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Scotland Takes the Views of Members.
Earlier this year, the Scottish Regional Committee, took a decision to canvas Membership opinion on the Region's biggest annual event, The Scottish Conference, Exhibition and Dinner. While this has grown significantly over the past three years, it was noted that the daytime events could potentially be attended by many more Members. To find out why some Members attend and others do not and to gain an understanding of what would attract Members, the Region commissioned a survey from a local organisation, Quadrant Care, specialists in Customer Service Programmes. The Region will award prizes to three Members, for taking the time to participate and these will be selected at random by the Company.
15% of the Scottish Membership was contacted by telephone and a series of questions asked, based on whether the Member had attended the event or never attended. The results were
- 15% of those surveyed had attended on at least one occasion.
- 43% who had never attended indicated that this was typically due to timing, diary clash, other commitments.
- 24% couldn't get time off.
- 55% said they would attend if the content was relevant with good quality speakers and topics.
- nearly two thirds of those who had never attended, were however in the "possible or likely" categories for attending this year, subject to the region addressing criteria mentioned for attending.
- other factors affected attendance, such as the day and date, opportunity to network, location. Interestingly, cost was not a major factor affecting the decision to be there.
- 65% of those who had been at least one Conference, said they attended because of content, structure, format and VFM (Value For Money). Visiting the exhibition and networking were also significant responses.
What the Regional Committee and its Conference Planning Group really wanted to know, was what changes should be made to fire the imagination and interest of Members to ensure their being at the 2003 event and beyond. In addition to the above responses, a number of others were extremely valuable in forming a view.
- 61% of Members were looking for relevance to their work activities, with quality of delivery by speaker participants.
- in-depth subject coverage also figured highly 31% but with short, modular type presentations.
- individual Members also wanted to be made welcome.
- some thought that a bigger venue, better located would be more appropriate and convenient and it was clear that some Members highly valued the exhibition element of the overall programme.
It was encouraging to see that of those who attended at least one of the conferences, 94% were in the "possibly", "likely" or "highly likely" categories for attending the 2003 event. This brings out the key point that most Members who have experienced the event have in fact found it worthwhile and from that reinforcing experience, want to come again.
The Region has not been slow to respond to the Survey points as well as taking into account feedback already received from others, including exhibitors. This year's event will be at a larger venue, the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) in Glasgow. The date has been set later, to try to avoid previous date clashes and is the 5 and 6 November 2003 (two day event). The exhibition and conference will be free access. The conference programme will be modular in structure giving all attendees the opportunity to select which modules they want to attend and to plan their overall attendance time between the exhibition and the seminars. There will be no obligation to attend for the full day, it will be possible to dip in and out over the two days duration of the event. The dinner will be held at the end of the first day with likely early closure of the exhibition to accommodate maximum attendance. While subjects for the conference content are still under discussion, the emphasis will be on relevance. The thinking on this will be further directed, by having each of four likely conference areas, specialising in topics relevant to each of the four new Institute Faculties, i.e. Supply Chain, Transport, Resources and Technology.
The view of those involved in organising the event is that the Survey has made a sound contribution, that planning to date already reflects many of the opinions expressed and that development will proceed in accord with what is perceived to be the wishes of Members. A strong appeal is therefore made to Members in Scotland and in other parts of the UK, for support in attending the 2003 event which looks like being the biggest and best yet.
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