In the light of the Covid-19 crisis we have decided to cancel the 2020 Complexity and Management Conference as a face-to-face event. This is partly due to the fact that on current trends the pandemic will be at its peak in the UK in May/June, and probably across Europe too, and partly because the uncertainty has already begun to affect the numbers of people booking. Every year probably 50% of our delegates come from overseas, and a good proportion of UK delegates and overseas delegates are consultants who are preparing to lose almost all of their business over the coming period. I have had a number of people write to me on the one hand expressing their desire to come to the conference, yet on the other acknowledging that they cannot commit the resources to doing so given how much they are going to have to retrench.

We do intend to hold at least a one-day event online – we think it is important to do something in response to the new times we all face. The conference is, after all, supposed to be about the idea of collaboration, which is something to think about whether we meet face to face or not. And we are a research community interested in making sense of the experience of acting in conditions of uncertainty. For these reasons we need to respond in some way by finding alternative opportunities for making meaning from what we are all going through, the complex responsive processes of acting into this particular set of unpredictable circumstances.

We are investigating how we might host online discussions and other inputs. We are also thinking about whether we can offer the one-day workshops planned for the Friday as online events.

So if you are still interested in participating, please don’t fill up your diaries with anything else, at least for the Friday (if you have signed up for the workshops) and Saturday.

I have written to those of you who have already signed up for the event letting you know that I have triggered a refund from the university.

I will write to you soon with our ideas for hosting an online event, or series of events.