ArduPilot Conference 2020 - Postponed to 2021

Based on the growing risk and expected development of the coronavirus over the next few weeks and on medical advice we’ve decided to cancel the face to face portion of the ArduPilot Developer conference for March 2020 and will instead be holding the talks online, using zoom video conferencing.  The 2021 conference will be held at the same location (the Hotel Kurrajong) from 9th to 11th April 2021.

We didn’t take this decision lightly and know that this will be a big disappointment to many people. The annual developer meetup is the highlight of the year for many people (certainly for the core developers).

Online Conference

Like many other conferences that have made the same decision to cancel the face to face meeting we will be holding the talks online. This also offers us the ability to have many people to attend virtually. The draft schedule is available now. We will be announcing the meeting IDs soon, so those attending remotely can fit the conference talks into their schedule.

To facilitate people in varying time zones we will arrange the conference talks so that they are spread across a range of time zones. Some talks will be in Australian morning time and some in Australian evening time. The times for each talk will be chosen to align with the speaker's own timezone to ensure their talk is at a time they are comfortable with.

We will also hold the next two weekly development team meetings (the ones on Monday evening US time, Tuesday morning Australian time) on zoom, to allow for two practice meetings to ensure that we have the system running nicely before the main conference.

Cancellation Costs

The hotel has offered us generous terms for cancellation. For the main venue costs the hotel has offered us the ability to cancel with a 25% penalty if we book the same hotel for the conference in 2021. Note that per the contract we would normally lose 100% of the event cost (approx US$6k).

For those who booked at the Hotel Kurrajong using the ArduPilot booking code the hotel has offered to refund 100% of your booking. For those who didn’t book with the ArduPilot code you will need to contact the hotel to negotiate cancellation. Contacting them quickly is likely to result in a better refund.

The hotel phone number is +61 2 6234 4444. The person arranging the cancellations at the hotel is Jove.

Travel Costs

For those whose travel costs were partially funded by ArduPilot we ask that you immediately start the process of cancelling your travel arrangements and recouping any costs you can. The ArduPilot project will honour any commitments that have already been made on paying for travel costs that cannot be recouped.

Please contact the funding committee funding@ardupilot.org for any questions.

As we are planning to hold the conference in Canberra in March 2021 you should also see if you can defer your ticket for a year if you cannot cancel it. Please ask the airline if that is possible.