On Thursday 3 July we'll be in Leeds with the Don't Panic Guide To Crisis Communications conference, the fourth of our own branded events. Originally held in Manchester a year ago and subsequently visiting London in January, this revised version of the event features four new speakers. The full line up is as follows -

Michael Bland, Michael Bland Communication Consultancy

Francis Thomas, Suffolk County Council

The event is being supported by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Yorkshire & Lincolnshire Group and a discounted rate is available for CIPR members and charities. A detailed conference PDF can be viewed or downloaded from the Don't Panic website. We look forward to seeing everyone in July.

UPDATE 16.6.08 Something's cropped up for Kevin Bocquet and he will no longer be able to join us in Leeds. We'll miss him but are pleased to announce that creative guru Andy Green of GREEN Communications will now take Kevin's slot.

Last week we provided event management for the launch of the Sports & Spinal Injury Clinic at the University of Bolton which was a luxury for us as it's only 15 minutes drive from the town of Bury where we're based. We were involved in assisting with the audio visuals for the event as well as managing the invitation list and providing guest reception and entertainment.

The clinic is a partnership between the university and sports physiotherapists Harris & Ross and the launch attracted numerous representatives and players from the wealth of rugby, football and other sporting establishments in the region. Other than some early egg & spoon race triumphs, sport has never really been my thing so I couldn't name any names.

The drinks reception, presentations and grand opening took place on Wednesday evening as guests stepped cautiously around human statues to the sound of the wonderful Bacchus String Quartet. The statues were hand painted with muscle and skin zone schemes and were booked from the Show Offs agency.

Spinal Tap were the fictitious subject of 80's spoof rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap which remains essential tour bus viewing for rock groups the world over to this day. They're also a fairly weak and obvious title for this post but it's a great excuse to link to the 'one louder' and 'bread' clips.

Many thanks to everyone who attended the Don’t Panic Guide to Social Media conference last Friday. We thought it was our best event yet and we were certainly blessed with a dream line up of speakers.

There were some great presentations too and some fascinating insights. A couple of points really struck me including Oxfam’s Sam Barratt quoting Plato ‘Those who control the stories rule society’ and Meg Pickard of The Guardian’s assertion that context, rather than content, is king.

Many years ago I did an 'A' Level in Communication Studies and dossed around a lot which is probably why I’m putting on events and not speaking at them. A few things did sink in though and the above points reminded me of the Marshall McLuhan quote ‘Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which they communicate than by the content of the communication’. He later put it a lot more snappily when he said ‘The medium is the message’.

I’m not saying I agree completely but the internet and things like blogs have given us all the opportunity to control the stories to some degree and those that used to talk at us are definitely having to learn to talk to us.

You can read more about the event from a delegates perspective on the blogs of Sherrilynne Starkie and Rob Skinner. I loved Rob’s observation on rude possibly being the new polite in relation to the amount of phone twittering and laptop use amongst delegates.

Stuart Bruce was one culprit, live blogging the morning session. It actually seems very apt given the conference subject and I do think delegate etiquette is changing.

I was also quite flattered that Stuart now kinda likes the fact we use song titles for most of our posts as he used to think we were just being willfully obscure...

OK, this is a lot shorter than I would have liked but we have another big event tomorrow so here’s The Plastic Ono Band.

Update: You can now read posts on the conference from Neville Hobson and Simon Wakeman.