Terms and Conditions of Participation

Headings are for convenience only. Words such as “including” do not limit the generality of what precedes them. A reference to a law includes that law as amended or replaced.

No signature, acceptance box, written confirmation or other formality is required. The conduct described in clause 2.1 constitutes your agreement to these Terms, including for the purposes of Part 4 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017. Where you also tick an acceptance box or make a payment, that is additional confirmation of your agreement.

If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not submit any contribution to, register for or take part in any Edition or GDI-related event. Withdrawing after acceptance does not undo your acceptance of the provisions that survive under clause 22.6.

If you submit, register or pay on behalf of another person, your co-authors or an organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these Terms on their behalf and that you have brought these Terms to their attention. Each co-author named in a submission is taken to have accepted these Terms.

These Terms incorporate the Publication Policy, the Cancellation, Refund and Substitution Policy, the Privacy Notice, the Recording and Photography Policy, the Code of Conduct and, where relevant, the Sponsorship and Exhibition Terms and the Awards Terms, each as published on the Website. If there is any inconsistency, these Terms prevail unless the other document expressly states otherwise.

These Terms apply to every Edition of the Series, including GDI 2025, and to every contribution submitted and every form of participation in connection with it, together with any terms published for that Edition at the time. To the extent of any inconsistency between them, these Terms prevail, except where the law requires otherwise.

Each Edition is organised and contracted by the Organiser. Your contract is with the Organiser alone.

The Founders, chairs, committee members, stream leaders, reviewers, session chairs, judges and volunteers act in a representative, academic or honorary capacity on behalf of the Organiser. None of them is a party to your contract, gives any personal undertaking to you, or owes you any personal duty, fiduciary or otherwise, in connection with an Edition.

You agree that you will not bring, and you waive, any claim against any GDI Person other than the Organiser in their personal capacity in connection with an Edition, the Series, any review or editorial decision, any publication outcome or these Terms, except where the claim arises from that person’s fraud or wilful misconduct.

For the purposes of subpart 1 of Part 2 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017, clauses 3, 7, 8, 13 and 15 are intended to confer a benefit on, and are enforceable by, each GDI Person. The Organiser and you may vary or terminate these Terms without the consent of any GDI Person.

Registration is personal to the named delegate. Each registration covers one delegate and, for an author registration, the presentation of one accepted paper in the programme. Authors presenting more than one paper must register once for each paper or purchase an additional article registration where offered.

A registration is confirmed only when the Organiser has received full payment and issued written confirmation. The Organiser may decline or cancel any registration at its discretion, including where required by law, in which case any Fees received for that registration will be refunded in full and the Organiser will have no further liability.

Concessionary rates, including student, early-bird, industry and group rates, apply only to eligible Participants who meet the published conditions. The Organiser may request evidence of eligibility at any time and may charge the difference to the applicable full rate where eligibility is not shown.

Inclusions vary by registration category and format and are as stated on the registration page for the relevant Edition. Nothing is included unless it is stated.

Fees are payable in full at the time of registration or by the due date on the invoice, in the currency stated for the Edition, and are inclusive of any goods and services tax where stated. Bank charges, card surcharges and currency conversion costs are payable by you.

The Organiser may withhold or cancel access, programming, certificates and the forwarding of any paper for publication until Fees are paid in full.

If you dispute a payment with your bank or card issuer without first raising it with the Organiser under these Terms, the Organiser may suspend your registration and any associated paper until the dispute is resolved, and may recover from you any amount reversed together with reasonable costs of recovery.

You indemnify each GDI Person against any loss, liability, cost or expense, including reasonable legal costs, arising from any claim that a Submission breaches any warranty in clause 6.1.

Accepted papers must be presented in the allocated session, live or through an approved recorded presentation. The Organiser may remove from the programme, and decline to forward for publication, any paper whose authors have not registered and paid by the author registration deadline or that is not presented.

Views expressed in any Submission, presentation or discussion are those of the presenters. They are not endorsed by, and do not represent the views of, the Organiser or any GDI Person.

Acceptance, rejection, allocation to sessions, nomination for awards, special issues or edited books, and all other academic and editorial decisions are made by the relevant committees in the exercise of academic judgement. These decisions are final, subject only to the appeals process published in the Publication Ethics policy.

No GDI Person is liable to you for the content or outcome of any review or editorial decision.

Presentation at an Edition and publication in proceedings, journals or books are separate. Your Fees pay for participation in the Edition. They do not purchase publication.

Proceedings, journal special issues and edited books are published by independent Publishers. Each Publisher applies its own scope, eligibility, quality, ethics and production requirements, may change those requirements at any time, and makes its own final and independent decision on every paper. The Organiser forwards eligible accepted papers for the Publisher’s consideration but does not control, and cannot direct, override, appeal or guarantee, any Publisher’s decision or timetable.

The Organiser does not warrant or represent that any paper will be published by any particular Publisher, in any particular form, within any particular time, or at all.

Where a Publisher declines a paper, or declines to proceed with a volume, the Organiser may, in its discretion and without obligation, consider that paper for publication through an alternative outlet in accordance with the Publication Policy. Any alternative outlet will have its own requirements and decisions, and is not guaranteed.

The Organiser makes no representation or warranty that any proceedings, volume, journal, book or other outlet is or will be indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar or any other database, or will hold any ranking, impact factor or status. Indexing and ranking decisions are made solely by third parties. Any reference on the Website to a Publisher or outlet is not a representation about indexing.

A Publisher’s decision not to publish a paper, a change in a Publisher’s requirements, a delay in publication, the publication of a paper through an alternative outlet, or the indexing status of any outlet does not entitle you to any refund, credit, compensation or other remedy against the Organiser or any GDI Person.

The Organiser may change the programme, speakers, session times, rooms, venue, platform, catering and other arrangements of an Edition at any time. Such changes do not entitle you to any refund or compensation.

The Organiser may change the format of an Edition, or any part of it, from in person to online or hybrid, or the reverse, where it considers this necessary or desirable for reasons including safety, cost, travel conditions, geopolitical circumstances or equitable access. Where it does so, your registration transfers to the new format and the Organiser will refund the difference, if any, between the Fees paid and the published Fees for the equivalent category in the new format. You will have no other remedy.

The Organiser may postpone an Edition. Your registration will remain valid for the rescheduled dates. If you cannot attend the rescheduled dates, you may cancel under the Cancellation, Refund and Substitution Policy as if your cancellation had been received on the date the postponement was announced.

If the Organiser cancels an Edition outright for reasons within its reasonable control, it will refund the Fees paid for that Edition. That refund is your sole and exclusive remedy.

The Organiser is not liable for any failure or delay in performing its obligations, or for any change, postponement, curtailment or cancellation of an Edition, caused by events beyond its reasonable control. These include natural disaster, severe weather, fire, flood, earthquake, epidemic or pandemic, public health orders, war, terrorism, civil unrest, government action, sanctions, travel restrictions, industrial action, failure of a venue, supplier, utility, telecommunications network or online platform, cyber attack, or the withdrawal of a Publisher, partner or sponsor.

In those circumstances the Organiser will use reasonable endeavours to offer a change of format or a postponement. Where neither is practicable and the Edition is cancelled, the Organiser will refund the Fees paid less a pro rata share of costs already irrecoverably incurred, and will have no further liability.

For online sessions, you are responsible for your own equipment, software, internet connection and time zone. The Organiser does not warrant that any online platform, stream or recording will be uninterrupted, error free or available in your location.

Technical difficulties on your side, or temporary interruptions on the platform, do not entitle you to a refund. Where a significant part of the programme cannot be delivered because of a platform failure attributable to the Organiser, the Organiser may, at its option, reschedule the affected sessions or make recordings available, which will be your sole remedy.

You are responsible for your own visas, travel, accommodation, insurance, health and personal property. A letter confirming registration is not an invitation of sponsorship and creates no obligation on the Organiser. The Organiser is not responsible for the outcome of any visa application.

You must comply with the Code of Conduct, the instructions of the Organiser and venue staff, and all venue rules and applicable laws. The Organiser may remove or exclude any Participant who breaches them, from the current and future Editions, without refund.

You are strongly advised to hold comprehensive travel and cancellation insurance.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Organiser and the GDI Persons exclude all warranties, conditions, guarantees and representations, whether express or implied by statute, custom or otherwise, other than those expressly set out in these Terms.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither the Organiser nor any GDI Person is liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), equity, under statute or otherwise, for any indirect, special or consequential loss, or for any loss of profit, revenue, opportunity, publication, citation, promotion, funding, reputation, data, travel or accommodation costs, or time, arising in connection with an Edition, the Series or these Terms.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the total aggregate liability of the Organiser and all GDI Persons to you in connection with an Edition, the Series and these Terms, however arising, is limited to the Fees you actually paid to the Organiser for the Edition giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud.

If you register, submit or sponsor for the purposes of a business, including on behalf of a university, employer or other organisation, you agree that the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 does not apply, and that, to the extent permitted by section 5D of the Fair Trading Act 1986, sections 9, 12A, 13 and 14(1) of that Act do not apply. You agree that it is fair and reasonable for the parties to be bound by this clause.

If you are a consumer under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, nothing in these Terms limits any right you have under that Act that cannot be excluded.

You indemnify the Organiser and each GDI Person against any loss, liability, damage, cost or expense, including reasonable legal costs, arising from your breach of these Terms, your negligent or unlawful act or omission, your Submission, or any claim by a person you registered or paid for.

To the extent permitted by law, you release the Organiser and each GDI Person from all claims you may have in connection with publication outcomes, Publisher decisions, indexing, changes of format or programme, and the matters described in clauses 8, 9 and 10.

You retain copyright in your Submission, subject to any agreement you sign with a Publisher.

You grant the Organiser a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual licence to reproduce and communicate the title, abstract, author names and affiliations of your Submission in the programme, on the Website, on the conference platform, in promotional material and in the archive of the Series; to play, stream and record your presentation during the Edition; and to make recordings available to registered Participants for a reasonable period after it.

You consent to being photographed, filmed and recorded at Editions, and to the use of those images and recordings to report on the Series and promote future Editions, as described in the Recording and Photography Policy. You may opt out in the manner described in that policy.

The names, logos and branding of the Series, including GDI and DigiBUILT, belong to the Series and may not be used to imply endorsement or affiliation without written permission.

If a dispute arises in connection with these Terms or an Edition, you must first notify the Organiser in writing at the conference email address for the Edition, setting out the nature of the dispute and the outcome you seek.

The parties will attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute within 20 business days of the notice. If it is not resolved, either party may refer it to mediation in Auckland administered by Resolution Institute, with the costs of the mediator shared equally. Neither party may commence court proceedings until the mediation has concluded, except to seek urgent interlocutory relief.

To the extent permitted by law, any claim against the Organiser in connection with an Edition must be notified under clause 20.1 within six months after the last day of that Edition, failing which it is waived.

These Terms, and any dispute arising in connection with them or with an Edition, are governed by the laws of New Zealand. Subject to clause 20, the parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand.

Where the Website identifies a different Organiser and governing law for a particular Edition, that identification applies to that Edition.

These Terms, together with the documents incorporated in clause 2.5 and any written confirmation issued by the Organiser, form the entire agreement between you and the Organiser and supersede all prior statements, correspondence and representations, including any statement on a previous website for an Edition.

The Organiser may amend these Terms from time to time by publishing the amended version on the Website. The version in force when you accept these Terms applies to that acceptance, except that amendments required by law, or by a change in a Publisher’s requirements, apply from publication.

If any provision of these Terms is invalid or unenforceable, it is to be read down to the extent necessary, or severed, and the remaining provisions continue in full force.

A failure or delay by the Organiser in exercising any right is not a waiver of it. You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms except as permitted by the substitution provisions. The Organiser may assign its rights and obligations to a successor organiser of the relevant Edition.

Notices to you may be given by email to the address you provided. Notices to the Organiser must be given by email to the conference address of the relevant Edition.

Clauses 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 13 to 16, 20, 21 and this clause survive the end of any Edition and any termination of these Terms.

These Terms are written in English. Any translation is for convenience only and the English version prevails.