At the moment, the Efofex team is in a not so sunny Vancouver as we prepare to attend the British Columbia Association of Mathematics Teachers’ annual conference on Friday. We will be there, in our Efofex jackets, so if you are attending the conference please come and say hello.

We also planned to attend the biannual NZAMT conference in Christchurch. We booked flights and accommodation and proposed two sessions to the conference organisers. We have attended many times in the past and didn’t anticipate any issues. Alas, it was not to be.

Even though our main session was going to be (as always) “How to get the most out of FX Draw”, our sessions were deemed to be commercial and were not permitted unless we were “Gold Sponsors”. Efofex will never be big enough to be a gold sponsor so we have been effectively prevented from offering New Zealand customers support.

We have certainly been to conferences in the past where a major sponsor has been subjected to “ambush marketing” by a competitor who doesn’t pay any money but offers lots of sessions. We understand why a company like Casio would insist on this condition when sponsoring a conference. Having said that, we feel like we are collateral damage in a fight between multi-national companies and, in the end, it is teachers who miss out. We hope that our New Zealand customers quietly suggest to their association that this particular rule be implemented with a little more nuance!