This year’s CIPR Northern Conference is now the subject of an excellent, in depth podcast by Jonathan Bowers of UKFast. Weighing in at just over 24 minutes you can now download the opus from the UKFast website.

It’s a fascinating insight into the conference and features interviews with our keynotes, John Willman, Rob Skinner and Julia Hobsbawm, many of our workshop speakers and also delegates who attended on the day.

Social media, particularly blogging was undoubtedly the conference’s hot topic and those of you who have read our review of the conference below and followed the ‘saddies and surfers’ link may be aware of the firestorm created by CIPR’s Director General Colin Farrington in relation to these new PR tools.

Now CIPR are clients of ours but as a member I feel disappointed that a lack of vision threatens to dismiss a powerful new medium which can certainly add to the PR mix.

Stuart Bruce famously uses a brilliant example of business blogging in his presentations which inspired us to set up eventualities. The Tinbasher is written by staff at Lancashire-based Butler Sheet Metal and won a best business blog award in 2005. The blog has proved an extremely effective way to promote their business and their turnover has increased dramatically as a result.

The blog you’re reading now costs us £28 a year and we’ve already had 4.500 page views. You can set one up for free but we pay the modest premium because it gives us more functionality and control over the way it looks.

It’s probably our best marketing tool and the events world certainly seems interested in the possibilities of social media to enhance the way we work. Our industry bible, The Main Event, has a two page spread on the applications of new technology in their next issue and our fledgling blog will be featured.

We’re also very fortunate to be the organisers of probably the hottest conference on social media in the UK. The University of Sunderland’s ‘Delivering the New PR’ conference was originally hosted in Sunderland in 2005 and has visited Manchester and London this year.

The University’s Philip Young, the man behind the conference, is now in discussion with the Swedish PR Association to take the event to Stockholm but for those of you in the UK we’d definitely recommend a trip to Edinburgh on the 13th of September.

The event is being supported by CIPR Scotland and a substantial ticket discount is available to all CIPR members. A PDF conference brochure can be downloaded from our website’s news page and you can also book your place online.

If you’re interested in the applications of blogs, podcasts and RSS and would like to learn more then this event is unmissable. Our audience has increased by 50% at every subsequent event and the delegate lists look like a who’s who of the business, public sector and charity worlds.

Who said ‘blogging is simply a form of vanity publishing’?

Northern cities like Northerners themselves have a style and vision often lacking in their Southern counterparts and Leeds, despite its vicious one way system, is no exception.

The city’s enjoyed a great deal of regeneration in recent years and its new focal point Millennium Square provided a magnificent setting for this year’s CIPR Northern Conference. The event took place on the 6th of July at the Carriageworks, a former industrial building which
now houses an impressive state of the art theatre.

The night before our event, many of the speakers and CIPR organising committee got together for the obligatory conference dinner. Many thanks to Carol Arthur who chose extremely well when booking the highly recommended Room restaurant.

The food was excellent and the staff were great especially when they confided that the conversation at our end of the table was so much more interesting than that at the other end. We were sat with CIPR Scotland vice chair Adrian Mahoney and CIPR North East chair Jan Hillary who can certainly hold their own on the subject of Big Brother!

It was also great to finally meet Simon Collister of the excellent Simonsays blog and although Don’t Panic have a very tenuous connection to the world of PR blogging, us ‘saddies and surfers’ have a great sense of fraternity.

In fact one of the recurring themes of this year’s Northern Conference happened to be the so called ‘New PR’. From Stuart Bruce’s packed out blogging session to UKFast’s roving podcaster Jonathan Bowers, the shock of the new was evident in abundance from coffee breaks to keynote speeches.

For an immediate flavour of a great day check out the CG Vision videocast which was beautifully recorded and edited for screening at the conference close. Regionalism is a dreadful thing but what the north does today…

I’m sure there’ll be many other blogs which will focus on the significance of this conferences’ embracing of all things new and I mustn’t forget that primarily we’re the first and therefore foremost event management blog so let’s get on with the review.

Event managers expect venues to play an integral role in ensuring many of the smaller but no less important details of the day run smoothly and seamlessly. Of course, site visits and regular communication ahead of any event are essential but with so much else to organise and co-ordinate we do tend to rely on the venue to deliver certain pre-requisites.

Perhaps we should have seen things coming much earlier when the venue’s catering menus arrived to the unanimous disappointment of everyone involved in organising the event. When we opted to bring in outside catering it was not well received by the venue.

Unfortunately our experience of the Carriageworks on event day got off to an even worse start when their staff failed to materialise for our agreed 6am load in of stage set and production kit. It took a further 30 minutes of unanswered phone calls and unnecessary stress before we finally got access.

Thankfully the LAS event production team took this in their stride and soon made up the lost time with their usual laid back professionalism. The set looked wonderful, particularly with the branding produced by the ever reliable Stockport-based Kingfisher Graphics.

It’s disappointing that our experience of the venue was tarnished as it’s such an ideal conference location. The 350 capacity air conditioned auditorium is especially good as were the catering staff who served refreshments throughout the day.

Most importantly the conference itself ran smoothly due to the professionalism of our speakers and Richard Griffiths, one of the best conference chairs north of Watford Gap. Judging by the delegate feedback, those who attended had a great day and as our motto and mission statement says ‘Don’t Panic - make it happen’. Mission accomplished.

Finally big thanks to our events team of Dino and Kyla who were joined by Wages of Spin blogger and recent PR graduate Alex Pullin. Good staff are invaluable and our tremendous trio were fantastic.