• Health

Health & Safety

COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

Update: 25th March 2020
Thank you all for your patience as we worked to find a way forward for BSides Canberra 2020.

Unfortunately the National Convention Centre has no availability for the conference to be held in 2020, so our plans of postponing are not practical. Therefore, we are cancelling BSides Canberra 2020.

However - there has already been significant investment into the merchandise (lanyards, booklets, t-shirt etc) that surround the conference as well at the Convention Centre holding onto the deposits already paid, so it is not feasible for the conference to issue full refunds to both delegates and sponsors.

What we plan to do is to rollover all ticket sales and sponsorship to our 2021 conference which is booked with the National Convention Centre on the 9-10th April 2021.

We will be reopening the CFP on the 1st of October 2020 to ensure the conference continues to host timely and relevant content. Therefore our program and speaker list is subject to change.

We hope you can all make it to our Post-Cyberpocalypse celebration!

Kylie & Silvio

Update: 14th March 2020
On the 13th of March the AHPPC made the following statement to limit the spread on COVID-19 in Australia:

"AHPPC considers that, for these reasons, the time has come to put in place social distancing measures to mitigate spread, rather than a strategy based primarily on case finding. These include limiting non-essential organised gatherings to fewer than 500 people"
- https://www.health.gov.au/news/australian-health-protection-principal-committee-ahppc-coronavirus-covid-19-statement-on-13-march-2020

BSides Canberra, scheduled for the 1-2nd May 2020 is currently 7 weeks away. However, we are cognisant that the dangers of COVID-19 may continue or escalate leading up to the conference.

We have been engaging with our venue and suppliers in the past week. The following courses of action are under consideration in preferential order given the current Government advice.
  1. Rescheduling the conference to October or November.
  2. Implementing the ability to attend remotely (virtual conference)
  3. Cancelling the conference
We understand people are investing into travel arrangements and we want to ensure that we provide timely advice to our attendees. We expect to have a finalised answer on the course of action that we'll be taking within the next 2 weeks.

Thank you for your patience and please don't hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected] if you need more details or clarification.

Regards,

Kylie & Silvio