Kia ora! We hope everyone is safe and adapting to the new normal we find ourselves working and living in. We are writing to you with an update about IABSE Congress Christchurch 2020, which we have postponed to 3–5 February 2021 and made the decision to move to a fully virtual event.
Given the cancellations of other conferences, some may be hungry for the kinds of connection and discussion that happen in these spaces. We want to be able to support you to make connections at this challenging time, and as such we are committed to running the IABSE 2020 Congress from 3 to 5 February 2021 as a virtual event. We are also committed to doing our best to make this accessible and fulfilling for a wide range of people.
At this stage we are currently working on gauging the support from our sponsors with the shift to virtual. For this reason, we will hold off on opening registration until the end of October as any commitment from sponsors will help us keep registration fees low.
We are delighted to have received over 250 paper submissions, all those who register for the virtual event will have access to the full proceedings.
We are excited to be working with an innovative virtual platform that will include the following features.
Paper presentations will be available to view on demand from mid-January.
The ability to add comments to a discussion forum for each paper presentation.
Live Q&A and discussion session with paper presenters.
Up to 20 keynote and invited presenters sharing their expertise from around the world.
The opportunity to interact with industry supporters through product demos and visiting their virtual exhibition booths.
Various opportunities for networking outside of the conference sessions via small randomly selected conversation groups, larger discussion groups or via the Meeting Hub, which allows one-to-one aside conversations with attendees either via instant messaging or video calls.
To encourage interaction with the virtual event as much as possible, there will a gamification feature that will allow points to be earned for prizes by interacting with certain aspects of the platform.
We are disappointed that you will not get to visit this side of the world at this time but we are looking at potentially making some virtual technical tours available to you so you can see what we are doing here in Christchurch, New Zealand.
If you are an industry supporter, there is a range of ways in which you can gain exposure via the virtual conference platform. We will be using your support as a sponsor of this event, which will help us ensure we can keep the registration fees as low as possible. It would be hugely helpful if you were able to confirm your commitment to support this event through sponsorship as soon as you can to help us determine the virtual registration fees for attendees and to ensure it’s accessible for as many people as possible. For more information, please email [email protected].
Please keep an eye on: iabse.org/Christchurch2020 for any further updates. We will be in touch when we have more speakers confirmed and registration is live!
If there is anything you would like to share with us—concerns, feedback, ideas for how to make this a successful event—please do get in touch. We would genuinely love to hear from you.
Ngā mihi
Alessandro Palermo,
Chair of the Organising Committee