Dynamo 22

Last week I was at the Dynamo 22 conference. It was amazing. There is so much pressure on the events calendar now, especially since COVID is now on the back burner, and it is quite hard to stand out from the crowd. But this conference did.

It is some time since I have been actively involved in organising the Dynamo conference. I have been on the selection committee that selects the sessions before but this time I was on the other side of the fence. In the end I was involved in three sessions two online and one in person.

This is what made this year’s conference so different. Rather than having an all day event, as in the past, a decision was made to hold this year’s conference over two half days. Tuesday would be an online event while Wednesday would be in person. 

This was a work of genius. It allowed for a large range of topics to be covered, with the audience able to dip in and out online while the physical event meant we could all get together and talk. This has always, for me, been the main benefit of a conference, the opportunity to rekindle old acquaintances and make new ones. 

The keynote speaker, Sir Jim Mackey, Chief Executive of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, was inspiring, the breakout sessions were amazing and  Susan Bell did a great job of holding it all together. 

The best bit though was the networking over lunch. There were so many people to say hello to that I simply couldn’t get around to them all . Over the next few weeks I will be starting many emails with ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t get to speak to you at Dynamo 22’. 

A measure of a great event is that you leave wanting more. Dynamo 22 was a great event, I take my hat off to the organisers and Beacon House Events and am already looking forward to next year’s conference.