CIPD annual conference 2009 - Manchester

As this years CIPD annual conference and exhibition gets closer - have you booked yet?

This is the first year that the CIPD is moving its conference from Harrogate to Manchester on the 17-19 November. It will be interesting to see how this move works. certainly moving from Harrogate - when it was the only conference in town, to Manchester where there will be other events on at the same time will be a cultural change for the event in many ways.

In days gone by, the CIPD 'main event' was surrounded by a number of unofficial fringe events - will the move to Manchester spark that same level of entrepreneurship?

Are you planning to go?

If you are into twitter check out hash-code #cipd09

#HRD09 are you going

HRD 2009 is nearing, while this year I will not be able to attend the whole conference I will be attending the exhibition.

What are you going for? what are you hoping to achieve?

Learning Technologies 2009

Are you going to this learning based conference and exhibition?

Mike will be blogging from here at http://rapidbi.wordpress.com/ see you there.

World of Learning conference and exhibition

If you enjoyed the reviews on the CIPD annual conference then read Mike's blog from the World of learning conference and exhibition 2008 at the NEC.

CPD for CIPD members and conference delegates

My main reason for attending the conference was my own CPD and this blog is forming a part of my PDP and record.

What did you learn at the conference? or what have you learnt from this blog or from articles about sessions from the conference.

Key learning

Key learning for me was that many of the speakers were highlighting the importance of engagement of employees (both current and future) to the culture of the organisation, rather than the traditional corporate approach of competence recruitment. This is particularly interesting as the six years I spent working with SME's I noticed that many entrepreneurial owner managers recruit to 'fit', in the company rather than skills as the priority. They would prefer to recruit to culture and attitude and then to train in-house. Although many did not recognise this as training. This has interesting implications for governmental initiatives like train to gain, as these are skill, qualification or competence based programmes

Press reports on the CIPD annual conference

It has been a few days now and time to reflect. One of the interesting things is the diversity and level of coverage the annual conference gets.

A round up
I thought that we were setting a new pace in blogging but Personnel Today did something unexpected - they transcribed the keynote sessions for example Jackie Orme keynote and Surviving and thriving through turbulence . These are useful transcriptions for the keynote sessions.

People Managements site offers us Keep cool and talk during tough times

John Philpot on the CIPD site blog - a scant entry as part of his overall offer.

On TrainingZone Annie Hayes provided an overview of the event.


It will be interesting to see the articles that arise in the coming weeks from the conference content.

Earlier press coverage
Earlier in the year the announcement of the CIPD's decision to move from Harrogate to Manchester caused upset as can be read about in the Yorkshire Post - but can the CIPD be blamed? Customers have increasing demands on suppliers and it appears that while the venue has adapted - the infrastructure around the conference centre has sat back and relaxed. The CIPD annual conference is the second largest conference held annually in Harrogate.

Experience the annual conference and exhibition

Throughout the event the CIPD had its roving camera crew. This caught up with a large number of people and this clearly shows that it was a stimulating event for them.

Unfortunately they appear to have missed:

• The community regulars...
• The community moderator...
• CIPD staff...
• The Apprentices
• Yours truly

... maybe that was not a bad thing....

But I am sure YOU are there - have a look.... watch the vox pops video
What do you think of the video - does it inspire you to attend Manchester 2009?

For those that want to know more about vox pops at wikipedia, vox pops can be powerful tools for employee engagement, measuring staff satisfaction etc as well as for event promotion.

Presentations from the CIPD annual conference

The MyEvent secure social networking facility that the CIPD have been trialing throughout the conference now has some of the presentations used in the seminars. The ability to access and discuss handouts and presentations is a wonderful value added facility.

It appears that some presenters have not given permission... a shame as people have seen them and versions of the presentations were given out in a handout form (small & black and white). If the presenters did not want people copying them they could have been made available as a secure PDF. This is particularly true for some of the presenters who had far too much data on a slide to be visible in the conference session itself. A/V skills (the use of visual aids) of presenters is another topic for another day....

Towards the future
I would urge the CIPD in the furure not to engage with speakers for events that are not willing to share resources (be it PPT or PDF format). We are now firmly in the knowledge age and we should only be engaging with people that are prepared to share. The conference circuit is a wonderful sales opportunity for many of these individuals (they get paid to speak and they get the opportunity to 'sell' their services to many other potential purchasers) and the cost of sharing knowledge should be one they are prepared to pay...

MyEvent - is it or isn't it...?

Having returned from the conference I was keen to look at the presentation promised in the comprehensive session handouts. On Friday one representative from the CIPD sales team returned my call and left a message. When I spoke to the member of the team he told me that due to circumstances beyond their control the presentations from Harrogate would not be up until mid week at the earliest... not what was suggested in the notes from the conference session suggest that they were available immediately... but that is one the joys of being an early adopter.

It is a shame as the promised networking from this facility appears to be a bit of a pipe dream... at least at this stage. This may well be down to too few early adopters registering on the system and more down to the users than the system itself.

Some of the facilities are 'restricted by administrator'...maybe someone has forgotten to throw the 'switch' and I am sure it will all work wonderfully when this is corrected....

Update -
Having spoken to the Conference Producer, it appears that some of the functionality is available only to users with certain profiles - this was a challenge the CIPD community had last year - so looks like it is just teething problems.

The expectation of the presentations being available 'instantly' was an expectations management difficulty - the wording on the handouts saying one thing but realistically the conference organisers needing time to confirm changes with speakers - so with the reassurance that content will be available in a couple of days all is well in MyEvent land.

User Error
With any new system there are two types of error - errors in software.. and user errors.

When I experienced errors when searching I was searching from the wrong page - so the results I obtained were not what I expected - at the right page it was working fine... DOH!


The future
It looks like the CIPD are continuing to invest in this platform and it will provide members and event attendees with some very useful facilities in the future... Next test HRD 2009

When the teething difficulties have been sorted (common with all new IT systems) and users educated (it is very different from traditional forums) and integrated with the existing CIPD community forums, this will be a tremendous facility for all members - taking membership facilities to a new level.

MyEvent... is it or isn't it....
Well that is not a CIPD decision, this is down to users to make use of the excellent facility made available to event delegates. I would encourage CIPD branches to consider educating members in the use of this technology so that when members attend events they can make the most out of it.

Welcome to my CIPD conference blog

After the success of the CIPD annual conference blog (www.cipd2008.blogspot.com) I have decided to blog my attendance at all of these and future events.

This page will be a generic page for all future posts on CIPD conferences and exhibitions. There won't be much here for a while but watch this space...