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BCI Annual Symposium 2008

17 October 2008

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Annual Symposium was held on 9-10 October 2008 in the seaside town of Brighton in the south of England. Approximately 300 business continuity professionals attended, listening to the high quality and varied presentations, and taking advantage of the networking opportunity the Symposium provided.

The Symposium began with a presentation from the keynote speaker Dr Deborah Pretty, Principal, Oxford Metrica, entitled ‘Reputational Turmoil in the Financial Sector’ which, of course, was very topical and well received. There were two other plenary sessions during the Symposium, ‘The ‘GODFEAR’ Continuity Community’ by Maitland Hyslop MBCI and James Royds FBCI, and ‘Future View, Business Continuity Management. Shift Happens’ by Louise Knegtel MBCI.

The rest of the two days were divided into three streams:

• Two streams examined key stages of the BCM Lifecycle with one going back to basics for those relatively new to business continuity and the other targeted at experienced practitioners considering ways of taking BCM to the next level.
• The third stream, entitled BCM in Action, looked at certification and standards, various case studies and legislation and regulation.

An exhibition ran alongside the presentations, with the following Industry Partners of the BCI exhibiting:

• 4CStrategies
• AdtApt
• Continuity Shop
• GlaxoSmithKline
• ICM
• Office-Shadow
• Reed Exhibitions

BSI Management Systems, an industry partner of the BCI, also had a stand at the event and provided a speaker and a moderator who ran the BCM in Action stream. This stream featured standards and best practice. There was a lot of interest in BS 25999 and the certification case study which was presented by BSI’s Julian Thrussell in conjunction with Roger McLoughlin from Vodafone.

Feedback from the Symposium has been very encouraging, with 63% of delegates who returned their evaluation forms saying they would definitely attend next year. Details of next year’s event will be announced shortly.

For more information on the BCI and the BCI Symposium please visit www.thebci.org.