Spring and autumn are conference seasons, times when summer and winter holidays don’t clash with the well-established and often much anticipated chances to get together with people in a similar line of work. Often events are close to each other in the calendar, competing for diary space and expense account budget but they provide opportunities to learn, share information and maintain those personal interactions that we humans enjoy.
Seeing a wide range of people in a short period of time, perhaps over consecutive events, also highlights trends in attitudes and a catch-phrase I am hearing a lot at the moment is “pre-competitive collaboration” – let’s call it PCC. In these times of anti-trust regulations (is anyone else following the USA Bumblebee tuna company legal action?), you could be forgiven for running a mile if asked to sit down with competitors but, fortunately, there is enough wisdom around to realise some problems (a) cannot be solved by individual companies and (b) in no way constitute price fixing. Of course it helps if a group consists of buyers and sellers, and not just sellers alone, but these PCC mechanisms offer a way for industry to solve problems at a speed that would impossible to do otherwise.