July 8, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

After careful consideration, the CUG Board has arrived at the unfortunate conclusion that we must cancel the in-person CUG2020 conference.  The New Zealand government has closed their border to all but New Zealand citizens for the foreseeable future.  Also many home organisations and/or countries are limiting (or forbidding) travel abroad.  This situation means that we simply cannot have a face-to-face conference this year.

We will of course refund all of you who have paid your registrations already.  As is our normal procedure we will refund to the payment type made when you paid the registration.  If you have any questions or issues with your refund please send an email to the treasurer (treasurer@cug.org).

For all of you who have had a paper accepted or wish to submit new content for consideration, we will have a Special Call For Papers and publish a Special Edition CUG2020 proceedings so that your hard work does not go unrecognised.  You will be contacted by our Vice President and Technical Program Chair with the details.

Furthermore, in order to allow at least some conference dialog this year, the CUG Board has decided to run a special virtual event via video conference.  We are still working through the details and will communicate them to you ASAP but please keep Tuesday 27th October penciled in your diaries.

There is also the matter of annual elections scheduled for this year’s conference and the CUG Board will proceed with these elections virtually.  You will be sent details on the nomination and voting process in the coming days.  As a nod to how we usually do things, I will announce the election results as part of the virtual event, mentioned above.

You will also be interested to know about the plans for CUG2021 and I am happy to report that we are well along the way with these. The host and venue have been chosen and I will announce the details during the October virtual event.

Please understand that we have not taken these decisions lightly but we really have no other choice.  We must do what is right for our members and sponsors in order to safeguard everyone’s well-being.

Yours sincerely and kind regards,

Colin McMurtrie
CUG President

The New Zealand border is currently closed to almost all travelers to help stop the spread of COVID-19. For current information and updates see Coronavirus update: INZ’s response.