ACMP Africa Conference 2011
The second annual Association of Change Management Practitioners (ACMP) Africa conference, held from 16 – 18 November 2011, has been widely regarded as a resounding success. The event, held at the Grayston Southern Sun Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg was exceptionally well attended with some 200 speakers and delegates representing an unprecedented number of international visitors, notably from the United States, Canada, Croatia, Kenya, and Tanzania. South African delegates included a wide representation of South African Change Management professionals in independent practice, corporate and public sector organisations.
This year’s conference theme “the future of Change Management”, focused on providing delegates with forward thinking and progressive approaches to the role of change management in business and organisations. The two-day packed programme featured an extensive range of diverse and highly experienced leaders and speakers in the fields of business, management consulting, organisational development and change management, as well specialists and motivational speakers in behavioural change and transformation. Key note speakers included Toni Fourie, CEO of nEllerines Holdings, Clem Sunter, Dr Shane Hodgson, Kerry Brown and Sanja Kopajtic of SAP (International) Doug Walker of Woolworths Financial Services, and Steff du Plessis of the Effectiveness Group. Other notable speakers included: Rick Rothermel, Director of ACMP Global, Prof Dirk Geldenhuys and Freddie Crous, Prof Andy Andrews, Stacey Fraser of Accenture South Africa, Jonathan Weinstein, President, Line of Sight and Robert Ryan, Principal IBM Global Business Services, Virgina USA.
The programme also accommodated Channel presentations and discussions on both days, providing delegates with a choice of attending four of eight different topics and speakers presenting highly practical case studies and best practice methodologies.
Of particular value was the excellently prepared and presented addition of the Pecha Kucha - 20 slides in 6 minutes and 40 seconds – which provided no less than 6 additional speakers on both days.
The conference was preceded by two half day workshops: “Making Molehills out of Mountains – A Framework for Developing and Nurturing Organisational ChangeAbility”, presented by ChangeWright; and “The Business Transformation Approaches with SAP, an overview of SAP’s latest Organisational Change Manager and Business Transformation methodologies, presented by the SAP global team.
The networking event on day one afforded delegates with the ideal opportunity to network and build new business relationships. Sponsors of this year’s event included: ACMP Global, Picouseware, Changewright, Automatic Printing, ChangeAbility, The Change Leaders, JvR Consulting Psychologists, Knowledge Resources Global Organisation, Design Summit II, Mindpeace and Southern Sun.
Overall, the conference received rave reviews from attending delegates. Here is some of what they had to say:
Overall an excellent program; it’s been a very amazing conference.
I will never miss any other conference to be held in future. This conference was mind-blowing, an eye opener and so relevant.
I especially appreciated the variety of content presented during the entire conference. The conference helped to clarity many areas in my understanding, provided brand new knowledge of UGR & biopsychology. This was wonderful experience.
The caliber of people who presented were beyond my expectations. I am delighted to have heard multiple views on the challenges of change management and that it means different things to different people.
Very well done! Much better than any other academic conference I have attended. Reasonably priced too which makes a big difference if a company is not sponsoring one’s attendance. Thank you.