… a long day

Today will run for about 27 hours as I fly west to attend the BCI’s World Conference in London. While London is familiar, I lived there for 18 months, this conference is new.

I have been fortunate to have attended, and presented at, a number of the world’s leading BC conferences – so looking forward to seeing how this one compares with the others.

Attending these events is a major commitment for people, not in terms of registration fees but in travel time from my part of the world – and the income you don’t earn. At least the travelling itself is not that uncomfortable.

The interesting number here is that I will spend more time travelling to get to/from this event than I will spend at the event. A two-day conference is a little short, I would prefer more time dedicated to the conference and interacting with other practitioners – but we do have to limit theses things so there is plenty of time of time for the pre and post conference training courses.

In this case training that is available all over the world, and online. Surely a little more time dedicated to the people who have come together to meet and converse would be better?

I will also be keen to see how Social Media is addressed at the conference. I don’t mean if it is going to be talked about – I am keen to see if it is actually used, and used appropriately. Please note vendors I am not talking about the inevitable commercials – I am just hoping there will be some content intermingled with the commercials.

At the Australasian BC Summit in Sydney earlier this year I observed that social media use was non-existent – and perhaps that had something to do with the age of the audience. Hopefully BC is a young persons game in the UK!

This is one of those things we talk about, and insist needs to be added to our toolset for response plans and crisis communication – yet we struggle to actually understand what it is and how to use it as a normal operational tool.

Any readers attending? Post a comment and it would be great to catch up.