The Failover Plan Podcast Shane Mathew, Leader and Business Continuity/ Crisis Management Consultant

Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts. Today on the podcast, we’re talking with James MacDonnell - Director, Crisis Management and Business Continuity at BDO USA. James is a risk management, business continuity, and crisis management professional with more than 18 years of experience helping Fortune 100 clients and federal agencies prepare for and respond to crises and emerging risks. But what he’s especially good at is developing ways to gamify business continuity activities. You’re going to want to hear how it works and the benefits it has brought to many programs. And you’ll even get to hear my experience of gamifying my BIA collection.

Industry Groups are an essential part of any profession. They allow practitioners and thought leaders to share knowledge and generate ideas with their colleagues in a collaborative setting. However, a new generation is making up an increasingly large percentage of the workforce — one that brings with it new priorities and ideas that don’t necessarily fit the mold of current formats. This week on the podcast, we’re going to explore the impact that the next generation of professionals are having on the business continuity industry.

In this episode of the podcast, we’re talking with Michael Crooymans, the Global Resilience Officer for Signify (previously known as Philips Lighting). His current focus is establishing and implementing the Global Resilience program which focuses on improving the maturity of Business Continuity and crisis/major incident management in the organization. However, he’s also well known for his considerable efforts in building the business continuity professional practices through his volunteering. We will get to hear how he's applied that work into his professional life.

In this 2 part series on the podcast, we are going to hear from both the Crisis Manager directly liaising with the government, and also the person who experienced it directly. Both of these individuals were exposed to the same crisis, a kidnapping event, but from two very different perspectives. One having to deal with it from outside, the other one from inside.

So this week on the podcast we’re holding the first of hopefully several round table discussions with some well known voices within business continuity. Today's  conversation explores how COVID has changed many BC professional’s worldviews as inspired many to question how the industry will need to address various parts of the profession as we move forward.

This week on the podcast, we’re going to speak with a practitioner who faced the challenge of needing a BIA tool. But when she saw that a BC software wasn’t in the cards, she created her own! We’re speaking with Michelle Marx, who is the Resilience and Business Continuity Manager at Transport for London. 

Michelle’s recently unveiled her latest version of her homegrown BIA tool, which is powered by Microsoft’s Power Apps - an off-the-shelf tool many companies use to create homegrown applications for their teams. We get to understand her development process and see if this is something others may wish to explore further for their own programs.