It’s become obligatory for politicians to produce 100-day reports about the whirlwind of activity and progress they’ve overseen since taking office.
Well, I’m not a politician, so I’m taking the slight liberty of getting my report in a little earlier – 65 days – but the common factor here is, there’s been a lot going on.
Firstly, we’ve been doing the initial planning on this year’s Academy. Here’s the good news, and some details of the changes we’ll be making to the format.
- We’ll be in person this year, but we also plan to offer a hybrid option.
- Academy will be a one-day event, and it will be held in central London. (This actually follows your feedback and preferences from last year’s online event.) It will be held w/c 28 November, and we will confirm the date and venue for you in the next couple of weeks.
- Lastly, this year’s Academy agenda will focus entirely on LOCAL public services. We have enjoyed a successful relationship with the Government Communications Service in running Academy over recent years, but because of reorganisation within the Cabinet Office, we will be locally focussed this year, involving our partners and collaborators from across local public services. We know this reflects a lot of the feedback we’ve received from members, and we are really looking forward to the event. I hope we’ll be able to present you with a really compelling, relevant agenda.
We have said goodbye and thank you to the PRCA, who have been our ‘hosts’ for the past 4 years, looking after LGcomms administration, membership and general management as well as supporting events and activities.
Last week, we appointed CJAM, who are a full-service association membership company, to look after such matters for the coming year. We will be maintaining our successful relationship with the LGA for website, social media and membership comms support.
The changeover means there has been a slight delay of a few weeks in LGcomms issuing invoices for annual membership – these will be with you in the next few weeks. The good news is that for 2022-23, there will be no increase in annual membership, maintaining our commitment to providing the best possible value for our membership.
We also re-established running our seminar programme in real life – with a terrific campaign masterclass in London. In July, we are in the fine city of Sheffield for a session on social media. Meantime, we’ve been continuing our online webinars thanks to the support of our commercial partners. We’ll be developing a programme of bite-sized ‘perfect for practitioners’ webinars in the Autumn, as the format is proving popular with you.
Next on the webinar list is a session for social media practitioners on how to flourish under pressure, presented by our partners at SoCrowd. Check it out here via the link here Events – LGcomms
We’ve been working hard on an important and major survey, which will be launched next week, helping us benchmark where we are as public service communicators on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. It’s the largest piece of work of this kind ever undertaken in our sector. Please do take the time to complete it – it will be crucial to helping inform further work going forward.
Andy Allsopp is Chair of LGcomms