On 28 April, 2026 Co-Director James Shires at Virtual Routes attended the National Volunteer Management Conference 2026 in Athlone, Ireland. The event, coordinated by Volunteer Ireland, brought together volunteer managers from across Ireland and abroad for a day of keynote speeches, masterclasses, and networking.
Virtual Routes attended to meet with critical community infrastructure organizations and highlight the offerings of its Cybersecurity Services Centre, which provides free services to organizations that play an important role in their communities. While at the conference, Virtual Routes ran free website scans for organizations which signposted potential security vulnerabilities on their websites and gave advice on how to resolve these issues.
Co-Directors Max Smeets and James Shires will be back in Ireland soon to provide two training sessions called Online Safety for Volunteer Managers: Practical Steps That Work on 16 June in Dublin and 17 June in Cork. James says that, “We’re excited to be in Ireland and great to work with volunteer managers that play such an important role in communities.”
