The NATA MSA Conference 2020 was held from the 3rd to the 5th of March. One week later it would never have happened and that would have been a lost opportunity for our metrology community.

As COVID-19 started to escalate in Asia and Europe, some overseas speakers and delegates had to cancel. For those 120 of us lucky to attend we were treated to an awesome event.

Staged at the Angliss Conference Centre in the centre of Melbourne, the organising committee chose an open format. The sponsors’ exhibitions were placed around the edges of the presentation room so that delegates could engage with our sponsors during every break. Angliss were wonderful hosts and the presentations and indeed the entire event ran very smoothly.

There were 40 presentations comprising of invited speakers, scientific presentations and workshops. A wide variety of topics were covered and there were multiple opportunities to learn and engage with the presenters. The presentations will be uploaded to the website soon so that members can take a look at what was on offer.  It never ceases to astound me how forthcoming our community is and how great we are at sharing our knowledge.

MSA 2020 had a record number of sponsorship support and we cannot thank our sponsors enough for their commitment to this biennial event.  Viewing the room during the breaks and social occasions you could see clusters of people gathered around different sponsors’ stands drooling at the fabulous equipment on offer and learning from the technical experts manning each stand. NATA was the platinum and naming sponsor while Wika sponsored the conference dinner and Fluke were lanyard sponsors.  

I have always said, if you can come away from an MSA conference having met one new contact and learnt one key technical fact that will assist your business, then you have achieved a return on your investment. Again MSA 2020 delivered on this. Not only, technically did it deliver but the social networking events were excellent – you learn so much just chatting to people about how they do stuff and ‘word of mouth recommendations’ are always gold for any lab or business. The conference dinner at the MCG was particularly outstanding as were the drinks and canape events on Monday and Wednesday evenings.

The NATA MSA 2020 will be a hard act to follow but the NZ organising committee for 2022 are up for the challenge, watch this space – Roll on MSA 2022!

Anne Evans
Exec Committee

We now have uploaded the photo gallery and a fantastic conference video from MSA2020 to the event page .  Coming soon will be some of the presentations that have been made available.