As I wrap up here in San Diego, I wanted reflect on DRJ’s Fall World 2009. It wasn’t hard to see that less people attended than previous years. It wasn’t surprising, with the lack of travel budgets and the state of the economy. The event had many of the same faces from the industry. But I detected a pervasive feeling of angst and frustration that I have not seen at other events this year. People are frustrated – many at being out of work, others at being faced with management that doesn’t recognize their true value to their organizations, and many at being locked into undesirable job situations that have a common theme: a lack of support resources and dollars to do their jobs.
The economy has put our profession under a tough magnifying glass where BCP as cost centers, mass document generation, and expensive solutions with little return are no longer passing muster. It’s a frustrating time, but also presents a unique opportunity to force us to be better – more than just document planners, but professionals who understand the inner workings of our operations and can put the pieces back together during the worst of times. Now more than ever we must be creative – there are those that will pray for the status quo and try to skate by to the end, but as Business Continuity Professionals we are much better than that – let’s not wither away, but prosper as a profession by continuing to make ourselves better – by making our organizations better.
I attended DRJ last year and loved it. i didn’t get a chance to go this year becuase i didn’t get budget request in earlier enough. I learned so much last year there as my first time in attendance. I belive we all have similar challenges in the areas mentioned.
BCP is just not treated as a true profession yet which is part of the problem. We need to improve all our credentially and education. A business would never be with an accountant with a CPA..but we are just not there yet with BCP people with some XYZ credential. That type of thing will help with our endeavors in the long.
As far as attendance, not sure how many were there vs last year. but i suppose it is the quality of the education provided and vendors showing their wares (latter more important) than the number of people. Funny…I needed a bag to go to work today….lot of books and lunch. i picked up my San Diego 2008 DRJ.
Have a great day!
Please visit attend your local chapter of ACP if one can….ACP meeting (at least in Philadelphia) area have been fantastic. Last weeks lunch time meeting had a speaker and presentation, in addition, to a panel discussion of BCP and physical security folks that rivaled that provided at the big conferences. and it was…..free (and had a nice lunch at zero$). :-)
…I just got done talking to a co-worker about all the various BCP and DR guidelines, standards out in the world. it is insane at times…differnt camps, different interests. I told the co-worker about BCPs’ Geonme and she thought it was a way cool concept!!!! :-)
Thanks, Jim! The BCP Genome’s intent was always to cut through the noise by synthesizing all of the BCP standards together sans the interpretation. In the end the myriad of standards and regulations are really suprisingly similar. You’d be shocked by the amount of redundancy. It has always been my personal belief though that the standards should really encourage better preparedness by mandating that businesses prove operational readiness through standardized exercises/test of core industry business functions. For example, show me that you can successufully handle a surge of patients, provide withdrawals to you consumer banking customers, and manufacture essential product. That, rather than something like a “Hazard Vulnerability Assessment” is a true measure of preparedness.
Jim, I agree. The ACP Chapters have been doing a great job at bringing some fantastic speakers and topics to its members. I had a chance to catch up with Brian Mackay of the Liberty Valley Chapter last week and he has some fantastic vision for really getting the word out on topics that can really help us as BC Professionals.
DRJ can definitely be a big help in certain areas. Budgets really put a crimp in everyone’s education this year. Definitely look out for the virtual conferences that are much less and provide the same education on your schedule. I agree with you about others not seeing BCP as a true profession. I think one of the biggest problems is that our profession is defined by documents/plans. By simply mass producing electronic/paper documents, the industry as a whole has really diminished its value. We have been seen in many organizations as technical writers at best and administrative plan generators at worst. It’s hard to see how our plan generation exercise really has any value. To really take the next step we need to show more value and manage risk, rather than dump our big plans onto our organization.