- Wednesday, 15 Feb, 10:00am
Kawaiicon Orbital Status 2023
Hey hacker friends!
We will cut straight to it: The Kawaiicon crüe are taking a break. We don’t know when we will be back, and promise to shout to the Internet rooftops once we are. In the meantime, be excellent to each other.
The long of it is: Wowee what a wild last few years it was when it comes to running a con! Kawaiicon 2 was like trying to run a con on ‘ultra nightmare’ mode. It wasn’t easy, and we got there in the end with the help of an expanded shadow crüe and the support of our badass community.
We just don’t have enough in the tank for 2023. We are not quitting on you all; We love this community too much to do that. We all just have personal things that need the limited energy we have left. So we are taking a break, and trying to gather the energy again to put on the wild variety performance we call Kawaiicon. We’d much rather run a kick-ass con for you when we’re all fully charged and ready!
Until then: Hack some stuff, build cool things, create amazing things to share with your hacker pals and infosec community - and we hope to have a stage (and ) for you to stand on in the future.
<3 and \m/ always, sput and the Kawaiicon crüe
- Tuesday, 28 Jun, 9:00am
Kawaiicon 2 is go for launch this week!
Con week has arrived, HACKER!
Here is your pre-flight safety briefing containing useful ‘deets about our COVID plans, pre-registration, registration, merch, and more. But not much more.
COVID
We will be scanning and verifying vaccine passes, and verifying face mask exemption passes.
To avert a tsunami of emails asking the same question: You can get a vaccine pass if you are up-to-date on your vaccinations, have a temporary exemption (ex: you had COVID recently), or have a medical exemption. Read about it at here.
And ask MoH if you have questions. You probably want to sort this out before the con (and not while you are standing outside the venue huddled against the wind and rain).
Masks are required inside the venue (unless you have a govt ratified exemption) and there will be KF94 masks available if you want one (courtesy of Neko Ngeru Cafe!).
If you are not feeling well or were told to isolate, don’t come to the ‘con. Stay at home in your fluffy slippers, snuggle up in your fave blankie and watch the live stream. We will mail your merch to you.
Before The Con
Checklist:
- Current NZ vaccine pass
- Photo ID (for verifying your vaccine pass)
- Mask (or NZ face mask exemption pass)
- Your order ID numbers
If you don’t have an ID for any reason, please get in touch with us before the conference. We really don’t need to know who you are, just that your pass is legit, so we won’t be storing or scrutinising your deets beyond what you had to supply to buy your ticket.
Pre-Reg
Where: Downstairs at The Michael Fowler Centre (111 Wakefield Street)
When: Thursday 30th June - Between 12:00-16:00If you pre-ordered merch or want to skip the reg queue (A+ do recommend), come to pre-reg and get it done. You will need:
- Your name (surely you got this one covered)
- Your ticket order ID, which is INSERT ORDER ID HERE
- Any other order ID if you bought your merch separately
The Con
Where: The Michael Fowler Centre (111 Wakefield Street)
When: Friday 1st July and Saturday 2nd July - Doors open 8:00, the ‘con kicks off at 9:00Both reg pickup and vaccine pass/face mask exemption verifying will be downstairs. Once you have your wristband and badge, try to keep them visible to make our volunteers’ job easier.
Keep your mask on while inside the venue. If you need a break from mask wearing or you want to grab some food or drinks, you can head outside. There won’t be any cafes or bars open inside the venue this year - but there will be mee goreng, coffee and other comestibles in the food trucks just outside.
If you start feeling crook while you’re at the ‘con, pick up a RAT from the reg desk or the nearest pharmacy, you poor little incubator. Remember we are live streaming this year, so you can enjoy the talks from the comfort of your blanket fortress.
Merch
The merch desk is upstairs in the Renouf foyer and will open around midday on Friday. If you didn’t pick up your pre-ordered merch at pre-reg, you can get it here if you bring along your order ID.
If you didn’t pre-order merch, there will be limited cash sales of t-shirts available upstairs in the Renouf foyer (starting Friday afternoon). No hoodie sales, soz.
Other Con Things
Beyond the main ‘con, there are a few other things happening around the venue.
In the Renouf Foyer we have Hack And Learn (HAL) and locksport challenges going on. Event details are at here.
We have a quiet space upstairs in the Lion Harbourview Lounge if you want some timeout from all the people, or just wanna blob into a beanbag chair.
Most of the usual events are impossible to hold since we can’t fit all the attendees comfortably and safely. However, “The Andromeda Strain” will be screened on Friday night after the ‘con on the big screen if you want to hang back and have a chill night with us.
Code of Conduct & Behaviour
We remind you that Kawaiicon has a Code of Conduct, which you can see here.
Along with some FAQs here.
This applies to the ‘con, all associated events, and, we’d like to think, daily life: “don’t be an asshole”.
Please be excellent to the (very classy, very brass and glass) venue, staff, volunteers, Crüe, and each other.
More specifically, anyone who has to be constantly reminded to wear their mask or is giving our volunteers a hard time will be kicked out.
Comms
We won’t have schedule booklets in effort to save some trees, so you can find the schedule here.
We’ll be relying on Twitter for immediate comms during the event, as getting to our hacker-proof website-CMS on the road is hard! Follow @kawaiiconNZ on Twitter for the latest.
See you soon, hackerdoodles!
The Kawaiicon Crüe
kiwicon@kiwicon.org
https://kawaiicon.org/ - Tuesday, 24 May, 4:30pm
Vaccine Pass Update from NZ Govt
We have a vaccine pass update for you all!
The NZ government recently announced new vaccine passes, and along with it they have updated the requirements. tl;dr: for those over 18, two doses plus a booster will be required to get a pass.
As a handy refresher - here is what you’ll need to enter the con:
- A current NZ Vaccine Pass. You can get this through My Covid Record or here for intl. travellers.
- We aren’t accepting expired passes, sorry :(
- The new vaccine pass system also allows for people to get temporary passes and passes if you have a medical exemption. Take a read about how to get a vaccine pass here (and please stop emailing us your medical history or hot takes on vaccinations).
- A photo ID that matches the pass.
- If you don’t have an ID for whatever reason please get in touch and let us know and we’ll work something else out.
- To be wearing a mask.
- People with mask exemptions will get a special wristband (see the recent announcement on exemption cards)
- Your ticket order number.
And if you’re travelling from overseas here some important things to do before you board your flight:
- Make sure you’re allowed to travel to New Zealand.
- Complete the NZ Traveller Declaration.
- Send proof of your overseas vaccinations to get an NZ Vaccine Pass.
- The NZ Vaccine Pass scanning app only accepts and can only validate the NZ Vaccine Pass. Other vaccine passes such as the IATA pass, Australian State passes, etc will not be accepted.
You’ve got 28 days to fill in your traveller declaration before you fly, so it is a good idea to complete that and get an NZ Vaccine Pass a couple of weeks before you go (。•̀ᴗ-)✧
And finally - “A virus doesn’t care about your risk register”, so we are trying to put mitigating controls in place & not just “put it on the risk register”™. These protections are not up for debate. We don’t wanna kick anyone out of the con (▰˘︹˘▰) so please do the needful and follow the rules.
If you have any further questions please see our covid plan or get in touch.
TTFN (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*
- A current NZ Vaccine Pass. You can get this through My Covid Record or here for intl. travellers.
- Sunday, 08 May, 8:00pm
Call For Volunteers,Ticket Sales Closed
Firstly Kawaiicon would not be the same without our amazing volunteers! Whether you are keen to help with just pack in / pack out, a consummate talker willing to be one of our COVID marshals, a general dogsbody willing to help out however you can, or one of the registration and merch desk teams helping the assembled badarses, WE WANT YOU., you awesome badarse you!
The Kawaiicon cookbook SALT HASH AC1D HEAP is still available in limited stock and is looking super awesome! It features sweet (and savoury!) recipes from multiple chefs written to match your haxx0r sensibilities - get one today as they might not be available at the con!
All other ticket and merch sales are closed to all but the lucky few with a code provided by your benevolent corporate overlords.
- Friday, 15 Apr, 11:59am
Ticket sales now open
Ticket sales are now open. Visit The Kawaiicon Procurement Office and Shopping Barrow Dept to shovel in some tickets, merchandise and maybe the long-awaited Kawaiicon Cookbook! We’ve got more waves coming so don’t worry if you miss out in this wave, or if your preferred ticket option (waged / unwaged) is sold out.
CAPCOM GO!
Be sure to review our COVID policy before you commit to buying! Things aren’t going to be the same.
- Wednesday, 26 Jan, 11:00am
New Dates for Kawaiicon 2
Today some good news, we have confirmed dates for Kawaiicon II, Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd of July 2022!
Assuming we are in traffic light orange or green, the conference will go ahead as planned on the new dates. We are currently working on our updated Covid policy which will also be released soon.
Stay tuned for further updates.
- Wednesday, 06 Oct, 11:00am
Postponing Kawaiicon 2
Hey hacker friends,
We are postponing Kawaiicon 2.
The short version is: We only want to run an in-person con, and right now it just isn’t safe for us to run it on November 12-13 2021.
We are going to postpone until mid-2022, and will share the dates as soon as we get them locked in.
In the meantime: get freaking vaccinated, and talk to your friends and family about getting vaccinated too.
The longggggg version is: We didn’t think it would be a Kawaiicon if people didn’t get to hang out with each other and talk shit and all that stuff when you’re not attending our awesome talks. Logistics are a pain in our collective asses every year and the plague has just made stuff worse (if you want things in time for Christmas, order them now!) and we’re gonna rant about them below in a wall of text most of you won’t read but wow did it feel cathartic to write:
Things we took into consideration in making this decision:
- Venue: Kawaiicon needs the 3rd largest venue in Wellington (just behind the cake tin and TSB arena). Finding a date that works is hard as heck, as it’s often booked well over a year in advance. We go through a lot of logistics, venue planning, and health & safety with the venue managers (which was already a bit to deal with pre-2020 - the tesla coil in 2019 alone required about 3 site visits and somewhat-hilarious risk assessment sign offs. Post the plague, H&S requires even more work and insurance cover). We hand over a hefty sum to Wellington Venues for the venue (did we mention we love our sponsors?), and cancellation fees are painful if we postpone out to a year.
- AV: The performing arts show we put on is supported by the most amazing AV crüe and an external AV company (who are very good sports about the terrible things that we make them do, and who we really don’t want to screw over). While the antics we put on are often dreamt up as part of the pre-con nightmares we have in the week leading into the con, everything else takes at least 2 months of planning to make sure we have the right equipment in the right place at the right time, and that everything is ready to get rigged the day before (or the day of if you lose your pack-in date to hecking Bill Murray shakes fist).
- Physical stuff: We always aim to have stuff like t-shirts, hoodies, lanyards, badges, stickers, etc made in New Zealand. Buying local is important! Not only is shipping within NZ a bit delayed because of recent lockdowns, but the global supply chains have also been disrupted. Each of the vendors we use for our merch had about an additional 2-week delay on getting our stuff made and shipped - which means we would have to order stuff 6 weeks out, when we don’t know if we’d even be able to have the ‘con. Our usual 4-week sprint to get things physically made pre-con would be extended by half as much again(plus the added factor of unsure travel plans and last minute changes).
- Speakers and hallway con events: When we plan to have other events running at the con (like our beloved Kuracon, CTF, etc), we usually get these pre-planned a few months out (before regret and event planning stress/memories kick in). We’re an international con these days, and as much as we hate to admit it we love our Aussie hacker friends. We tried to hold speaker announcements and CFP open for as long as we possibly could to just wait and see what was happening. It was pretty sad to cross off so many amazeballs submissions from our mates overseas.
- The crüe’s pity party: Yeah, we are the gluttons for punishment who keep volunteering to do this year after year, so perhaps we deserve little sympathy. But we are just that: volunteers. We have jobs, families, and are also coping (or, tbh, not-coping) with all the not-fun-times that are going on. We all unanimously agreed that we are always going to be an in-person con, and we have been trying to roll with the changes as best we can while also juggling a bunch of other stuff.
Our original date for our go/no-go announcement was 29 October and it required all of NZ to be in alert level 1; this does not look likely given the current situation in New Zealand. When you consider all of that stuff above - well, it puts us between a rock and a hard place. If we forge ahead, we risk spending sponsor money only to find the con might get postponed or cancelled further along.
By delaying the conference, we can extend our (very) tight timeline and attendees won’t turn up to something that the Crue is sulking about because it should’ve been better. We don’t have to stress you all out with last minute ticket sales and travel plans all while things still feel really uncertain.
If you have already booked travel / leave or other things in anticipation for the con, we sincerely apologise. This really sucks. Part of the reason we’re making this decision now is to avoid upsetting more people if things were to get delayed or cancelled this year. Hopefully you can either use that travel & leave for other things or get refunds.
Our first and highest priority is to keep our community safe, and the second priority is putting on a real kickass con.
This extra time gives the opportunity for folks to get fully vaccinated before the con, and for the rest of NZ to come out of lockdown. We also expect (hope) changes to travel restrictions next year, and this will be a big deal to some of our community who live internationally and might even mean we get to see more of your faces. Yay!
You will have to give us some time to explore all our options and get some plans locked in, but the con will probably run mid-next year (2022) if we win the cage match against the other penciled-in events. This is different to what we have done before, but! it means we can do all the things we need, to the high quality y’all love and enjoy, while also avoiding some painful cancellation fees (like the down payment on the only compatible venue).
While we are blabbering away on this long winded post - we shouldn’t miss the chance to say thanks to a few folks:
- Sponsors - You gave us cash to run a con (which is one of the more stressful things to worry about when running an event of this size) and we really appreciate it. Heck, a lot of you can’t even make it in NZ right now and you still sponsored. That is freaking awesome, and we appreciate the support.
- Speakers and CFP subbers - You have all been so patient which is honestly a huge help when we are running around like mad stressing about everything else. Our speakers have also been so lovely to work with, and flexible to us being unsure of what the state of the play was going to be. We appreciate you all too!
- All of the heckin’ lot of you - All the kind emails, IRC/Signal/Slack messages, in-person headpats of condolences (only at level one) - they all mean a lot. Y’all have been so supportive, and we really can’t wait to put on a con for you and see you in person!
So, yeah. It sucks, but the con will happen - just when it is safe. So stay tuned (and get freaking vaccinated g’dammit).
<3 and \m/ Kawaiicon crüe
- Saturday, 05 Jun, 11:33am
Oh Hai
|ω・)
Oh! Hai!
The Kiwicon crüe is back!