I spent the day yesterday at the PM Forum annual conference (download the agenda) and very good it was too. It's always a nice combination for me of being able to work "on my business" i.e. thinking about what we do and how we can improve our client experience and "in my business" by networking with clients, partners and hopefully some prospects….you know who you are!
Whenever I go to seminars like this now, I do my notes straight into a mindmap. You can download both the PDF versions and the native XMind file (http://www.xmind.net) below. XMind is a cross platform open source mindmapping application.
Beverly Landais, CEO at Devereux Chambers was the Chair for the day. The morning keynotes were pretty good with Andy Raynor being the highlight for me. Sorry Richard, that research section whilst being important was not "that" relevant for me.
The breakouts that I chose were excellent, although I did hear some people commenting in neutral/negative terms about some of the others. In the morning I did the workshop run by Andrew Rogerson (http://www.gristonline.com) and Debi Coles (http://www.neversecond.co.uk) on "Crafting messages that resonate with your audience". It was a nice balance of a bit of theory from the pair of them and then a decent amount of time to work through an exercise.
The only thing lacking in that session was a quick "round the table introduce yourself", so I knew who I knew but did not really get to make that many NBFs.
Lunch was very good "bowl food" but with very clear instructions in the advance emails and on a GREAT BIG slide on the main screen to only eat four bowls….god knows how many I must have eaten last year (Melanie....I only had three this year…but two sausages & mash…was that wrong of me?).
Now, the afternoon. The "Lessons from Investment Banking" was, I'm sorry to say, the weakest keynote of the day. Highlighted by the complete apathy in the audience when it came to questions. The graveyard slot is obviously a tough one but even so, it didn't quite hit the mark for many people in the room I suspect.
My second workshop was the "Harnassing CRM, Web Analytics and Social Media" run by Edward Charvet (http://www.trovus.co.uk) and David Brady (http://www.vuturegroup.com). Quite a big group so the round table intros that we did do took quite a while, but I did spot a few people who I'm hoping will be NBFs.
The session looked at some theory around how PS firms could be using CRM, web analytics and social media better and Ed talked through one VERY good little case sty about how a PS firm "properly" adopted social media. The first, key, inflection point (good phrase!) was the hiring of someone into the marketing team to concentrate on social media…now how novel is that for a PS firm <g>!
David Brady gave out a great workbook that each delegate could use to work through when thinking about their business. It has some great things that any PS business should work through e.g. :-
- Business Performance Funnel
- Life Cycle of PS Marketing
- 7 Steps to the Marketing Bulls Eye
- Develop Massive Action Plans (MAPs)
The second workshop cleared out pretty quickly though as everyone was focused on tea, cakes & ice-cream I suspect!
The panel session was pretty good. Always useful to know that the CEO of RSM Tenon has a tattoo of a Yorkshire Rose somewhere on his body! The questions were somewhat "preset" but that was find, no-one was trying to catch anyone out.
Then it was a quick drink and social catchup with more clients/friends/prospects and then it was off….in a bit of a rush it must be said for the 7pm train back to Bristol.
So, all in all, great value in terms of a combined client, learning, networking and prospecting day out that I encourage everyone to think about for 2013.
If you want to see what people were saying in social media land then you can find read all the Tweets via #PMConf.
Downloads
- Complete mindmap (Xmind format)
- Main hall (PDF)
- Workshop C - Session notes
- Workshop C - Exercise on a "pretend" pitch and what questions you need to ask yourself and the pretend client.
- Workshop B - Session notes