by Claire Fennelow
This week I attended the simplyIC conference, the perfect place to be to keep up to date with all things Internal Comms. simplyIC is Europe’s premier festival for communicators and the digital workplace. The programme has over 30 sessions across two days and in four different rooms. Here, you can learn about the latest tech and tools, improve your professional development through training, including presentation skills and top tips for internal communicators, and you can also get to go behind the firewall and see what brands are doing to elevate employee engagement.
Whilst Internal Comms professionals are not necessarily our core membership, they are very often our members’ clients and it is therefore essential that we keep informed of their issues, concerns and latest developments. Whilst very tech biased (intranet systems and other comms platforms, AI, data etc), the programme of talks and discussion also featured plenty of personal and human relations content.
Frank Wolf, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Staffbase delivered a fascinating keynote about narrative vs storytelling and why narrative should be ‘everything’. Using the Barbie movie to build his case, he had us all on side by the end. Well worth a listen and a reminder that Narrative is King.
I also heard a Case Study on the history of Internal Communications delivered by Northumbria University and the archivist from Boots. It was an absolutely fascinating insight into the origins of what we now know as Internal Comms and how the process became professionalised and embedded in corporate culture. The conference offered a thoroughly engaging and hugely knowledgeable set of speakers who linked a myriad of communications milestones to show the journey and bring it to life.
Once again I was reminded by the need for the brain to be stimulated by thinking outside your usual lane.
