This is practically the last newsletter before the World Building Congress 2022. I am delighted that registrations continue to grow, and with less than 2 weeks to go we have over 540 registrations with about half attending in person, so I am confident that we will do justice to all the efforts of the local organising team at RMIT led by Ron Wakefield and Erin Mellencamp, who have lined up a great event.
To repeat my newsletter message of a month ago, over four days we will have ten parallel streams, over 400 papers, 9 keynote speakers, special sessions for students and early career researchers, and a formal dinner at Melbourne Town Hall. Only the welcome reception and formal dinner will not be streamed live, all other sessions will be available live and for download soon afterwards for those not able to attend in person. For a taster of what to expect you can see most of our keynote speakers in conversation with myself on the website, they all demonstrate that we can expect some great plenary sessions.
A final reminder to all those who submitted papers that your papers need to be formatted to the requirements of our Proceedings publisher IOP, this is now urgent and will mean that WBC2022 will be the first World Building Congress whose proceedings are published with Scopus indexing. Michael Behm can provide you with any last-minute information that you may be lacking, but unfortunately we cannot assist with the formatting itself so authors need to take care of this please.
Members’ Lead Representatives should also remember that the General Assembly of the CIB takes place during the Congress, at 08:00 local time on June 29th. Online participation will also be possible, and the time zone should not be too bad for those in Europe and the USA in particular, so watch out for the registration details. All Lead Representatives of CIB Members received the formal notice in March, and by the time you read this the deadline for extra nominations for the new Board has passed, so the proposed Officers and Board members for 2022-2025 are as per the Board Advice Note which was issued in March. Please note the annual accounts and the report of the Committee of Examination have now been finalised, these will be available in the next few days on the dedicated members-only page for the General Assembly. And don’t forget that you can register your apologies and appoint a proxy if you are unable to attend in person.
I imagine we will have a special newsletter just before the start of WBC2022, but by that time many of us will have arrived in Melbourne. I look forward to seeing everyone and to meeting so many people for the first time in person after two years of online meetings. See you soon!
Don Ward, CEO, CIB
