Tim Eagle, OIC's Tim Way, Alex Petty and CCLS NZ president Adele Jefferies

In this, our 66th year, CCLS New Zealand returned to our biennial home Wellington for our 2024 conference. Our conferences are world-famous in New Zealand for excellent, evidence-based education, great social events and professional networking in a fun and relaxed atmosphere, and this year’s was no exception. The CCLS council would particularly like to thank all our speakers, sponsors and colleagues for sharing their time, their many clinical insights and a fair bit of laughter.

With our 2024 ‘Mix Tape’ theme, we wanted to provide a wide range of interesting conference topics, like dry eye and keratoconus, but also add some new hits, such as AI and red-light therapy. We were so pleased our international keynote speakers, David Kading and Professor William Power, could join us, together with Professors Jennifer Craig and James Wolffsohn and all our other amazing local speakers. We also wanted to bring back our popular workshops to help attendees mix and match this year’s excellent programme to really suit their needs – initial feedback indicates we hit the sweet spot.

Our sponsors are also a crucial part of the conference and this year they once again put on a brilliant trade show, providing a great way to reconnect with them and our colleagues and see what’s new. 

A special congratulations to our photo competition winners (see p26) and to Kerry Atkinson, who was the well-deserved recipient of a CCLS life membership (p28). At the CCLS AGM, we thanked retiring council member, optometrist Dr Samantha Simkin, who brought knowledge, drive and a fair bit of fun to the council for a number of years, and we welcomed new member Dr Hans Vellara to the team. 

It has been a big year for CCLS New Zealand which, in addition to our in-person conference, included the introduction of our 2024 webinar series; the launch of the ‘Find an Expert’ member directory on our website; the update of our searchable ‘CCLS Contact Lens Guide’ and ‘CCLS Contact Lens Care Guide’; and the incorporation of the Myopia Action Group into CCLS. We also added some public-facing myopia management content for members and the ‘CCLS Myopia Management Guide’, and we awarded another CCLS scholarship (see June’s issue of NZ Optics for more). As we move into our next year, members will see more of the same, including the launch of the ‘CCLS Dry Eye Guide’ to help you better support your dry eye patients.

CCLS is a team effort, from the council and members, current and past. As a society, it is a fantastic group of passionate and experienced eyecare practitioners from optometry, ophthalmology and research, who are keen to further their own and their colleagues’ education and push eyecare knowledge and the profession in New Zealand to all that it can be. It is an honour to be a part of it.

Adele Jefferies is the current president of the Cornea and Contact Lens Society (CCLS) of New Zealand and national clinical manager for Matthews Eyecare, where she mentors and oversees the clinical standards in 20 practices across New Zealand.