Last Saturday The IC Crowd @theICcrowd held the much-anticipated unconference: ‘The Big Yak’ in Richmond which was sponsored by Sequel Group. Not only did the event have an amazing turn out of around 130 Internal Comms professionals but the activity on Twitter was enormous, with #thebigyak trending in the UK! 
From the early (for a Saturday morning) croissants, to the great opening words by Social Technologist, Benjamin Ellis (@benjaminellis) to the interesting discussions led by various IC professionals (not forgetting the goodie bags given to every attendee) the day was jam-packed, useful and informative.
Not sure what an unconference is? Basically it means that the topics of the day, and in many ways the day’s success, is in the hands of all of the attendees. Using the old-fashioned A5 paper flip chart method to make a grid dividing up rooms and time slots, attendees can write their ideas for topics on post-it notes and then go on to run those sessions.
Topics ranged from social media KPIs, Intranets, evaluating and using feedback, becoming trusted advisors to the Senior teams, video, gamification plus many, many more – for a full list of sessions see www.allthingsic.com/bigyak.
Some of the ‘learnings’ from the day:
Internal communications is the consciousness and conscience of an organisation #thebigyak
An ex boss once said to me, “the client (the business) does 95% and we add the 5% that makes it better.” An ethos to live by #thebigyak
Employee videos should be shorter-you would never watch a 15 minute advert or new story #thebigyak
Speak clearly, speak plainly and remember to keep the messages simple. #thebigyak
“Never underestimate the toilet poster!” Bog media, love it! #thebigyak
Social media blurs the line between work and home life – is it a good thing or a bad thing to be constantly connected? #thebigyak
For more Twitter activity check out #thebigyak
A big thanks to the The IC Crowd for such a brilliant and insightful event, the only problem now is somehow topping this event next year!