Welcome to HESPA’s 2023 Autumn 'All-In' Conference which is about the role of strategic planning as a joining force; connecting the dots and bringing people and projects together to meet overall strategic aims.
The role of a strategic planner is not easily defined. It spans a variety of territories and crosses multiple intersections, uniting and aligning colleagues and activities to meet common goals. It is a challenging, stimulating and hugely interesting job which draws on a diverse skillset, including investigative prowess and the ability to translate and interpret large information sets in accessible ways for a variety of audiences. It involves collaborative working, engaging a wide array of stakeholders on numerous topics and themes, and seeking buy-in for cross-institution strategic initiatives.
Planners are required to be jacks of all trades, often putting their hand to any work which comes their way. And faced with a hostile economic and political environment, they do all of this with reduced capacity and in increasingly challenging circumstances. In recent years their professional spectrum has grown broader and we hope to have captured this in our conference programme this autumn.
Under the main umbrella theme, we have broken the event into sub-themes, one per day, as follows:
Day 1
Ensuring organisational stability and resilience - anticipating and preparing for future challenges and disruptions
Day 2
Joining the dots for strategic coherence - the evolving role of planners
Day 3
Finding your place, serving your community and retaining your competitive edge
We hope that our programme is varied enough to have something for everyone. It is certainly a good representation of the breadth of work in which planners are involved, and highlights some of the key themes and challenges of our time. You can see the full programme by clicking the tab on the right hand side, where we will be adding final session synopses and speaker details in the coming days. In case it’s helpful, you can also download a summarised PDF version which can be attached to an email to share with colleagues.
We are very excited to hear from a fantastic line-up of speakers and to welcome our members back for a jam-packed three days of learning, sharing and discussion.
We are again using our trusted online conferencing platform – Hopin – so the usual virtual networking and exhibition will be available for those who are interested. Hopefully, by now, most of you are familiar with the way it works, including how to join sessions in different locations and effective use of the Chat, Q&A and Direct Message functions. However if you are new to Hopin, or would like a refresher on how it all works, you can watch our handy introduction to Hopin video here.
Last, but not least, we are – as ever – truly grateful to our loyal supporters for their continued sponsorship and encouragement. In what has been a particularly difficult year, they have maintained their support and stood with us, and we are so thankful. You can find out more about our conference supporters via the tab on the right. Please make sure you make time to speak to them during the networking sessions and attend their invaluable business sessions, which are usually co-presented with a case study university.
If you have any questions about the conference please do get in touch with us at info@hespa.ac.uk
We look forward to seeing you on Hopin in November!
