Conferences

There are now four key international ideas / employee involvement conferences each year:

ideasUK – November

EIA (North America) – September

Ideas Arabia (Dubai) – April

DiB (Germany) – May (mainly in German)

with two more gaining prominence:

INSSAN (India) - February

Innovacteurs (France) – December (mainly in French)

The interaction between these events and their organisers (particularly with the first four) has resulted in qualitative improvements in format and content all round. Still to gain a foothold are the extensive inter-membership opportunities for wider benchmarking. Over the years I have been fortunate to interact with many non-UK organisations and found it most invaluable. This is an area we will work on for the future.

Ideas Arabia

So what do you get at an Ideas Arabia Conference? Well I’m not going to reel of the speakers or programme, you can see that for yourself at http://www.dqg.org/dqg/subgroups_view.asp?subgroupid=8 under 3^rd International Conference 2008.

What I can tell you is that it was a well facilitated mix of international speakers covering all aspects of the conference theme ‘innovation’. Ranging from the CEO of the local company building the innovative Palm islands through various vendors and consultants to scheme practitioners, the speakers rang the changes and kept the interest of delegates throughout.

At each break delegates were well watered, fed and informed by a well laid out area adjacent to the main conference room with scheme and vendor displays around the walls and refreshments in the centre.

Delegates finished conference with a coach tour of the Palm Jumeirah (what an impressive construction) and on the first evening the overseas speakers were taken to the Heritage Village, Dubai which gave us a brilliant insight into the incredible ‘journey’ Dubai has undertaken in such a short time. Hopefully I can suppress any attempts to put the camel pictures on this site!

Being the third conference the organisers and delegates were clearly getting into their stride. The atmosphere was friendly, the organisation efficient and we were left after two days with that great feeling that you had learnt something and enjoyed doing it. Well done Ideas Arabia!

Andy Beddows

Conference Charity

For many years the members of ideasUK have held a prize draw as part of the Awards Dinner Celebrations. With prizes donated by both our venue hotel and members the money raised from delegates each year has been donated to a charity.
For the last two years all the proceeds have gone to local Chester children's charities - in a most cost effective way.

In order to get every penny raised to the charity our Vice Chairman, Jorn Lovstrom, asked for a 'shopping list' of needed items and then spent the proceeds direct on buying those items. For Conference 2007 the recipients of the £1000 raised were the Children's Ward at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

In early 2008 on behalf of the Association, our Chairman, Andy Beddows, visited the hospital together with the Crowne Plaza General Manager, Mark Thacker, to present them with a Day Bed (converts from comfortable day chair to bed at night for parents staying with a child) and a portable DVD Player with a selection of DVDs.

Again we thank the prize draw sponsors, particularly Emitates, Jumeirah & Crowne Plaza and look forward to another successful prize draw in November this year.

Well done Sponsors! Well done Delegates! And a Big Thank You from the Hospital!

Andy

International Ideas Week

Well what a week that was! It was always going to be ambitious running 4 breakfast seminars in 4 cities over 4 days.

This year we decided to do something a little different for International Ideas Week and hold a series of breakfast seminars around the country to celebrate Ideas Week. We held events in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cardiff during the week and although the weather tried to put a dampener on the events, they turned out to be very successful.

Having being involved with ideas programmes now for over 7 years, I am still amazed at the appitite people have for developing innovation and creativity within their organisations. I met some really interesting people last week and it was great to hear the stories and anitdotes they had regarding working within their organisations.

Part of ideasUK objectives is to promote staff engagement and recognition and during the seminars last week I think we are starting to get the message across.

2008 looks to be a great year for innovation and for ideasUK!

Anthony

Welcome to our Blog!

Firstly I would like to welcome you to the ideasUK blog, for weeks now we have been debating the benefits of issuing a formal newsletter to our members. However, in a flash of brilliance, I thought this would be a much better idea as it allows instant feedback and also allows us to add stories and news as it happens.

Over the coming months, we will be adding articles to the blog that will relate to developing innovation and creativity within the workplace.

Anthony