Silke Huber joined FERMA earlier this year as project coordinator. She’s involved in the day to day preparations for the Forum. Here’s her update.  

When visiting the FERMA Forum, I am looking forward to being informed and inspired and networking with people, allowing me to add value to my company upon return.Yvar VAN WEENEN
Risk Manager, Shell International, the Netherlands

For me it’s been a busy summer as the all the work we’ve been doing to prepare for the Forum has come together. One of the most important jobs has been putting together the content for the printed programme. This has meant collecting descriptions, final speaker confirmations, maps and images, checking the listed timings and occasionally having to change them. Getting all the biographies and photos for the speakers and workshop leaders – there are more than 80 of them – took time, and some gentle reminding of the deadline for a few.
I’ve also been coordinating promotional activities with our media partners, such as placing our advertisements, arranging listings of the Forum on their websites and organising the display of publications on site. We’ve had an unprecedented amount of media interest in the Forum this year, and we should have an excellent selection of risk-related magazines and papers available for free on site.

“FERMA is an international platform to meet business partners from all over the world who we work with. I am looking forward attending some interesting and informative workshops and having a lot informative exchanges with other attendees”.
Maximilian TEMPLER Managing Director,
Volkswagen Versicherungsvermittlung, Germany

I’m collecting submissions for what is a sort of speed dating for products and services, the product innovation pitches which will take place during the breaks. Participants will have only three minutes to convince the risk managers that they are worth a follow up. Risk managers will vote for the best presentation and product, and the winner will be announced at the end of the plenary session on Wednesday, 5 October.

These are just a few of the tasks involved in the complex business of organising a successful international event. It’s my first Forum so please come and say hello to me on the FERMA stand. I look forward to meeting you.

Please don’t turn off your mobile phones

Instead of the usual opening request to silence mobiles, session participants will be asked to keep their phones on, so they can ask questions, express their views and vote on polls on the spot via SMS.

There will be a number or website address on display during sessions and activities for comments, questions and voting. Contributions from participants will be displayed on screen for others to respond to.