Last Friday we were in London with version two of our Don’t Panic Guide to Crisis Communications, the first in a series of own branded events we will be holding this year. The original conference took place in Manchester last May and featured ten of the speakers who joined us in London.

Almost one hundred delegates enjoyed presentations from Former BBC journalist Kevin Bocquet, Sarah Dean Forrester of Trimedia Ltd, PR Blogger Stephen Davies of webitpr, Rob Skinner of first direct, crisis and reputation expert Michael Bland, Andy Green of GREEN Communications, Lucy Laville of Leeds Metropolitan University, Paul Kelly CEO of Trimedia Ltd, Louise Oughton of Dacorum Borough Council, Sally Sykes of AstraZeneca, Heather Edwards of Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust and Phil Hall of Phil Hall Associates.

We’re great believers in providing high quality, affordable events and alongside what we believe are very reasonable ticket prices, PDF’s of the presentations have also been made freely available to delegates via a conference specific microsite.

The event took place at the Marriott Hotel Regents Park which is currently undergoing a £10 million refurbishment which sadly meant we couldn’t use the hotel’s restaurant for the delegate lunch on this visit. As always though the hotel’s events team were fantastic and ensured we had a seamless and trouble free day.

We’d just like to express our thanks to all the speakers and delegates who made the conference such a success as well as the ever reliable tech team from LAS who bathed the stage in Don’t Panic pink. Finally a big thank you goes to all the staff at the fabulous Artigiano restaurant in Belsize Park where we held our speaker dinner on Thursday night. If you’re looking for great Italian food this place is a must.

UPDATE - You can now listen to a really useful podcast interview with Sarah Dean Forrester of Trimedia Ltd on the subject of crisis communications at the blog of social media expert and conference attendee Neville Hobson. Also Rob Skinner has posted about the conference on his always good for a read personal blog and Stephen Davies is apparently just lazy these days...