Last week, I was lucky enough to attend BA Conference Europe 2024 in London. This is the third year in a row that I’ve attended, and the turnout this year was brilliant (almost 600 BA professionals!).
Conference is a pretty full-on experience, with a vast range of workshops, presentations, and activities on offer, and the social aspect is massively important too. Coffee breaks, lunchtime buffets, and even karaoke(!), all provide loads of opportunities to meet and chat with fellow BAs.
Now the dust has settled, I’ve shared a few of my experiences and reflections below.
First time conference speaker!
I was really chuffed to be selected as a speaker for the event. My chosen topic was one very close to my heart: getting involved in the BA Community. I shared my own journey (from lonely BA to having a fantastic network of peers!) as well as my tips on how people can start to get more involved themselves.
While I’ve done a fair bit of public speaking in recent years, this actually the first time I’ve just stood at the front of a room and talked at people for 40 minutes!
I’d spent the last few months attempting to assemble a coherent presentation. My track leads, Jonathan Hunsley and Pip Hall, were hugely helpful in getting me prepared and polished. Their support, and just a few dry-runs with some friendly audiences, ensured I got through the session in one piece!
A few surprises
I won’t try and share everything I saw or heard as with so many great speakers and the vast amount of quality content, I could go on for pages and pages. Instead, I want to share a sample of the things that surprised or delighted me.
Conference keynotes are typically engaging and motivating, but they don’t often leave me thinking about actions I want to take as soon as I get home! Investigative journalist Geoff White gave a lively talk about cybercrime, and considered how business analysis could prevent it. Aside from how great it was to hear someone “outside” business analysis demonstrate they clearly understand what we do, Geoff’s talk inspired a whole bunch of questions for me to start asking clients as soon as I got back to the day-job.
Danny Kalkhoven spoke about his passion for photography and how he achieves great results with a “£5 camera”. He drew parallels to how we deploy tools and techniques in our business analysis work, and argued that we shouldn’t reach for complex and technical approaches in every situation. His tool selection model – itself disarmingly simple – really stuck a chord with me and made me reflect on the techniques I use with different stakeholder groups. Having not met Danny before, I’d selected his session from the agenda options on a bit of a whim, so it was great to come away from the talk with ideas bubbling away.
A particularly lovely surprise was seeing some of my BA buddies doing their first conference talks; all of the worries and “pre-match nerves” they had confessed to beforehand seemed to fade away once they started talking, and their presentations were slick, fluent, engaging, and really well-received by audiences. I felt hugely proud for them!
I love getting free stuff, and this conference was a great opportunity to bag some merch from the various organisations and groups present. Much of this stuff falls within the category of “nice, but essentially trivial”, so I was delighted to discover that the free ‘Business Analysis Toolkit’ booklet from AssistKD is actually a tiny gem of a freebie! It contains instructions and examples for deploying a whole range of business analysis techniques. Being so small and compact, all the content has been super-distilled. I ended up reading the whole thing cover-to-cover while waiting for my train home!
What I got from Conference
Having the opportunity to present at Conference as a speaker was brilliant – and something I’d recommend to any fellow BAs that think they may have something to share. The journey from initial idea to receiving applause can feel really daunting at times, but there’s great support and the audiences are the nicest you’ll find anywhere! The act of building my presentation also helped me crystalise my thoughts on what I want for myself and the BA Community, which will really help me in thinking about how I want to direct my time and efforts.
I find attending Conference to be a brilliant energiser. I come away full of ideas and insights I can start applying in my consulting work. However, connecting (and re-connecting) with fellow business analysis professionals is the biggest win for me.
Since I started “getting out there” in the BA world, I’ve met loads of people around the UK and beyond, and from all kinds of backgrounds and industries. Conference is a great opportunity for me to catch-up with many of my BA buddies, and also to make new connections. I spent a lot of time introducing people I knew from different spaces to each other, and it was lovely to see others growing their own networks.
What next?
I’m hoping to share my presentation online in the coming months. If there’s one downside to the conference experience, it’s that its reach can be limited by cost and practicalities of attending in-person. Virtual presentations can be made available to a much wider audience, and it would be great if I can inspire more of my BA peers to get involved in the community.
I’ve already got some ideas bubbling away for next year’s Conference submissions, and a collaboration with a BA buddy could be on the cards too!