“Future Thinking”

Considered a great success – The venue, the refreshments, the food, the breakout sessions and the speakers with Rohit Talwar a knock-out with his ‘One Step Beyond’ presentation.

From an ISES perspective, it was good to see so many international delegates, including the American President Marty Janis – Atlantic Service Group, Washington D.C.

As with previous years, the conference was organised with a team from Thames Valley University. The team organised all aspects of the event. Martin Fowler was conference director and held the team together with the help of Barry Seaman, ISES VP Education.

Sara Fredriksson co-ordinated the speakers. Katie Radburn organised the pre conference sales effort attending Confex and RSVP show as well as the regular ISES monthly meetings. Richard Rowlands was our resident ‘techi’ who worked on the email notification and so well on the day to ensure all the visuals worked and all the speakers A.V was satisfactory. Thembi Mkandla, a placement student with Richmond Creative Event Catering & Design from Manchester Metropolitan University sorted all the bookings and Masterclasses as well as being the central contact for all the team.

There was also great input from other board members in helping find speakers, negotiating deals with the venue and hotels for the visitors and arranging entertainment.

One plea from the team for next year – ‘Please don’t leave booking so late. 70% of registrations were taken within the last 10 days which makes budgeting and planning so difficult.’

Many delegates found the picture board a novel idea as it enabled them to put names to faces. You should have received your mug shot by now and we look forward to more feedback returns.

There was a wide variety of speaker topics most dealing with the “Future Thinking” theme. It was interesting to see the variations on how the panels and speakers interpreted the subject. 

Feedback so far

The good ones
“Event well produced, good use of venue, nice catering, interesting networking”
“Networking was greatly facilitated by the photo board”
“I found the event to be worthwhile and a great success overall”
“Rohit Talwar’s insight into the future was a real eye opener”

The not so good ones
“I did not appreciate being told to have my picture taken – this should be optional”
“RSVP debate was a shambles”
“Not so many speakers from the USA”

What more can I say other than, on behalf of the ISES Board, I would like to thank all the speakers and panel members for the time and enthusiasm in making such a memorable day.

Barry Seaman
ISES VP of Education
Richmond Catering