It’s been a few years since I last attended the IOF Convention so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I attended the full 3 days of the event last week.  I’d grown a bit tired of the previous events where it seemed there was a lot of hot air in the sessions but ultimately no-one was prepared to share real information or insight on what they’d done.

I was pleased to see that this had changed (at least a bit) this year, and in a number of sessions I went to there was some really useful detail of how people had gone about their work (from specific campaigns to organisational restructures) and the results they had got from it.

True, there are still a few sales presentations masquerading as actual sessions, but most of the sessions I went to felt like genuine attempts to share useful insight with other people.

I’d still like to see people sharing the learning from their failures as well as their successes though (as it does tend to be only the latter that we share with each other), so we may well put together a session on that subject for next year’s Convention!

It was also great to see a packed room at my session for ‘How to raise funds for difficult causes’ and if you attended it, I hope you found it useful!  If you’d like a copy of my presentation slides or to chat more about the topic, just email me at richard@changestar.co.uk.