Behind the scenes at this year’s SfEP conference

Post by Stephen Cashmore

Wyboston Lakes, SfEP conference 2017: if you weren’t there, you missed a great conference and social gathering.

Lots of people have already blogged about the conference, much better bloggers than I am, using words such as ‘great’, ‘fantastic’, and ‘best ever’. All true, but I can add another perspective.

Right up until the AGM of this conference, I was the SfEP training director. What that means is that I was on the council while the conference was being planned and organised. And what that means is that I can add some more words to the collective description: ‘detailed planning’, ‘hard work’, and ‘attention to detail’, to name but a few.

Conference director Beth Hamer and her team bore the brunt of the hard work developing the conference itself. Sure, Beth occasionally posed questions to the council: ‘I want to do x. That OK?’ And the council would hold forth and almost invariably do exactly what Beth had thought of. Chair (Sabine Citron) and Vice-chair (Lucy Metzger) meticulously checked all the bye-laws and constitutional AGM-like points – the things that send most of us to sleep in seconds – to make sure the AGM passed off smoothly. The office staff set up everything on the day and bossed everyone who came in the door, even the huge security guys that were turning up for their own conference.

So, as an ex-director, I have seen more or less at first-hand how much hard work – a year’s worth of hard work – goes into making the conference such a great occasion. And guess what? It’s going to happen all over again in 2018, this time at Lancaster University. So, if you missed SfEP conference 2017, be sure to be there next year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen is an advanced member of the SfEP who lives in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland. He is an ex-teacher, ex-accountant, ex-bridge player and ex-auditor, but threw all that over to become an editor after taking early retirement. Check out cashmoreeditorial.com or follow Stephen on Twitter @sceditorial

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