Monthly Meeting May 2020

The main event for the May monthly meeting will be a panel discussion on the topic “Society after Corona”. We will be exploring how society may change permanently as a result of the pandemic. Will working from home become the new normal? How will our value systems change? Could it be the beginning of the end for some traditional political and economic systems? Will we become a more caring society? Will there be deep and profound socioeconomic changes, or will we revert inexorably back to business as usual?

We have a panel of notable experts in relevant domains (in order of acceptance of our invitation).

Dr Anthony Richardson, RMIT. His special area of interest is the impact on society of major disruptive events like earthquakes, bush fires and, yes, pandemics.

Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn AO (Retd.), former Air Force deputy chief. Infrastructure and supply chain security.

Shaun Whitaker is a very senior member of a major corporation, concerned with IT systems resilience in banking and similar industries.

Jessica Macpherson, OAM. Founder and CEO of the charity St Kilda Mums.

James Jansson, PhD, founder of The Science Party, social/moral philosopher an expert on computer modelling of epidemics.

Members are encouraged to submit written questions in advance. They can be directed at nominated panellists or open-ended. Instructions for submitting questions will be circulated separately. We are unfortunately unable to handle real-time questions with our small crew.

The discussion is expected to take an hour or more. There will then be a short break. When we resume we will have a brief report from our president David Stonier-Gibson, and then the customary What’s New segment from George Skarbek.

The meeting will be streamed live to members at https://melcc.org.au/streaming on Wednesday 6^th May, at 7 pm. The stream will be started approximately 30 minutes before.

Please remember: We are all learning how to use this technology.