A one-day workshop about turning risks into opportunities
with the theme “understanding future sources of human-induced disasters”
led by Nathaniel Forbes, Robert Kay and David Parsons

The Forbes Kay Parsons Charrette 2022 (FKPC) is a one-day exploration of ways to turn the risks of the next ten years into opportunities. (Get it? 2012 + 10 = 2022) FKPC  is an accelerated planning workshop focused specifically on how to get a return on your investment in organizational and community resilience planning.

The Forbes Kay Parsons Charrette 2022 is an innovative approach to resilience organized by Nathaniel Forbes (Singapore), Robert Kay (Australia) and David Parsons (Australia). As far as we know, no one’s ever organized a charrette on resilience risks and opportunities before.

What’s a charrette? It is “an intense period of design activity… organizing thoughts from experts and users in a structured medium that is unrestricted and conducive to creativity and the development of myriad scenarios.” From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charrette

FKPC 2022 will be held on Sunday, 24 June 2012, at the Ontario Bar Association in downtown Toronto, Canada. Admission to FKPC 2022 is CAD $395.00, including lunch.  Participation is limited to seventy-five (75) people selected from the public, private and non-governmental sectors.

Sunday, 24 June is the Sunday before the World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM).  Read more... (646 words, 1 image, estimated 2:35 mins reading time)

‘Because every year, I meet twenty people I should know.’ – David Parsons

In evaluating any conference, I think there are just three questions to ask:

• Did you learn something new?
• Did you meet someone new?
• Afterward, will you do something new?

For the World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM), my answer to all three questions has been ‘yes’ – or ‘Yes!’ – every year since 2005. I always get new insights, often from the same smart people who attend year after year. I always bring back a fistful of name cards from new people I’ve met – public sector emergency managers (EMs), private sector business continuity managers (BCMs), crisis managers (CMs), risk managers (RMs), disaster relief (DR) professionals. And I always lug home my well-travelled leather bag stuffed with new scribbles, new strategies and new quotes to try out immediately.

Those are the KPI’s of a worthwhile conference, in my opinion. And for a guy who lives on the sweltering equator, Toronto weather in June is wonderful.

Some unofficial WCDM history

At its peak five years ago, WCDM drew 1,800 people to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC) for three (3) days. It seemed to be the only truly “international” resilience conference in the world; flags from 20+ countries accurately represented the origins of the attendees. Its organizer, the Canadian Center for Emergency Preparedness (CCEP), was able to operate for a full year on its revenue from WCDM.  Read more... (3176 words, 0 images, estimated 12:42 mins reading time)

Everybody’s other favourite pastime: comparing salaries! The deadline is 31 December 2011 for recruiter BC Management’s Asia BCM compensation study. Click here to complete the survey. Results for 2010: 27% of BCM people in Asia get SGD 50K or less per year, 23% get up to SGD 100K and another 23% get up  to SGD150K. 75% of the SGD 50K or less were in India. View the chart for Asia Pacific. Hey, you do this for love, not money, right? When you complete the Asia BCM compensation study, you get a free copy. Pass it on to your HR department.

So this is what passes for thought leadership in business continuity management (BCM) these days.

The Business Continuity Institute (BCI), a U.K. professional association with global ambitions and under-exploited footholds in the growth markets of Asia, Middle East and South America, goes looking for a partner in North America. After thoughtful deliberation about the future of BCM in the 21^st century, and with all the time in the world to make a choice, they select…the Disaster Recovery Journal (DRJ), a 24-year old, American, family-owned magazine publisher and conference producer that must be the only BCM business in the world still calling it “disaster recovery,” the most-resented term in BCM profession.

BCI’s announcement says the alliance “aims to align thought leadership between [the] two organizations,” while DRJ’s press release says the alliance will “broaden and deepen discussions in…business continuity and related professions.”

That “thought leadership” bit caught my eye. When I first skimmed the headline, I mistakenly thought the BCI and the American professional association formerly-known-as the Disaster Recovery Institute International – DRII – had finally decided to stop pissing on each other’s shoes. Now, that would be news.  Read more... (2676 words, 2 images, estimated 10:42 mins reading time)

1. In 2010, 80% of the students who had Nathaniel as their instructor passed the exam on their first try. To help you pass, too, Nathaniel offers a ‘No One Left Behind’ Guarantee.  Watch the video to hear his guarantee.
2. Nathaniel packs the course with photos and case studies from his 15 years of BCM experience in Asia. You get ‘real world’ examples and sample documents you can use right away, plus the BCI’s universally-recognized theory that helps you pass the exam.
3. Nathaniel teaches the course in only three (3) days instead of the usual five (5) days, saving you time and money.
4. No other BCM certificate has the global stature and recognition of The BCI’s ABCI/CBCI/MBCI/FBCI certification hierarchy. Read what Nathaniel has written about ‘sub-prime’ BCM certifications.
5. You get Nathaniel as your instructor, an American with 15 years of on-the-ground BCM experience in Asia, not an inexperienced substitute teacher. Read some of the testimonials from his past students about Nathaniel.

It’s easy to register. Contact Chris Tan at chris.tan@calamity.com.sg, send an SMS text message to +65 9688-5000, or call +65 6324-3091 during business hours in Singapore.

Plus 5 MORE good reasons to take this course in Singapore, Tropical Paradise of Southeast Asia!  Read more... (410 words, 2 images, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Perhaps it was inevitable: BCM software for Apple’s iPhone®, RIM’s Blackberry® and Google’s Android™ mobile devices.  Scenarios, call trees, contact lists, maps and tasks stored on your handset, and updated automatically from a central server.  Not a new idea, but still a good one.  Bamboo™ BCM software is not available in Apple’s App Store; you have to go through your I.T. department because the developer, Deloitte Australia’s Business Continuity Group, is targeting companies, not individuals (see their answers to frequently-asked questions).

Bamboo™ BCM software may be great, but the marketing’s miserable. One obvious question: ‘how much does it cost?’ You can’t find that out on the web site. Another obvious one: ‘do you have to be a Deloitte client to get it?’ I sent email to Deloitte Australia to ask; I got back an automated out-of-office message. Here’s one of Deloitte’s homemade Bamboo videos that an Australian colleague called “the worst commercial for BCM I think I’ve ever seen.”  I’d have said that Deloitte could afford to hire professional actors and voice talent.   This is why no one ever hires an accounting and auditing firm to do marketing.  Read more... (281 words, 1 image, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

When does your own health stop being a personal, private matter, and become a legitimate consideration in a company’s business continuity planning? In Asia, where many emerging (and re-emerging) diseases originate, that’s a relevant question.

3,700 people died of H1N1 influenza in North America in 2009. In response, many organizations offered masks, liquid disinfectant and nitrile gloves to their employees to inhibit the spread of influenza. In the same year, 3 times as many people – about 14,000 Americans – died of AIDS resulting from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Since companies distribute masks and gloves, shouldn’t they also distribute condoms? Why are rubber gloves acceptable, but ‘rubbers’ are not?

Disease Risk
In the years ahead, diseases you never heard of, affecting people in places you never heard of, will have in impact on your life, your company and your career as a resilience professional.  Infectious diseases can now have immediate global consequences as they spread around the world quickly through international air travel. The first case of H1N1 in the United States was on April 22, 2009. The first case in New Zealand, about as far away on the planet as you can get, occurred 6 days later on April 28. The first case in Asia was in Hong Kong on 1 May. So, it took just nine days to spread to the other side of the world.  Read more... (5196 words, 2 images, estimated 20:47 mins reading time)

Here in Asia, a lot of BCP practitioners want to earn certifications in business continuity and the related fields of emergency management, I.T. disaster recovery, crisis management and security. I’ve made a table of certifications in those fields and links to the organizations that offer them.

I’ve included only certifications from independent, non-profit organizations or their education arms. All of the certifications listed are internationally-recognized, although all of them originate from North America or Europe.

I have not included any from private companies that give out certificates (as opposed to certifications) on completion of their programs, although there are many of them and they may be worth your time and money.  Read more... (447 words, 0 images, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has new BCM guidelines that became effective in January.Banks in Malaysia have until 30 June 2008 to comply with the guidelines.

Download the guidelines here (Adobe® Acrobat® PDF file, 42 pages). The document number is BNM/RH/GL 013-3, but I cannot find it on the BNM web site.

There are 17 principles in 5 categories that banks must follow: BCM framework (4 principles) and methodology (10 principles), communication with internal and external constituencies, internal audit review of a bank’s plan and responsibility for outsourced functions. There is also a glossary of terms and several appendices.

In that glossary, BNM introduces yet another abbreviation – Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) – that means the same thing as the Business Continuity Institute’s obscure Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPD). Neither term should be confused with the commonly-used “Recovery Time Objective” (RTO), which is shorter than MTD, as shown in this BNM diagram.

Do you see the “DRP” and “System Recovered” in that diagram? Even in 2008, after a decade of lexicographic struggle between I.T. and business professionals, BCM principles are still illustrated by examples of system recovery instead of business processes recovery. Will BCP ever breathe free of its technical past?  Read more... (425 words, 1 image, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released in August new guidance for financial institutions. The RBI directive suggests how India’s 50,000 bank branches may help customers and communities after “natural calamities.” The guidelines also supplement RBI’s BCP instructions issued in April 2005. FFI: Read Nat Forbes’ BCP Confidential blog post about RBI’s guidelines.