COVID-19 Update

On behalf of NZSEE we are saddened about the cancellation of the 2020 NZSEE annual conference. This circumstance was forced on us by the extraordinary circumstances we all find ourselves in.

However, we are announcing an exciting programme of events and activities that we have planned to run in its place, and also notifying registered participants of your options regarding your registrations fees.

Following the conference cancellation, NZSEE will now run the NZSEE 2020 Webinar Series throughout this year.

The first of this webinar series is planned to be held on Wednesday 22 April from 12 noon to 1:30pm.  The title of this first webinar is Building Resilience. The speakers will be Mike Stannard, Rob Jury, Tim Sullivan and Jenni Tipler.  Each speaker will give a 15 minute talk on a topic related to building resilience with a question and answer session to follow.  Join us to find out what activities MBIE have underway in this important topic, current research and future plans to address building resilience. The webinar will be co-chaired by Helen Ferner and Ken Elwood. All society members and conference registrants will be invited to attend.  Further details will follow shortly including log-in details.

The NZSEE 2020 webinar series will then continue over the coming months.  Each of these webinars will include a collection of oral presentations from invited speakers on a range of topics relating to issues facing our profession.

This webinar series will be an engaging way to absorb and interact with some of the high quality submissions originally planned for the conference along with other topics, and a great way to break up the working day.  Our aim is to keep our members connected during this challenging period. Again, these webinars will be openly available to all registrants and members, and programme details will be made available in the coming weeks as we work with contributors.

A full proceedings of accepted Conference papers will be published and made available to all members and registrants. Contributing authors are being contacted separately to confirm acceptance and permissions regarding the inclusion of their papers in this proceedings.

The NZSEE AGM is to be run as a separate virtual event from 3pm on Thursday 23rd April, and will include the announcement of the NZSEE 2020 Awards winners. Whilst the conference awards themselves (such as best paper, etc.) are not able to proceed, excellent submissions were received for the 2020 NZSEE Awards. It is unfortunate that we are not to be able to celebrate these in person. However, it is very important we recognise our awards recipients for their outstanding achievements and so we’ll be sure to celebrate with them to the fullest extent possible in this virtual environment we find ourselves in.

For those who have already registered and paid for the conference, full refunds will be issued.  You should have already received an email from the Conference Organiser confirming details of the refund process on Monday 6 April. However, given the circumstances, we would be delighted if registrants would consider donating their registration fee to the society in recognition of the significant unrecoverable external costs incurred by the society prior to cancellation, and also in recognition of the valuable content that will be offered openly to all conference registrants and society members in its place.  If you’d like to have your registration fee used as a donation to help offset the Society’s financial loss from cancellation of the conference, no action is needed.

We thank you for your patience as we finalised the cancellation process and the confirmation of the online programme and webinar details, and look forward to participating alongside you in NZSEE’s first online conference!

NZSEE Management Committee