MEMBERS IN PRACTICE
NEWS August 2012
Chairman’s note Dear practitioner friends, It was good to see so many of you at Heythrop Park for the MiP conference in June. We have been poring over your feedback forms with interest. It is of course nice to get praise and we got lots of that, but the main purpose of the feedback is to get constructive criticism so that we can better meet your expectations next year. Some of the issues raised however are difficult to respond to, such as: • Location of the venue. Everyone liked Heythrop Park as a venue but its location does not suit everyone, particularly MiPs in the North, Scotland and Ireland. Our answer to that is to hold more regional CPD events. • Sales pitches. Naturally we don’t always like being overtly ‘sold to’ at an event we pay to join. However the MiP Panel is commited to running the conference on a break even basis and it is quite a challenge to square this with affordability. Most of our speakers kindly give us their time for free so in return we give them some latitude in promoting their ‘thing’ which some of you also find useful and relevant. In total the conference costs £50,000 to put on. We ask you to pay £30,000 of this and the balance of £20,000 comes from sponsors. We are currently working on ways to run more events round the country, namely regional CPD and networking events for practitioners and self-employment information events for ordinary employed members. We are setting up two groups to add to the existing conference planning group: one to organise area events and another to develop CPD content: • Conference planning group • CPD development group • Area events group If you would like to contribute in any way, please contact me at ray@baxterworld.com and I will discuss what would be involved.
Ray Baxter Chairman, MiP Panel