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Presented by: Jonathan Hemus, Managing Director, Insignia Crisis and Reputation Management Limited COVID-19 has reinforced the criticality of getting communication right in a crisis, yet many organisations continue to make the same predictable mistakes in their crisis response. As a consequence, reputations, organisations and their stakeholders are unnecessarily harmed.  As the guardians of organisational reputation, it’s about time communicators played a critical role in ensuring their organisations avoid these crisis management traps.   With 30 years’ experience working with organisations in crisis, Jonathan Hemus knows the most common crisis management traps and their potentially disastrous consequences. This session will reveal his ten golden rules to avoid these catastrophic pitfalls and ensure a purposeful and surefooted crisis response.   Through Jonathan’s insights from the frontline and participation in a scenario-based exercise, attendees will learn how to deploy practical, powerful tools, provide sound counsel to leaders confronting a crisis and reduce the impact on both their organisation and its stakeholders. Read more

Presented by: Richard Goring, Director, BrightCarbon Remote meetings are here to stay, as is the Zoom fatigue that many experience. The importance of compelling content is becoming ever more apparent, but trying to do that with the same tools you’ve always had can be hard, right? Wrong. It's about time that people knew how to create presentations that actually work. And, amazingly, PowerPoint can do that. It gives you terrific tools to create the kind of dynamic, visual content that you need to capture your audience’s attention. With functions that allow interactive sequences, navigable content to respond to your audience, and pop quizzes for quick and easy engagement. Come along to this masterclass packed with live demonstration of how to create compelling presentations for successful meeting in a virtual environment, all using standard PowerPoint. No, really. Read more

Presented by: Priya Bates, Co-founder, A Leader Like Me & Advita Patel, Director, CommsRebel 2020 highlighted both challenges and opportunities for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Starting with protests and performative gestures, individuals and organizations started asking for performance and proof of true change personally and professionally.  A Leader Like Me, with its roots in a connection that started at the 2019 IABC World Conference in Vancouver has evolved into a business launched during pandemic supporting women of colour and amplifying diverse voices around the globe.   In this session, we'll discuss: - The impact when employees and customers can't see A Leader Like Me in their organizations - How to manage imposter syndrome and build confidence through community  - How to turn awareness into action when it comes to diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging - The important role of communication professionals and the profession itself in supporting and driving change  Individually and collectively, it's about time we drive needed change. Read more

Speaker: Jenifer Bice, Senior Director - Event Solutions, Walmart Do you have enough TIME? Do your audiences? Are you making your content relevant in these days of Zoom fatigue to capture that precious TIME? We’ve all made the shift to virtual over the past year +, and in this session you’ll learn from Walmart, the world’s largest company, about why it was named one of the 10 most innovative brands in events in 2020.   You’ll get ideas, tips and real examples about planning virtual events, engaging audiences, infusing creativity and keeping their attention. Because it’s about time we learn from each other and deliver virtual events that engage, inspire, and feel real and meaningful – without creating fatigue. Together, we’ll look at how events are evolving and how we’ll take what we’re learning now into the future, when we can be in person once again. Read more

Speaker: Roxy Tomacder, Corporate Communication & Aloha Experience Manager, King's Hawaiian What's W.A.T.A!? As communications professionals, we are like "ninjas" behind the scenes defeating challenges and with no expectation for praise. In addition, we are constantly called upon to meet the needs of multiple (if not all) departments within our organizations that we lose sight of our purpose.  W.A.T.A! is an acronym representing foundational elements to trigger a focused communications plan. In this session, you're invited to learn this method and apply it to any future communications projects!  Read more

Speaker: Diana Hong, Managing Director, CRA, Inc. What the research and our experiences show is that during virtual work, our networks narrow down - our strong ties get stronger and our weak ties get weaker. Even within a team, we find that our day to day fills from more meetings with those whom we closely collaborate with and little to no interaction with others we used to see in hallways, break rooms, cafeterias, near the printer or coffee machine. But research also shows creativity and career opportunities come from casual collisions - from the expanded network beyond immediate connections or people you know in passing. So how do we reconcile this? We're in an era of work that means it's about time to better leverage hybrid or fully remote work environments. In this session, we'll cover pointers from academia, real-life examples, and suggestions for organizational communications leaders through presentation, exercises, breakout sessions, and live polling. Read more