The first day ended a bit sluggishly. First, a demonstration of an electronic whiteboard for use in interactive process design, which didn’t seem to offer any benefits over a standard laptop (or tablet PC) plus a projector. Next, a truly uninspiring panel of four vendors hosted by Jon Pyke without any real focus; they each talked about themselves, then there were some questions from Jon and the audience that really didn’t grab the crowd. At 5pm, they started an hour-long (!!) awards session that I can’t believe many people stayed for, unless they were really desperate for the free drinks afterwards. If I were a vendor, I’d be a bit pissed off that the afternoon actually encouraged people to bail out before the evening drinks session, since it was in the vendor demonstration area and intended as a chance to visit the vendor booths. However, I ducked out early from the awards session and found the bar open, so all ended well.
Suggestions to Steve Towers and the BPMG team about what to improve for next time:
- Free wifi for conference attendees, not just those who are staying at that hotel
- Session descriptions, rather than just the titles, to assist in making a decision about which session to attend
- No unstructured panel of vendors talking about themselves
- No hour-long awards session
Other than that, it was pretty good.
Hour long … hmmn as you said you bailed early. It only lasted 40 mins which is pretty short really for that sort of thing.
I think when we run it next year (at whatever conference we do it at), we will probably do it as a series of the Gold Award best practice case study presentations (from the end-user companies) … take the whole afternoon or day rather than just honour those who put a lot of work into developing the cases.