COVID-19 Plan
tl;dr
- We can only run the con if we don’t have indoor venue limits (i.e. we are in Orange traffic light setting).
- We will still be checking vaccination status. This means having a current NZ Vaccine Pass. You can get a vaccine pass if you are up-to-date on your vaccinations, have a temporary exemption, or have a medical exemption.
- Masks must be worn at all times (except for small sips + snacks).
- We will have masks if you need one.
- We are going to try to have rapid antigen tests (RATs) available.
- We encourage you to test before/during/after the con.
- We will be filling the venue to 75% capacity (about 1,700 hackers) to allow for more physical distancing.
- We’ll be streaming talks to other parts of the venue. We plan to stream talks publicly.
- This plan is subject to change… because government, viruses, and friends are all hard to predict. We’ll do our best to let you know when and if it changes again.
But hey, this plan is pretty important so take a minute or two to read the whole thing!
On the day
So, even at orange we want to help you (and help us) avoid spreading any kind of con flu.
Important: If indoor limits are enforced in Wellington again (we move to Red), we will have to postpone the con (again). Check out below for how postponing will work.
Here’s the plan for the con:
Pre-arrival
- Check in with yourself - are you ready for a big day ahead of you? Are you hydrated? Feeling okay? It’s been a long time since big events were a thing so be ready for a different dynamic.
- Consider doing a rapid antigen test (RAT) before arriving at the venue. We won’t be checking tests but it’s a considerate thing to do.
- Being respectably middle-aged and law-abiding hackers, Kawaiicon will be exceeding the NZ Government alert guidelines for public events.
On arrival
- We will be checking vaccination passes.
- This means you need to show your current NZ Vaccine Pass so we can scan it. You can get this through My Covid Record or here for intl. travellers.
- You can get a NZ Vaccine Pass by either being up-to-date on your vaccinations, having a temporary exemption, or having a medical exemption. Take a look here on how to get a NZ Vaccine Pass for each of these situations.
- We are going to scan vaccine passes, so they have to be current. So if you had an old, expired vaccine pass you do need to get a new one.
- We will be giving you a wristband so we know that you’ve been checked.
- All of the venue staff, our volunteers, speakers, the Crue, and event organisers are going to be fully vaccinated, boosted, and following the same rules as you.
- Remember to bring ID to go with your vaccine pass
- Only the person carrying out vaccine pass checks will know your government-issued identity details.
- We have always been an event where you could keep your identity private. In this case, we need a person to verify vaccination status. We will not be storing your PII or any data about this.
- If you’re dealing with the shitty situation of only having an official ID or vaccine pass in an old (or dead) name, we’ll do our best to minimise that suck for you. We’re not going to be jerks about this because we know the system sucks, so of course in this situation you would be allowed to attend if your name and pass don’t match.
- We will (try to) have RAT kits available if you’d like to take one.
- Testing regularly will help reduce the amount of time infectious people are at the con.
- We want to make testing available and easy to do so that anyone with symptoms can get tested and, if positive, leave the con (and hopefully watch via livestream if we can sort out the logistics).
- We will have fresh masks for those who need one or would like a fresh one.
- Masks help us to reduce airborne viruses, including regular ol’ con flu, not just COVID.
- We prefer KN95, N95 or P2 (FFP2) masks; we also prefer masks that don’t have exhalation valves. It’s fine if you’d like to layer this mask with another one, but please no bandanas or pulling your t-shirt up and pretending it’s a mask.
- Talk to us if you have a mask exemption from the Ministry of Health. We will give you a different wristband to show that we’ve checked.
During the event
- We are filling the venue to 75% capacity (about 1,700 hackers).
- This is to allow for more physical distancing. We encourage you to leave some empty seats between yourself and other attendees.
- Please keep your mask on.
- If you need to change your mask, we’ll have plenty and you can crack open a fresh one.
- People wearing masks maskhole style around their chin or partially on their face will be asked to fix the problem or leave.
- If you start feeling unwell at all, please go home.
- Viruses are bad, keep them contained inside your lab/sandbox. Call your doc or Healthline on 0800 358 5453 if you have any cold, flu, or COVID-19 symptoms. Do not think “Yeah, I’ll be fine”. Get a test. Isolate.
- We will try to have some RAT kits on hand so you can grab one on the way out.
- We’d prefer to avoid regular con flu, not just covid. It sucks to feel like you might be missing out, but it’s best to go home and watch the live stream (if we get one going).
Food and drinks
- There won’t be food and drinks inside the venue.
- This is to minimise the need to remove masks inside the venue.
- If you need to remove your mask for a quick sip or snack, that’s okay. Please do this while seated or stationary.
- Do not leave your mask off in order to continuously snack or drink. If you’d like to have a break from mask wearing, you are welcome to do this outside in the open air.
- We’ll be extending the length of the breaks to allow for more time to leave the venue for meals. We will also plan to have food trucks outside again so you can eat and socialise outside.
End of the day
- We have decided to trim down the conference to the essentials - that means we won’t be organising extra events like parties in the evenings.
- It sucks but it means we can redirect our efforts towards safety at our main event.
- This also means no Kuracon :( we love Kuracon and having a space for young hackers to learn and play. This year we aren’t able to do this and we’re big sad about it :(
- Many kids haven’t been able to be vaccinated yet and we are requiring everyone at the event to be vaccinated. Sorry :(
Refunds and postponing
If the Traffic light level goes to red or there are indoor limits in place in Wellington, we have to postpone (again).
Tickets
If you already have a ticket, then we will honour that ticket for whenever the heck we can do an in person conference again. We don’t know when that will be because booking a venue in normal circumstances can be a bit of exercise in frustration, and rebooking (along with everyone else) is worse. We’ve had to do that once already, which is how the con ended up half a year offset. We will (of course) let you know as much as we can as soon as we can. If this does happen let’s call that future-date-we-hope-to-not-have-to-use 202X.
We won’t be issuing refunds. We understand that a lot of you will have been sponsored by your company to attend the conference. While they might want to see an instant return on their investment, they will have to unfortunately wait until 202X to reap the benefits of the hacker knowledge you will consume. All 2022 tickets will be transferred to 202X.
In the unlikely event that you can’t attend any more because you are getting married on the to be confirmed date for the 202X conference, you know who you are, email us. Or if the pandemic never ends (Ed note: hush now), or the Great Old Ones awaken in the deep, a spam can lodging in their eldritch rugose nostrils? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, and set it on fire.
Merch
If you bought merch, orders have been confirmed and are in production. We can’t get those orders refunded and we really don’t want to mail out thousands of hoodies and shirts. We will keep the merch in storage until the future event, so be rest assured you will get it! Besides, the merch art is pretty amazing so it is worth the wait.
Sponsors
For the companies that have provided generous sponsorship for the event, some of this money has already been spent on the venue deposit, art work, website design, crafting and various other sundry. Unfortunately it won’t be possible to refund you the money you sponsored, instead we will hold your sponsorship spot (and any residual cash) for a 202X event.
Speakers
We feel that running a virtual event doesn’t really gel with the type of conference we love running. We want to see you in the meatspace, not via some Zoom session. Therefore if you can no longer make it to the con (due to travel, or new dates not working out) we won’t be looking for you to deliver your talk online. Save it up for next year, add to your research, take it to the next level and we’ll see you in 202X.
Why all these rules?
We have agreed on these rules to reduce the risk for all of us attending the con. We feel a lot better organising a con where we believe folks can be safe as can be while attending.
These rules were set by the crue, so if you want to talk about them talk to us or email us directly. Don’t take it out on our volunteers or staff, they are just doing their job and don’t need your sass.
We know y’all are a bunch of nonconformists who like to follow your own path - we hope by explaining why we are taking these measures you can understand why we are putting them in place. There is nothing stopping you from expressing yourself in other ways (wear your favourite boots, decorate your claws in whichever way you like, go hard on the eye shadow, cosplay as your favourite space cowboy).
Seriously though, the last thing the Crue want is for people to get COVID because they were at our con. We’re taking this pretty darn seriously, and hope that you are too. We’re feeling pretty āwangawanga about the pandemic. We want this to be safe, and we wouldn’t be holding the ‘con unless we felt we could make it safe enough for you (and us!)
Got a question?
Drop us an email at kiwicon@kiwicon.org. And, be kind? Running a con is already a hard gig, and we are doing the best we can to give the NZ community hackers their hacker holiday.