View from the top: Strictly Surprises!

I can’t tell you how excited I am for next week, and our Strictly Highways ‘Collaboratively Speaking’ event in Blackpool.

There is excitement with our team, and it’s great to see the hard work coming to fruition. Susanne, Kerry, Charlotte, Shelley, Claire, Adam, Emily, Karla, Keely and Alec have all pulled out the stops to make this year’s (bigger) event a fantastic experience. Sadly, it will be Alec’s last Strictly as part of the LCRIG team, but we wish him all the best for the future and the development of his publications.

Back to Strictly, there are some great sessions that we’ve pulled together this year and I must thank our board members Carol Valentine (Kent CC), Dwayne Lowe (Bolton Council), Sean Rooney (Oxfordshire), Andy James (Cormac) and our Chair, Martin Duffy, for helping to choose the sessions this year. But just like children you can’t pick a favourite, I don’t mean a board member, I mean a session next week that I’m most looking forward to.

This year, as the theme is collaboration, it was important to have speakers talk with their partner organisations. With this in mind, I am looking forward to sessions from Lincolnshire, all the panel sessions (we don’t script these) so anything can be said – I love this element of the unknown and the DfT sessions which are taking place on Thursday afternoon are going to reveal some exciting things. I will be watching the reactions of the audience with great interest. The EDI session will be delivered by our own Karla Shorrock, who many of you will remember from her first ever experience last year. Karla is going to talk about some results from our project with Innovate UK, TTF and DfT.

Finally, in addition to the plans for Strictly, I am also hoping for some bonus news. With the Party conference season in full flow, I am hoping we might be able to link with some possible announcements next week – but with politics involved anything can happen!

See some of you next week, and of course at Highways UK too!