Valerie Merrill shares her reflections from attending three dynamic conferences, exploring leadership in crisis, the rise of AI in comms and L&D, and the enduring power of real-life connection. Packed with insights and standout moments, it’s a timely reminder of why face-to-face learning still hits differently in a digital world.
We spend a lot of our time in front of our screens, working on content, delivering and on Teams or Zoom and in our hybrid world we can sometimes miss the connections with others. I know that when I return from an in-person meeting, an event or a conference I feel energised, curious and better informed. Tired, of course, but buzzing.
I’m energised because I have listened to and met industry experts, had interesting conversations which have given me more understanding and made me even more curious to read up on a topic or watch videos and listen to podcasts. I also relish meeting with colleagues whom I now see once a year, if I am lucky.
In the last few weeks, I have been excited beyond belief to go to three conferences or events, all of which are new to me. What a feast! And I want to share that feast with you, about the events, speakers and, most importantly, what I learnt.
Confidence in times of crisis
The session I enjoyed the most at The CIPD Festival of Work was Sarah Armstrong Smith of Microsoft. Sarah is a globally recognised expert in resilience and crisis management and spoke about leading with confidence in times of crisis and uncertainty. She explored what it takes to lead effectively during uncertainty and crisis and shared actionable insights on making critical decisions under pressure, strengthening workplace culture, and supporting people through challenging times. This included cyber security and, in particular, the insider threat, which Sarah has written about in her book.
There was a Masterclass from Claire Hodson on about being change ready, where HR leaders are seeing employees struggle with change fatigue and 73% are facing moderate to high stress levels. It’s no surprise then that 54% of those impacted by change are looking for a new job – people have simply been burned one too many times by poor transformation management.
Claire was clear and gave us the statistics which both concern and panic us: 97% of organisations are planning significant transformations in 2025, 75% of large-scale changes fail and 84% of major transformations fail. Ouch.
AI and the world of communications
Another event to delight was Commsverse, a community technology conference focussed on Microsoft Teams, Copilot, Loop, and Dynamics365 Customer Service. It’s supported by Microsoft MVPs, influencers, and other industry experts who volunteer their time to share their expertise.
We went to support Sara Fennah (one of our own) and were not disappointed with her session called “The Tale of Two Copilots: My Personal Fairy Tale”. Sara covered understanding the pros and cons of Copilot and the MS landscape when you are not in your tenant (part of a company setup within the Microsoft environment, e.g. you have an @company name email to access Teams etc).
Tom Morgan ran a session that was technical and challenging, about building Copilot declarative agents, but we hung in there a learnt a ton about creating and registering agents to take on specific workloads. Tom’s Clothes Pilot was about his calendar, the weather and what clothes were available to fulfil his engagements. Excellent idea.
Microsoft Loop was the subject of a session from Piete Op De Beeck. Peter commented of IT departments that “we can no longer ignore Microsoft Loop” and explored how Copilot powered the app to reshape collaboration, from ideation and project organisation and seamless meeting prep and task follow-ups.
To finish our time at the conference was Kevin Kieller, a unified communications, collaboration and technology thought-leader, strategist, and implementation leader and focused on the competition to drive success. Kevin is part analyst and part consultant, which ensures he understand both the big picture and the real-world realities.
AI in the spotlight
The last event I was chairing a workstream at Learning Live AI Edition, where Dr Ashwin Mehta set the scene and inspired us with information and AI. Microsoft had three great speakers in Simon Lambert, Lurlene Duggan and Eileen Mackey Downing, explaining the trend on the future of work with AI and focused on the rise of the frontier firm.
The three speakers I hosted were very different but connected through AI. Julian Stodd of Sea Salt Learning presented the context of the social age as the paradigm of the post-industrial organisation. Extremely detailed and experienced, a legend and guru who definitely gave us much to think on.
Egle Vinauskaite advises on how AI can support scalable learning and performance, boost L&D efficiency, and prepare organisations for enterprise-wide AI adoption. Egle has been researching and publishing industry reports about the state of AI in L&D, which has enabled her to observe, capture and analyse emerging best practices and share them with the wider industry. This was a packed-out session, standing room only, for practical AI in learning and development adoption and it sparked meaningful conversations and change to organisations.
Learning and legacy
All these events led to huge learnings on my side, from the conferences themselves, and the experiences I had there also. Aside from the sessions, speakers and learning snippets, there are also always the meeting of people old and new. The conversations that come from these chance or planned meetings make a huge difference to our encounters on the day.
Yes, remote meetings and hybrid work serve a purpose. But we also need to meet up, brainstorm and learn from each other in this connected world. We need to Connect more.
Valerie Merrill is Director of Merrill Consultants
