Auditel National Conference 2007

The last couple of weeks have been very hectic at Auditel, which is why we’ve had a short blog hiatus. The reason for all the activity was our annual National Conference, held at the Welcombe Hotel Spa and Golf Club in Stratford Upon Avon on Friday. For all sorts of reasons, the National Conference is the highlight of the Auditel year and it was really satisfying to see so many consultants at an event with a really energetic, lively buzz about it.

Like any conference, the bulk of the day was devoted to presentations and workshops designed to inform and educate our delegates. These included updates on new opportunities in the energy and communications markets, as well as a presentation from DEFRA about Carbon Reduction Commitment, a new, mandatory emissions trading scheme for large commercial and public sector organisations. Our keynote speaker was Mike Southon, author of the Beermat Entrepreneur, sales guru and charismatic professional speaker. In the course of two hours, he entertained, educated and inspired us to double our sales and network more effectively, in what was by far the most popular session of the day. We were also joined by Nick Arding OBE, who told us the tale of his 2003 Everest expedition and his team’s dramatic rescue, at 8,000 metres, of two fellow climbers. It was an amazing and compelling story, accompanied by moving and awe-inspiring photos from the roof of the world. While his story doesn’t appear to have much to do with running an Auditel business (there’s very little chance of frostbite when working from home, for example), the leadership skills and determination exhibited by Nick and his team provided an inspirational and uplifting end to the day.

Once the formal proceedings were out of the way it was our chance to relax, socialise and have some fun at the black-tie gala dinner. We were joined for dinner by some of the suppliers who sponsored our summer Supplier Exhibition (an annual ‘mini conference’ at which supplier-run workshops take centre stage) and during the course of the evening, we ate, drank and were (in some cases, very) merry. It was to this raucous background that we presented our annual awards to consultants who have made particularly special or noteworthy contributions to the Auditel network during the year. In total, we gave ten awards, including the inaugural Tim Rix Memorial Award. Tim was a popular and highly-esteemed member of our network who we lost to prostate cancer at the beginning of this year and it is testament to both him and the winner, Daryn Dodge, that this presentation earned the loudest round of applause all day. Tim was also the inspiration behind our charity raffle and auction, which raised over £2,000 for the Prostate Cancer charity. Most of the prizes for the raffle, as well as the very generous auction lot of two 3-day tickets in the Luffield Grandstand for the 2008 British grand prix, were donated by our supplier sponsors and for this we are very grateful.

All in all, this year’s conference was a really successful and fun event for consultants, invited guests and the head office team, and while it has left some of us a bit jaded and tired, it was a fitting grand finale event to a very busy and successful year.