Last year I was asked if I wanted to contribute to a book on staff development. I believe my answer was initially suspicious…

 “I don’t have to write it all, do I?”

“No”

“I don’t have to edit it all, do it?”

“No”

“Oh. Good. Yes then. Sounds like fun”

The book is now being edited and is so very almost ready to send to the publishers it’s unbelievable. Gil and Tracey have done a phenomenal amount of work. I wrote or co-wrote a lot of stuff around social media, conferences, and training. (Funny that, it’s almost like… “OH”)

When I was asked to write a short piece on ‘ow to organise a conference’, I was pretty overwhelmed. It’s a BIG topic. It takes us a whole year and 10 people to organise LILAC. Where did I start. Well I didn’t really. For months.

I dilly dallied around it, by writing about Twitter, or submitting a paper, or creating a poster or… let’s face it, I procrastinated wildly. (Something I’m thinking of changing my name to.)

Then I hit on a brainwave – whilst staring hopefully at the LILAC website, I would write it around the job roles that we have on the committee, the who does what bit. and off I set. The words flying onto the page.

and 7 pages later I was finished. Only 7 pages doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the book – so when you see that chapter – don’t worry, it’s a lot shorter now. I still felt though that what I’d written might be quite useful. So here is the full article – still in it’s original word doc. Because seriously who wants to read a blog post that has 2000 words in it.

How to organise a conference. (Word)

Written as part of 101 Practical Tips for Developing Staff by Tracey Pratchett and Gil Young with Carol Brooks, Lisa Jeskins and Helen Monagle. Facet: 2016