Thursday 19 April 2012

Revealed – the list of British data protection events

The best kept secret in town is about to be revealed. Believe it or not, there is a web page somewhere on the internet that sets out to list forthcoming events that are likely to be of interest to members of the British data protection community. And, there’s another web page that contains an archive of recent events, so you know what you’ve missed. It was created at the end of February, with no publicity at all, and is now ready for a little more public exposure.

The aim is that conference organisers will use it to check whether the event they are planning is likely to attract the right sort of delegates, given other events that are also being planned around that time. And, it is hoped that data protection officers will use it as a sort of social diary to check when they are next likely to bump into their friends.

The archive already records 24 data protection events that have been held since the end of February. But all is not lost – there are another 21 data protection events that have yet to take place in 2012. And more will be added to the list, as the owner of the website gets to learn about them.

Please feel free to check back every now and again to see what’s being arranged. And, if you are a conference organiser, please feel free to get in touch with the owner of that website to ask for your event to be listed. It’s a free listings service, so if you ask nicely, I’m sure details of yours will be promoted, too.

If nothing else, it gives ammunition to those who argue that we Brits really do care about data protection. After all, if we didn’t care, then why are so many events being held - if not to meet the obvious needs of those who are evidently very happy to attend them?

The only downside, as far as the event organisers are concerned, is that it might give me the opportunity to create an awful limerick or two in honour of the efforts that some of them take to spread the data protection word. So, you have been warned – if you are keen to arrange data protection events, you may well be on the receiving end of doggerel as awful as this:


AN ODE TO SPEECHLY BIRCHAM

Those attending a Speechly Bircham data protection webinar
Will encounter an experience quite spectacular.
They’ll hear Robert Bond and his chums
Offering positive outcomes
Improving their knowledge of stuff that was previously quite granular.


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