The journey to Harrogate for the CIPD Annual Conference

On Thursday 28th of August with just 19 days before the conference I get my booking form and look over the CIPD site to make my selection. As my primary interests are OD, Strategy and L&D I focus on topics, workshops and masterclasses that meet my needs.

The site is a little complex to navigate round, this is probably because there is a lot of data available and for me it was easier to print the pages and then look at the programme on hard copy (not good for the environment - but what I needed to do).

Having made my choices, I filled out the form, scanned it and emailed it to the event team that day. Could not have been easier.

Tues 2nd - I received notification that one of the session I wanted was not full - but being out of the office I did not get this till Wednesday. This was easy to resolve - I phoned up the event team and they told me what was available and the booking was complete. Less than half hour later I received my confirmation. With this confirmation come the hotel booking form, the CIPD block reserve many hotel rooms so I made the call to the third party accommodation company. The only rooms they had were at the Holiday Inn at £160 per night - a little extravagant seeing as there would be little time to use the facilities. Luckily I have a business account with another chain and they were able to book me a room for the 3 days. Harrogate is almost full to overflowing during this event!

Then later this afternoon I receive access to 'MyEvent' an on-line community for attendees of the conference... will have a look and see what it has to offer.

Morale of the story
If you want to attend this event - book your sessions and accommodation early - the event being this full can only mean one thing - it is not only popular - but valued.