We attended BCI World Hybrid 2025 this week! In today’s bulletin, Charlie shares his experience of the conference and his key takeaways from the event.

I came back from BCI World Hybrid yesterday and I thought, as usual, I would share my thoughts on the conference and what it tells us about the business continuity industry. It was busy as usual, but I felt that there were perhaps fewer people than last year. The second day was definitely less busy, with about one-third fewer people than on Tuesday, the first day. There were, of course, the usual suspects from the old guard I see every year, David Window, Michael Crooymans and Nick Simms, amongst others, and Chris Oliver appeared, whom I haven’t seen for ages. There seemed to be less this year from the Middle East and a lot more from Europe, which may be due to geopolitics. There were plenty of the young (under 40!) and plenty of women, so it does show that there are new generations coming into and through the profession.

The BCI has tried to mix up the format with some different ways of presenting with lots of panel sessions, workshops, presentations and, new to me, PechaKucha. Some people loved the panel sessions, as I have seen comments on LinkedIn, but for me, they are somewhat superficial and not in-depth. Chris Butler’s wargame of deepfakes and cyber seemed to go down well, but the panel sessions were in long, thin rooms, one of which was next to a noisy kitchen so it was difficult to hear what the presenter was saying and have a good discussion with your fellow delegates as part of the workshop. This is the last year at the venue so hopefully a bigger venue will allow better rooms for carrying out interactive activities.

In terms of content, AI was still a prominent topic, and if it wasn’t mentioned in the title of the talk, it was discussed in the presentation. The real issue for me is that nobody, or at least those presenting, had done anything with AI except producing pictures and videos for exercises. This was the same chat from 2–3 years ago. Where were the presentations on how people are using AI to manage incidents, construct plans, or to gather and evaluate BIA data? Perhaps people are doing lots of innovation and not talking about it, or as an industry, we are not innovating at all.

It suddenly occurred to me that there was very little on cyber. Have we got bored with it as it is certainly not going away as a threat! This year, we have had attacks on household names (Co-op, M&S, and the attack on JLR being the biggest cyber attack on the UK ever and it affecting the growth of the country as a whole), but nobody was mentioning the incidents or presenting on them.

The negatives about the whole conference: there were lots of opinions on lots of things, but very little, as far as I could see, of practical learning and ideas which you could take away and implement in your own training, exercise, or plans. Where were the case studies where we learn the lessons of others? I think my presentation on the cyber attack on the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar(Western Isle Council) seemed to be the only one. Perhaps organisations are more reluctant or constrained to talk about their incidents, but I do notice they are quite happy to talk about them in their awards submission. I had a couple of consultants from Copenhagen come up to me after my talk and they mentioned it was their first time there and they came to learn more about BC and the latest thoughts and ways of doing things, but they were very disappointed with the conference and the content of the presentations. There are lots of bright, young people in this industry, but for whatever reason, there is a lack of innovation, new thinking and wow factor. There wasn’t a presentation where everyone is desperately trying to take photos of the slides, and then after the presentation, the hall is buzzing with people talking about the new idea, concept, or lessons learned.

In looking around the stands, there were again the usual suspects, PlanB, BC Training, Riskonnect, and C2, with a smattering of new exhibitors mainly selling BC software. The new BC software companies I spoke to, seemed to have little differences to offer except Fortiv, whose main feature was that they had a chatbot which would interview people to gather BIA information. All our consultants said they thought clients wouldn’t like to discuss their BIA with a chatbot. Perhaps we are not used to doing this at the moment, but I think in future, we will be more relaxed about it and this could work. The only stand which seemed to have a bit of a buzz about it was the 4C Strategies, with a constant stream of visitors. Exercises are very popular at the moment so that might explain it.

We live in a permacrisis volatile world so there is the need more than ever for organisations to be resilient and to be prepared for the next worldwide shock. The election of Donald Trump, invasion of Ukraine, and Middle Eastern wars has accelerated worldwide change and the world will not be going back to where we have come from. There is a huge need for business continuity to provide stability for our organisations, but we need new innovations, ideas, and also learning from others’ experience. The BCI Conference, if it wants to place itself at the centre of business continuity, has to adapt and ensure that it remains relevant and at the centre of BC, as there will never be a time when it is more important.

A little bit of a shout-out to those I haven’t mentioned in the above:

• GRC Malaysia
• TNT (now Fedex)
• SGS
• Sarah Hobday-Mitchell for a very personal presentation
• C2
• Rina
• Former Yorkshire Water people
• And all clients past and current!

Thank you to all those who visited our stand this year, we had a great time meeting everyone, we will see you all next year!