Joint Conferences

Proposals for a joint community sector conference form the basis of a suggestion piece put together by Urban Forum's Toby Blume around the future of AGM's within the Coalition. With public sector cuts soon to take affect across the sector, securing strong turnouts for these annual get-togethers is only going to get tougher and the option of lessoning the stress on finance and resources and improving opportunities for cross sector networking through joint conferences becomes more appealing. The Coalition believes this is an idea worth investigating and is urging you all to read through Toby's suggestions and give us your opinions.

Joint Conferences - Toby Blume

For the last few years we have had to work harder and harder to make our annual conference viable (both in financial terms and in getting enough people to make it a high quality event). In 2005 at my first Urban Forum annual conference, we had nearly 500 delegates. This year – with not that much less effort going in – we had 100 (for a 1 day, non residential event). With public spending cuts imminent and the knock on effect to our members and stakeholders, this trend is likely to continue. We took the decision to hold a one day event (rather than a 2 day residential), partly in order to reduce our financial liability. Although we got good feedback from the event, we also know that our members greatly value the networking opportunities that a residential conference provides. But the exposure to risks involved in organising a bigger and more expensive event are considerable (we know to our detriment when we made a loss a couple of years ago).

It occurs to me that many of us will be in the same position – putting in an increasing amount of effort for a diminishing return. I know this may not be universally felt, but I also know we are not the only ones feeling this (or likely to in the future). I feel there may be an opportunity for us to share the risks and the workload by collaborating on a joint community sector conference. There are many pros and cons of this approach that we would need to explore, but it seems to me that the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks.

Initial thoughts on the pros and cons (no more than initial thoughts).

Cons

  • Our offer to members often includes an annual conference (and people expect it of us).
  • We would inevitably be giving up some control of what goes on by collaborating
  • Although the workload would be spread, some things would need more work to do them together (so not more or less work, but different)

Pros

  • We reduce risk and financial liability
  • We increase opportunities for our members to network with people they may not otherwise meet
  • Reduce competition (from a punter’s point of view, they may currently need to choose between any number of the conferences we hold. We make it easier for them to decide).
  • Provides a strong message of unity by working together and scope to develop commonalities across the community sector

I would like to know whether anyone else would be interested in exploring the potential for a joint event (either as a CSC event or as a CSC members’ event… both seem possible to me). Subject to agreeing that it is a viable proposition, we’d suggest working towards an event sometime in the second half of next (financial) year.

Please send your responses to CSC Administrator James Romero.