In this week’s bulletin, Charlie gives an insight into how the event went and discusses the main business continuity themes throughout the conference.
This week, I have been at the BCI World Hybrid Event in London, and I thought I would share what I thought of the event and also what it says about the state of business continuity.
As a general view, I thought the event was as well-attended as last year. There seemed to be a similar number of vendors and attendees. It was interesting to note that a number of the vendors who were independent last year had been bought over this year; these included Noggin by Motorola, Beyond Blue by Everbridge, and PlanB Consulting by Databarracks. The good small companies are desired by those big ones looking to expand their portfolio of offerings in the market.
The event doesn’t get the same amount of ‘walk-in’ attendees as there used to be in Hammersmith, so most people we saw were the full-show paying delegates. There was an online audience, and it was good to see that the BCI made a lot of effort to include them and ensure they were able to take part in events and ask questions.
The speakers were almost completely new people, with the only ‘old guard’ speaker being David Window speaking about supply chain, and our own James McAlister doing his usual compare, which he does very well.
The main themes last year were AI and exercising, while this year it seemed to be AI, exercising, and cyber. Almost within the title of every talk was AI, whether it was relevant or not. I found all the talks with AI in the title very frustrating; they all talked about how AI was relevant to business continuity and had lots of use cases, but not one, apart from Charlie Pratten from Conducttr, could actually say they were using it practically to do something useful. Having long lists of what AI might do for us business continuity professionals is all very nice, but it’s like a flying car — we could all produce a wishlist of what we would like one to do, but unless someone has actually built one and is using it, then the specification is just dreams.
Cyber was mentioned quite a few times, usually in the context that it is the greatest threat, but few people talked about how they are preparing for a cyber incident or how they had managed one. I think for BC people, it is managed by a different department, and when it comes to response or planning for response, we are ignored. In cyber, we have a lot to offer in terms of incident response and continuity of operations, so I think we as a profession need more guidance on what we should be offering and how we should frame the help we can offer.
It was good to see a couple of sessions on BIAs and supply chain back on the agenda to remind us there is more to what we do beyond AI, exercising, and cyber.
The keynote speaker, Michael Hingson, who was totally blind, talked about personal resilience and how he and his guide dog, Roselle, had survived 9/11. He told a very good story, but I think most were even more impressed when he recounted that, as a young person, he cycled to school despite being completely blind.
I felt throughout the conference that there was very little new take aways. The BCI released their ‘Resilience Framework Edition 1.0’, but the content slightly underwhelmed me. It outlined eight core principles and a resilience framework cycle. I know that resilience is difficult to quantify and define — Kim, my wife, is on the ISO committee developing ISO 22316 on resilience, and there are lots of people who have different opinions on building a resilience framework. Edition 1.0 is a starter for one, but I personally see little practical use in its present form. I was reminded throughout the conference of good practices, some of which I had forgotten, but there was really nothing new or very different.
The networking and discussion with like-minded people that took place at the conference and the social events was excellent, and it was good to catch up with people you only see year to year. Business continuity can be a bit of a lonely business, so a social event is always great. Perhaps this coming year, we might see some innovation and some game changers, and perhaps even some people making practical use of AI!
