Conferences...

Last week I attended a Conference and walked away with some thoughts…

As most of my colleagues and network now head to Liverpool and Birmingham for the political conferences , we are all planning in some way to make it meaningful for ourselves, our clients and stakeholders.

Conferences as a format - getting together and sharing ideas - can be really powerful but in my experience a few things need to be true:

1.????? You need to be open to speaking with people you don’t already know

2.????? You need to actually follow up with those you did speak to, or heard a talk from, after the event

3.????? You need to be open to receiving things you didn’t expect to gain – like a bit of knowledge from a talk which wasn’t aimed at you, or a new contact who isn’t a key stakeholder but may become an ally/ or a client later on.

I attended the PRCA Conference last week and while this was an industry conference – very different from the political conferences – a few other things stayed with me with some parallels between learnings for us as professionals and the political sphere.

Breaking out of silos

This year’s PRCA conference was a joint PR and Public Affairs Conference, which meant the agenda boasted sessions that wouldn’t normally be aimed at me as a PA professional, but were nonetheless fascinating and inspiring to attend. Sessions on storytelling, market research and data dynamics were – I should have known – just as relevant to me as they were to the PR folk they were targeting.

This new Labour Government has started its period in power by setting out ‘Missions’ and is swiftly realising their missions require Departments across Whitehall to work together. A wise colleague of mine said the other day “Civil servants love a good silo to stay in”, articulating the key challenge in delivering against aims which could span different teams and disciplines. ?

So we must learn to integrate better, create teams which are agile and allow themselves to change as situations change. Conferences do well not always serving who they think their audience is, just as PA professionals do well breaking out of their “services offerings”.

Age Inclusion

The PR and PA industry rightly talks about how to become more diverse and inclusive. At the event I was interested to hear others talk about the value of intergenerational teams, particularly as my agency just gained an age-inclusivity accreditation!

But this topic extends beyond the make-up of our own teams into how we approach PR and PA for our clients and organisations: for example how to target Gen-z, but also how to stop underestimating the value (and buying power) of over 50s.

It’s an issue for this Government's policy agenda, too which is focussed on future generations on the one hand, while grappling with how to support (but also harness) an ageing population during a productivity crisis. Meanwhile the discussions on the future of the Tory party focus on how they can better appeal to young people while no longer taking their usual voter group for granted.

Age might be just a number, but one we've perhaps been ignoring for too long?

The person behind the badge

During the networking I met Alexandra Stevens , who was there in a professional capacity, but who also created a group called ‘Parents in PR’. This group is indeed not just aimed at PR people but also open to public affairs professionals. We discussed the value of being able to exchange ideas about how to manage work and home life when you are a parent and how policies are not always the answer.

Party Conference season is a tough one for those with little ones – one of the reasons I’m not going – and it’s a key policy concern. One of my colleagues Imogen Shaw is the Chair of the Labour Campaign for Childcare Reform and we spoke the other day: will we soon see a creche in the fringes? Why not? These Paris 2024 Olympics for first time ever enabled parent athletes to spent time with their young children in a dedicated family space inside the Olympic Village. Why not politicians?

Finding and connecting at the Conference on this was unexpected in the best way and made my networking experience even richer. Generally, at Conferences you will often find those you speak with have at least one ‘other’ thing in common with you: think sports teams, pets, growing their own tomatoes? Don’t ignore the human behind the badge. In agency it’s certainly always been true that “people buy people”.

If any of this resonates, drop me a line.