‘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)

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)

Rise up and rebel against the presenters who oppress you! Join the Anti-PowerPoint Party, a grass-roots global movement dreamed up by Swiss software engineer and author Matthias Poehm. Be sure to check out his “Horror slide of the month”! You can “Like” the APPP Party on Facebook, too.

Columnist Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times wrote about the APPP in her column, “Anti-PowerPoint revolutionaries unite”. (The FT makes you register to read their stuff, but it is free.) She was brave to admit publicly she’d been “gang raped by PowerPoint slides more times than I can count.” I can’t wait for her podcast of that one.

Joining the APPP is free. And very much tongue-in-cheek. I joined. I’d send money, too, but it’s not quite clear how it would be used. Matthias is flogging his book, The PowerPoint Fallacy, for SGD 29.00 if you join the APPP, SGD 46.00 if you don’t. His marketing strategy is positively a work of genius, in my view, because so many bad presentations waste so many people’s time, all over the world.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln dedicated a Civil War cemetery in three minutes and just 268 words – and no slides – in his famous Gettysburg Address. 150 years later, American school children can still recite it from memory (I learned it in the 4th grade). Here’s Google’s Director of Research Peter Norvig‘s satirical version of that Gettysburg Address  as a Powerpoint presentation. Point: bad slides detract from good content.  Read more... (375 words, 1 image, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

There is no more important long-term challenge in protecting businesses, homes and lives than bridging the knowledge gaps between what I call the “resilience professions”: business continuity, disaster response, disaster recovery, emergency management, crisis management, risk management and security. Asia is about to host the first conference I’ve seen to take on that challenge explicitly.

The 2008 International Disaster Management Conference on Public Private Partnership will bring together for the first time in Asia both public- and private-sector professionals in disaster, emergency and business continuity management as both presenters and attendees. The conference is on April 16 & 17 in Delhi, India and is endorsed by India’s National Disaster Management Authority.

In one conference you’ll be able to hear and meet senior executives from, for example, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Society, the British Standards Institute, India’s Oil Industry Safety Directorate, the Micro-Insurance Academy, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, the US Agency for International Development International Resources Group – and the Mumbai airport. There are about twenty (20) presentations, plus India’s normal introduction and thank-you rituals.

The conference is organized by volunteers at Responsenet, an initiative of the Aidmatrix Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO) supported by high-tech companies. Some financial support for the conference has been given by the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM), GeoHazards International, Tata Indicom and Sphere India. Last year’s conference organized by Responsenet on supply chain for disasters drew 120 people.  Read more... (676 words, 0 images, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

The World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM) is the leading global gathering for emergency professionals from the public and private sectors. The speakers are from all over the world. The networking opportunities are tremendous; 1,800 attendees are expected next year. And Toronto is a spectacular place to visit in the summer.

The theme of the 18^th WCDM from June 15-18, 2008 is “Resiliency – Individual, Community and Business.” If you live in Asia, and you work in emergency response or management, business continuity, risk management, security, disaster recovery or crisis management, WCDM is an opportunity to share what you’ve learned by making a presentation.

Submit your presentation idea by December 2, 2007. You can submit your proposal online: write up to 250 words to describe your presentation, then click on “Call For Papers.”

Would you invite the one person in the world most associated with incompetent flood preparedness and response to be the chairman of a conference on flood preparedness and response? Me, neither.

Here’s the program agenda for a “Flood Fighters” conference that started today in the U.K. It’s a “forum for all agencies to plan and work together,” according to its web site. There’s a concurrent Flood Fighters workshop, targeted at “individuals who will manage teams of responders and rescuers at water and flood incidents.”

The conference chairman is Michael D. Brown, former head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during hurricane Katrina.

You probably remember Mr. Brown and FEMA’s under-funded, uncoordinated, incredibly slow response to the flooding of New Orleans. U.S. President Bush mistakenly – but memorably – said of Brown’s performance: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” That Michael Brown.

Mr. Brown had no emergency management experience prior to joining FEMA as General Counsel in 2001. He had been a lawyer, teacher, legislative staffer and the Judges and Stewards Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. He resigned from FEMA in ignominy after hurricane Katrina. He is now an advisor to a company selling data analysis systems for homeland security.  Read more... (677 words, 1 image, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

I think it disgraceful that a nation that spends USD $275 million per day on rebuilding Iraq cannot clean and paint a dozen, life-saving fire stations in New Orleans in the year-and-a-half since Hurricane Katrina.

So in April I volunteered with Continuity Cares to assist for a day in repair and rehabilitation in America’s home of gumbo, jazz, Fat Tuesday – and oil refining.

Continuity Cares is the public-spirit inspiration of Bob Nakao of Continuity Insights – a controlled-circulation magazine and a genuinely-useful annual BCP conference that I attended a few days earlier – with the sponsorship of French bank BNP Paribas North America and the Sheraton New Orleans hotel.

With about 20 other people, I spent an afternoon at the District 4 firehouse in the Read Boulevard East neighborhood.  Here’s a short slide show (17 photos).

We scraped, sanded and painted the entire inside of the building, helping its firefighters whose “station” has been a trailer since August, 2005. Many of them have been living in trailers, too, because their homes were destroyed.

The firefighter in this picture shows how high the flood waters rose outside the firehouse. Inside, the water was eighteen inches (45 cm) deep – for days.

This is only the twelfth (12^th) of New Orleans’ twenty-five (25) fire stations to be repaired. Half of the city’s stations are still unusable.  Read more... (564 words, 1 image, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

Singapore is preparing for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group meeting in September, locally referred to as “S2006“. 16,000 visitors are expected; lots of companies plan to active their BCP‘s for the event. Public demonstrations are banned in Singapore, but there’s been plenty of preparation for disruptions. Here’s how to handle a phone threat, and this is what to do with a suspicious package.