Call for Speakers

Business Analysis Conference London 2010

CALL FOR SPEAKERS

Presentation proposals are now being accepted for the Business Analysis Conference London 2010, scheduled for 27-29 September at the Park Plaza Victoria Hotel, London, UK .The conference is produced by IRM UK and the IIBA.

This is an independent event, offering its audience a diverse range of experienced speakers who will provide a broad, practical perspective on Business Analysis. It will offer unparalled opportunities for networking and discussion of Business Analysis issues.

Do you or any of your team have a formal presentation to contribute to this event? All selected speakers will be entitled to attend the event free of charge.

The deadline for submissions is 15 March 2010.

Introduction:
Last year saw the first Business Analysis Conference in the UK. The conference has played a significant part in raising the profile and developing the professionalism of Business Analysis in the UK and Europe.

The UK Chapter International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) plays a key role along with the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, in organising this independent event. The conference also offers unparalleled opportunities for networking and discussion of Business Analysis issues.

We are looking for a range of sessions including standard PowerPoint presentations and proposals for more interactive sessions or workshop style discussion.  

We want to have a good balance across all the tracks of people’s experiences, examples and case studies.

As part of ensuring we have the best possible conference we will be organising meetings (either face to face or tele-conferences) to run through potential sessions to make sure each one fits into the overall track. It will also be a useful opportunity for constructive peer review!

In your submission please state which track you think your proposal fits and why.

Sessions should last for 50 minutes. We are also looking for a few 3 hour or 6 hour workshops to run on the first day.

The proposed tracks:

Techniques for Business Analysis (BA)

  • Investigating the business
  • Working with stakeholders
  • Gap analysis
  • Evaluating options + solutions
  • Defining and managing requirements
  • Realising Benefits
  • Selecting technique(s) from the BA Toolkit
    • In Depth or
    • Broad Guidelines
  • Innovation in the use of techniques e.g.
    • Bringing techniques from outside traditional Business Analysis into BA Work

Shaping the Future of Business Analysis:
(Individual/Organisation/Profession)

  • Responsibilities
  • Ethics
  • Code of Conduct
  • Variants of the BA Role
  • Interdependencies of BAs on other specialisms:
    • Design
    • Communications/Training
    • Finance
    • Strategists
  • Professionalism & Continuing Personal Development
  • Behavioural Skills
    • NLP
    • Personal attributes
  • Raising the profile

Business Agility and Business Analysis

  • Business Analysis within Constraints
  • Creativity/Innovation Options
  • What business agility means for Business Analysts e.g.
    • Confidence to Challenge
    • How Agile are you
  • BA Role in Agile Development
  • Suitability of Agile in BA
  • Incremental Business Change
  • Balancing business objectives
  • People Change
    • Culture
    • Successful implementations
  • Flexibility of approach

Please click here for speaker guidelines, which will help you prepare a successful abstract, and click here to submit your proposal.

Please direct any questions about submissions to Jeremy Hall (jeremy.hall@irmuk.co.uk)

Sponsorship opportunities are available:
Please contact Shane Mcglynn at shane@irmuk.co.uk

Speaker Guidelines for the Business Analysis Conference London 2010

Please read these guidelines carefully before you make your submission, and ensure it reaches us by 15 March 2010.

We are looking for:
a) 50-60 minute conference sessions and Keynotes
b) Pre-conference seminars/workshops (3 hours or 6 hours)

We expect to receive a large number of submissions for this conference, and take a wide range of factors into account in making selections, including the need to provide a balanced programme. A shortlist of the most promising abstracts is sent to a programme committee for revue before a final decision is made.

Please submit your abstract directly on our website using the submission form. You may submit more than one abstract.

Your abstract should keep strictly to the limit of 100 -150 words, clearly outlining your content and including 3-5 bullet points at the end to summarise your key messages.

Bear in mind that your abstract needs to be sufficiently polished for inclusion in the conference brochure and must achieve the following objectives:

  • Provide enough information for us to evaluate your submission relative to others. To aid the evaluation you can include additional relevant information in section 3C of the submission form.
  • Be attractive to conference attendees and help them to select the sessions most valuable to them, given their interests and level of maturity of their BA experience.

Based on previous conference feedback and programme assessments, here are some tips to help you maximise your chances of being selected.

DO:

  • Be specific and concrete about what you will be presenting and how the audience will benefit from it. Use the bullet points to highlight the key ‘takeaways’.
  • Demonstrate real-world achievements, showing examples of BA content if possible, and describing outcomes from applying it.
  • Push the envelope. Aim to stretch the audience with fresh insights and the benefit of your own experience. Or present a topic that would fully engage people at the CIO level.
  • Ensure that your presentation is really relevant to this conference. If your talk majors on a specialised topic (e.g. BPM, information architecture or software), you should position it clearly in an overall business Analysis context.

AVOID:

  • ‘Pitching’ specific products.
  • Exceeding the word count limit.
  • Trying to cover too much ground in the time available.
  • Putting forward unsubstantiated theories or opinions.
  • Using vague abstractions and jargon.

If you have presented recently at other conference on similar subject matter, we suggest that you use section 3C of the submission form to indicate how this presentation is different from what you have presented before.

If you are not sure whether your idea is suitable or not, please feel free to contact us to discuss it before making your submission.

Please note that abstracts which are longer than the specified length may be shortlisted, but will be edited down by us to fit the brochure and presented back to you for approval.

You will be notified whether your submission has been accepted by May 2010.

Click here to submit your proposal.