Wednesday 23 November 2011

Of Annual Reviews - the then and the now

It's our second and final Annual Review of Employment Law NI conference in Belfast today. We're expecting over 200 people to attend.
Our first ever Annual Review conference was held in the Holiday Inn Express in 1998 and was a much different affair and experience to the one on today. Today's will feature one very experienced Chairperson, upwards of 15 speakers, 10 hosters and as many exhibitors not to much a huge number of hotel staff running about the place to keep the event in motion.
In 1998, it featured just 3 speakers one of whom (me) also did registration, helped served the teas and coffee at the breaks and also chaired the event.
What I did too was to act as a beautiful assistant to one of the speakers who couldn't present and work the acetates on the OHP at the same time.  I duly parked myself next to it and put on the next acetate each time she nodded. The problem was that the OHP had seen better days and after just 15 minutes of activity it was beginning to over heat. As she spoke I fanned the damn thing furiously to cool it down. When she nodded I stopped and got back to what I should have been doing. Convinced the OHP was going to catch fire I nervously urged her session to finish as quickly as possible so we could switch the awful contraption off during the break and give it (and indeed me) time to cool down.

Oh yes, things have changed a lot since our first Annual Review


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