FS 66 Facilitate 2024: Growing Together with Paul Brand

In this episode Helene talks to Paul Brand, Director of Risk Solutions and part of the IAF England and Wales Leadership Team, Board member and conference team member.

They talk about 

• The IAF England and Wales facilitators and friends Facilitate 2024 Conference (April 26th & 27th 2024) and what it is all about.

• Who is on the organising team and what Paul's role has been

• What is different from last year's conference
• What kinds of sessions we can expect
• What he is looking forward to
• A bit about the participants some of whom are coming from outsde the UK
• How the IAF England and Wales conferences have grown over the years and what makes them successful
• "it is a bit like a buffet and having taste of this and a taste of that."
• "what really makes me happy about the whole thing, and inspired by it, is watching people enter into it and throw themselves into it. Watching them having conversations with people they've never met and would never meet and, and go away taking whatever it is they've taken from the conference". 

A full transcript is below.

Links

Today’s guest was Dr Paul Brand

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drpaulbrand/

paul.brand@risksol.co.uk 

https://risksol.co.uk/ 

Today’s subject

The Facilitate 2024 Conference

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/facilitate2024-growingtogether-tickets-733547288687?aff=oddtdtcreator 

To find out more about the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter

https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales 

The Facilitation Stories Team

Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/ 

Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to facilitation stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helene Jewell and today I'm talking to Paul Brand,a management consultant whose work focuses on public policy.

He often works on long term engagements across entire sectors for multi organisation communities, and uses facilitation extensively in his work.

He's also an IAF England Wales board member, certified professional facilitator and a member of the conference planning team. Welcome, Paul. Good morning.

It is morning. It is morning. Good.

It is morning. It is morning. So my first question is just to ask you, really to tell us a little bit more about you as a facilitator and your involvement in the IAF.

So I came into facilitation like a lot of people, not quite realizing I was doing it, doing a