The conference business is a very sensitive lead indicator of market economics.  At the first signs of a downturn, attendances plummet.    Waves of robotic share selling, inadvertently induced by some freak statistic or dodgy system algorithm, are a sure sign of an impending collective collapse in business brainpower.   There’s very little analysis behind these herd instincts.   Measurement madness kicks in and the search for easy savings to ‘make the numbers’ makes instant mincemeat of  all those fine promises on quality and training.  

As soon as will-power wobbles the language of business changes.   The old scripts get dusted off and CEO’s are busy “re-prioritising discretionary expenditure”  and “moving into managed exit mode”.   Understanding the difference between cost and value is a bit of stretch for business ‘leaders’ afflicted by imagination deficit syndrome.  

Imagination deficit was certainly not a feature of this year’s CMA conference.  To get a record attendance and strong staying power through to the afternoon of the second day had much to do with the quality of the agenda and the presenters.  But anyone who has also attended the shorter CMA seminars and ‘Focus Days’ will understand the interactivity that allows delegates to be significant actors in the overall performance.  

With very few exceptions the speakers this year delivered their insights with imaginative presentations and clearly understood their audience.  Conferences put pressure on presenters to get their messages across with clarity and memorable impact.    The scary discipline of having to stand up and say something sensible in front of a large discerning audience makes the marketing department think twice about their standard interoperable convergent gobbledygook.   It also brings out honesty – telling it how it is.  The over-hyping of wireless broadband is ‘WiBother’.  The woeful state of the UK’s broadband infrastructure is described in terms of ‘Not-Spots’ and, from the CMA’s regulatory leader David Harrington, ‘a low-fibre diet is afflicting our economic health’.    

Cultural issues were high on the agenda for many delegates – not least the challenges of young people coming to the world of work and clashing with what they regard as legacy systems.  ‘Generation Me’, it seems, demands freedoms at work that scare the pants off network managers with any regard for security.   And this year’s prize for the most imaginative 2 by 2 matrix goes to the consultant with a vertical axis scaled from Lizards up to Birds and a horizontal axis running from Stalin to the Dalai Lama.   You had to be there.

Market cycles are, we are told, inevitable.  Come the next downturn let’s hope that the bean counters are reminded that if you stretch the imagination it rarely goes back to its original shape.

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The article was first published in Comms Business, April 2007