… irony

I registered for a webinar – A virtual Town Meeting on the BC  Profession. As you can guess from the town meeting title this was a US organised thing. So that required getting up at 05:00 to attend a 1 hour seminar.

The irony is that due to technical problems the program was 30 minutes late getting started, no redundant hosting platform, but the supply chain (Citrix GoToMeeting) was able to assist and reboot their platform.

The seminar only ran for the remaining 30 minutes but is to be rescheduled if anybody wants to register for round 2. The date for reschedule has not been set.

Despite the gremlins it seems around 60 people joined in, there was no info supplied about locations or any demographics. The format was three speakers talking on some prepared topics and reacting to questions typed by attendees. The program was sponsored by Norwich University, who have a Masters Program running in BC. The speakers were John Orlando (Norwich), Michael Miora (Contingenz Corporation) and Jim Nelson (Business Continuity Services and Chairman of the Board ICOR). My main interest was to hear what Miora had to say, which was disappointing as I think he actually spoke the least.

Quick summary of what was said:

• Biggest change in the profession has come from the establishment of a “common body of knowledge”, via the standards and the credentialing bodies (Miora)
• Convergence (of EM, BC, DR, RM and related fields) discussed by Nelson. Hears a lot of talk about it, but little real adoption in organisations.
  • Made an excellent point – it does not matter what you call it, only that you do it – and do it properly via a structured program.
  • Use what is good, don’t worry about what part of the organisation it comes from
• There was the inevitable stuff about BC vs DR and the IT-centricity of many parts of the profession
• Some interesting comments about the recession and impact on BC
  • Clear evidence of cut-backs in use of consultants and lay-offs of internal BC staff
  • Those with wider responsibilities (e.g. BC and Security) have been able to survive more than those who do only BC.
  • Knock-on effect has been those with work have no time to network and contribute to professional development, those without work are lining up for additional training, certification and networking opportunities.
  • My personal view – this is not because management thinks there are less risks or threats out there. It is because the BC Programs probably represented little value to management.
    • Compliance-focussed, plan-centric, tick-box approaches generally are not going to survive the lean times (nor should they).
• Certification has become the baseline – everybody has it.
  • If you want to differentiate yourself you need something more – perhaps one of the Post-Graduate qualifications such as the one offered by Norwich.
  • This comment was made by Orlando, so may have been a plug for the sponsor, but was supposedly based on some industry recruiting research report (did not get citation)

I will post on the reschedule when it happens, assuming I get out of bed early enough.

How do you see the state of the BC profession?

Do you see the convergence of the various related disciplines in your organisation or clients?

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