The Wellington conference was a great success and with over 270 attendees, it has been one of the larger NZILA conferences in recent years.

Proceedings 
We have had many inquires about proceedings from the conference.  The good news is that most speakers were captured using broadcast quality, digital video.  So this video information will form the proceedings for the conference.  Currently this AV information is still raw and unedited.  The plan is to edit them over time and release the video clips on the NZILA website under the members, CPD area for viewing.  This editing work takes time and will need to be authorised by the speakers.  So there will be a delay before any material is posted. NZILA Conference delegates will be notified once the first of these videos go live.  More speaker’s videos will be released as they are finished and approved. 

This will enable conference delegates to relive the speaker’s presentations or catch speakers they missed.  For the institute members who were unable to attend the conference, they will be able to gain CPD points by watching the videos of the speakers.

Photos from the conference can be seen here.
If you have photos from the conference that you are willing to share, please send to NZILA

Prizes winners
There were various prize draws as part of the conference.

Logic Street Furniture had sponsored the Nikon P900 camera and everyone who registered for the conference was eligible for this prize, Hugh Lusk was the lucky recipient.

The questionnaire competition 49 inch LED TV prize was won by Chris Davidson from Jasmax and the student prize, a UE Boom 2 Speaker was won by Christine Skipworth from Lincoln University.

Firth ran a small concrete project competition with two categories. The two winners were Mark Newdick and Adrian Taylor.  Adrian then proceeded to entertain the crowd with showing them something from out of space.

Small Urban - Putting it into Practice
The food for the field trips was provided by The Pomegranate Kitchen – they are a social enterprise that gives jobs opportunities to recent migrant women who are refugees.     

The meals left over on Friday, were donated to The Free Store which was founded in November 2010 after an art project inspired a group of friends.  Kim Paton, an artist from out of town, set up a regular-looking shop stocked with food on the shelves. The peculiar difference being that customers could simply take the food for free. The art project came and went within a matter of weeks but a group of Wellingtonians had their brains buzzing. After discovering that some of the food in this shop was surplus food sourced from local cafes they asked, what if this could be a sustainable food supply?

Today the Free Store ensures that our inner-city dwelling friends have access to quality food where cost isn't a barrier. No questions asked and no strings attached. Anyone is welcome to partake in the bounty. The Free Store is an inclusive space built on a foundation of mutual respect, generosity and friendship.  

Thanks
Running a conference requires a huge team effort and there are many people to thank.

First to you the conference delegates for without you there would be no conference.

Big thanks goes to Vicki Clague and Tracey Ower from the Executive team for all their support to the conference committee.

Di Menzies and Jan Woodhouse from the Landscape Foundation for sponsoring our Cultural Speakers.

Isthmus for hosting the conference committee meetings for the last year and sponsoring Marco Casagrande, the Key Note Speaker for the Wild Urban Plenary session.

Neil Challenger, Damien Powley, Di Menzies and the members of Te Tau a Nuku for guiding us through the cultural protocols.  Also to Lynette Tamarapa who has gifted us our beautiful waiata.

The selection of the conference speakers, were curated by Penny Allan and Martin Bryant.  Together they have made a large impact at the Victoria University, Landscape Architecture school and with a touch of sadness, we wish them both well in their future endeavours as they relocate to Sydney.

To the Embassy Theatre which was such an amazing venue and to the many craft beer venues on the Friday night. 

A special mention has to go out to AVS who captured the audio visuals at the conference.  They have donated the editing of the key note talk by Marco Casagrande.  As they were so captivated by his presentation.  In the words of Peter Stobbard – the most inspiring presentation he has seen in his 27  years working in AV.

A huge thank you to our sponsors who supported our conference, particularly Firth who came aboard early as the conference naming Sponsor and who have repeatedly supported the NZILA conferences. 

Please take the time to review all the companies who sponsored our profession’s conference. As their support meant we could significantly reduce the cost of the conference registration.

Aroha from the 2017 NZILA Conference Committee
Angela MacArthur, Andrew Gray, Emily Alleway, James Pattullo, Kurt Cole, Martin Bryant,    Penny Allan ,Rebecca Cray,  Sara Bell, Shona McCahon and Tessa MacPhail