Mark Spedding provides his personal account of this year’s BHBIA conference held at The Grove Hotel near Watford.
Mark Spedding 
19 May, 2009
BHBIA Annual Conference 2009 – a personal view by Mark Spedding
BHI were out in force for the conference. Jon Chandler and Jen Squire ran
a well-received syndicate session on Understanding the Person behind
the Patient.
Elsewhere, Neil Dobson, Vicky McLellan and I manned our stand throughout the
Agency Fair sessions. All in all we caught up with a lot of people, both established
and new contacts, and from our perspective the conference was a big success.
The theme this year was On The Edge, a timely notion given the edgy times we are all living through, though the conference papers and syndicate sessions placed various different interpretations on the notion of “the edge”. This resulted in a refreshingly broad agenda over the two days of the conference. Indeed, the conference venue, the Grove Hotel, is on the edge of Watford, and the entertainment provided by comedian Bob Mills after the gala dinner was certainly edgy, so the theme extended more widely than just the papers!
Mills was not to all tastes, and neither, talking to delegates, were all the
papers and syndicate sessions. This is a recurring issue at BHBIA (and, previously,
BPMRG) conferences and it will probably never be resolved. The Committee have
a very difficult and largely thankless task in selecting an agenda which will
interest both veterans and newcomers, both agency and company delegates, and
both market researchers and sales analytics professionals – as well as covering
both “big issues” and the specifics of individual projects. I think we should
all approach conference with the view that some papers and sessions will be
more relevant to us than others, and accept that the ones we find less appealing
are of value to people working in different companies or different functions.
I’ve been attending BHBIA/BPMRG events for over 20 years, and still find much
of value in the papers. This year, I was particularly impressed with the questions
on the NHS “choice agenda” raised by Sarah Phillips and Julia Clark of Ipsos-MORI,
the way Alexa Edwards of BMS and Caroline Asquith of Adelphi managed to discuss
the serious topic of HIV patient research in a bright, cheerful and visually
delightful manner, and the wry humour in the paper from Su Sandhu, Jane Scorer
and Dr Alison Bigrigg – humour which did not detract from the important topic
of industry-NHS collaboration.
The BOBI Awards, presented at the Gala Dinner, also emphasised the quality of work being conducted in our industry at present. I sit on the steering group for these awards, and thus get involved in producing the shortlist of papers which then go out to judges for the panel-reviewed awards. I can confirm that the standard of submitted papers this year was very high, so congratulations go out to all the winners. Pfizer’s Mike Goff won two panel-reviewed BOBIs – an exceptional achievement given the overall standards of competition.
One very important session took place after lunch on the second day – a time when energy levels are often low, which is a shame, because the updates on BHBIA initiatives regarding professional ethics (Heike Baumlisberger), Talent Attraction (Elisabeth Roscher-Nielsen) and Business Intelligence Performance Benchmarking (Mike McGahan and Steve Johnstone) are all indicators of just how far BHBIA and conference have moved in recent years. The Committee and the individuals who get involved in BHBIA activities have gone beyond what was once quite a narrow focus on case histories and methodologies, and a clique of “the usual suspects” to create a forward-thinking, business-focused and genuinely inclusive body. Coming back to the conference theme, this attitude will help keep us all on the cutting edge – no bad place to be in the current climate.
So thanks to all involved for a valuable, stimulating conference – even from the point of view of a veteran attendee!
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