its standard offerings—something Schartner's team has been meaning to implement for a while, she said.
"We never want to replace our secret sauce, our magic, which is the in-person connectivity," Schartner said. "But this is an additional offering that might be of interest to our sponsors."
Meanwhile, two miles away in Providence's Olneyville neighborhood, Sprout Coworking is still up and running. The organization has not yet scaled back its hours, but it has increased the frequency of its cleaning and made hand sanitizer and disinfectants available to its members.
"We are following the same common sense guidelines you have been hearing in the news: wash your hands frequently; cough into your arm, not your hands; if you feel sick, please stay home so as not to spread illness," Sprout wrote in an email to its members on Thursday. "We will maintain our regular schedule until we hear it is not safe to do so."
Still, many of Sprout's regulars are not coming in to the space.
Business manager Stacey Kaplan said that whereas she typically sees 40 people working out of Sprout on any given day, she has only seen about 10 over the last couple of days as fear—and the virus itself—spreads. Additionally, many of the companies that work out of Sprout have directed their employees to work from home for the foreseeable future.
That said, many Sprout members have evidently found it difficult to work at home.
"A lot of my members have said, 'I can’t work at home. I want to come here,'" Kaplan said. "I think it’s a very scary time, and I think people need to pay attention and follow the guidelines, but be aware of what those guidelines are and, as they change, continue to follow them."
Social Enterprise Greenhouse (SEG), another Providence coworking space that is also home to multiple accelerators, has closed its "SEG Hub" space for public coworking, canceled all events, told staff to work remotely and transitioned all trainings and meetings to virtual setups for at least the next two weeks.
Innovate Newport has taken a similar tack. Thomas Shevlin, communications officer for the city of Newport, said that while the building is still open to existing Innovate Newport members who have key fob access, most members have chosen to stay away.
"Anecdotally, there were only two members that visited the facility yesterday, and I think everyone's pretty much working from home," Shevlin said on Tuesday. "Last week, they implemented stepped-up sanitizing protocols. The whole building has been scrubbed from top to bottom."
Innovate Newport has also canceled all meetings scheduled to take place this week, with the possibility to continue that protocol into next week as well.
But not all events can be made virtual.
Rhode Island Students of the Future (RISF), a Warwick-based nonprofit that aims to engage students in STEM learning through youth robotics, announced in an email on Wednesday, March 11, that it had canceled its 7th annual Robot Block Party. It had been scheduled to take place on April 7 at the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence.
"Sadly, what made the event so successful—the ability to touch and explore robots of all shapes and sizes and talk with thousands of robotics enthusiasts of all ages—is also what could make it a vector site for the coronavirus," Mary Johnson, a member of RISF's board and producer of the Robot Block Party, said in a statement. "We did not want to risk the health of our community, or of the residents of Rhode Island."
