When the stars align, your career, work life, financial concerns, friendships, home life, and health, all run smoothly and 
without incident. We recognize that this is not always the case. The unexpected and unplanned-for occur in any and all of these areas from time to time. Sometimes, many of the moving parts in your life seem out of sync, causing considerable angst and anguish. In our jobs as BCP folks, we strive to keep the stars aligned at work and sometimes “think BCP” while managing the essential parts of our personal lives.
When bad things happen at home (to us or our neighbors), we seek help or help as we can. I have spoken about how Sandy has impacted so many in the Northeast. That, of course, is the bad news. The good news is that there are many stories of heroism and helping out that are extraordinary and heartwarming. Volunteerism can be inspiring and wonderful. And it’s what we are called to do.
When bad things happen at work, we fire up our continuity of operations program and seek to minimize impact to core processes while protecting staff and the community. Ours is a complicated field sometimes – what with all 10 professional practices requiring attention to get our resiliency model right. BCP isn’t always “common sense” as some imply. If that were true, everyone would have viable and actionable plans in place.
To do BCP right, we all need appropriate and targeted education. We need the DRI International experts to help us to learn how to best put theory into logical and reliable practice. We need our peers, both internally and externally, to share their best practices. We need seminars, conferences, and local organizations, like ACP, to keep us abreast of the latest and greatest ways to build resiliency at our organizations. We also need to stay ever aware of the changing risk challenges as well as suitable response models needed to adequately address them.
You have myriad choices when it comes to your education and learning for business continuity. It amazes me that there are so many new players in this space. When bad disasters occur, those that can spell BCP suddenly become experts. I caution you against taking up with those who may be brand new to selling BC consulting services, software tools, resiliency models, and life safety programs. I am probably preaching to the choir here, but do stick with those you know best when seeking help. Do your homework, and make sure due diligence is part of your selection process. I can say without fear of contradiction that the DRI International family of instructors and staffers are committed to excellence, and they have longevity and a proven record behind them. Enough said.
So when you are choosing the conference that will best serve you this year, please give serious consideration to the DRI2013 in June. And as part of that work/life balance and keeping all your stars aligned, we feel that we will offer you great opportunities to learn, meet new people, share a few laughs, and do meaningful volunteer work in the Philadelphia area.
As with our conference last year (where 80+ of your peers volunteered) we will be offering several volunteer day options. We will also provide a list of some ‘on your own’ volunteer opportunities if you cannot work on the volunteer days that we have on the calendar. The volunteer work we do helps to keep everyone’s stars properly aligned by giving those in need the things that will make their lives better. We are just one small part of the larger community that works hard to give back, but we are an enthusiastic and determined lot. And if past experience is any indication of future performance, we will have fun along the way and feel good about our contribution.
All the best,
Clyde Berger
cberger@driif.org
Director of Volunteerism and Vice President