D&D News March 2007: some networking and contacts
Best Practice Club
At the start of the year, Derek visited our friend Ray Wilkinson at the Best Practice Club. We hadn't seen him for a while, so it was good to catch up with Ray again. We are delighted that, following the meeting, Derek has now become a Trusted Associate of the BPC. Hopefully this will be good for both sides. If you don't know about this organisation that facilitates the exchange of useful improvement information between their members, do look around the Best Practice Club website.
London Excellence
Dave was at a London Excellence meeting in February on the theme of Corporate Social Responsibility. The overwhelming demand for places meant a larger venue than originally planned had to be found. It's an encouraging sign and the mix of speakers and questions hopefully means interest in this topic and Excellence in general is increasing. Well done to Rose and Caroline of London Excellence for organising the afternoon. Details of future London Excellence events, including their 2007 Awards Presentation on Monday 16 July at Carisbrooke Hall, can be found on the London Excellence website.
British Quality Foundation
Derek attended the quarterly meeting of the latest BQF Sponsors' Group which was held in London at Guy Carpenter's offices with the subject of Risk Management. This was another well attended event, with good presentations from three organisations. They included one which had been very directly affected by the Buncefield Fuel Depot explosion in December 2005 - which is the only time you really know how effective your contingency planning has been. (Both of us had been based in the old NatWest Tower in April 1993, when it was devastated by the bomb in Bishopsgate, so some of the issues seemed very familiar.)
Other Very Important People
It was great to hear from Jay Parkhe, our friend in India, that he has recently earned promotion - many congratulations Jay. Derek met up again with Christina Pritchard and learnt more about her expanded job role. We've also had contact again with Dmitri Maslow in Russia, and were amazed to learn that he also knew another friend of ours, Peter Reed, whom we had met when we did some work in Tanzania in 2000. The Excellence world is indeed worldwide, but can be a very small place!
