Congratulations to EEDA for great conference in Destination Growth 09. A complete sell out and really great keynote speakers and workshops. One thing was utterly clear this year - if you want to take it all in it needs more than one person.

Sadly you can only fit three workshops in and with seven workshops in each of four subject strands making the choice was very hard. The keynote speakers were great, the session with Alan Sugar was well worth the time and the seminars I managed were all enlightening.

Kicking off the keynote speakers this year were;

Greg Dyke, former Director General of the BBC

Who spoke about leadership during times of adversity (and you only need to recall the outcry from BBC staff when he was sack to know is credentials). I think we all knew the truth in his advice to get close to the people in your business, be seen to be taking the time and don't take anyone for granted. Still it is good to hear it reaffirmed in an uplifting presentation.

Scott Garrett's presentation (former Williams Commercial Director)

Sadly I missed and the start of the Pit Stop challenge where 12 "lucky" delegates got to simulate a tyre change on an F1 car. I did catch their time - 9.4 seconds. Later in the day Scott was explaining the F1 rule changes for next year and that we can expect the tyre changes (no refuelling of course) to come down to 3 seconds and perhaps even below that. Wow! And the reason I missed it - was lucky to get a place on the Q&A session with Sir Alan Sugar.

Michelle Mone, creator of the Ultimo lingerie business

What a determined lady, and a clear demonstration that with "fire in your belly" and personal drive you can make a real success even if you did not excel in education. I was out of breath by the end but she advocates getting the PR message out as loud and long as you can. Her initial launch was very creative with a "demonstration" by plastic surgeons outside Selfridges who had just started stocking you first bra range. Really attracted the press and although she wanted just a couple of photographers to make the £500 spend worthwhile - she got 72 and the publicity went world wide. Her message - be creative and this can substitute (often) finance.

Lord Sugar, no intro needed

Sadly a short Q&A session from a very busy man. Lord Sugar was his usual forthright self (as a reporter from BBC TV found out to his cost later) speaking plainly and from experience. More than half the questions came from a manufacturing background.

The first brought out his disappointment that the manufacturing base shifted to Taiwan, dismissing claims that it was labour cost based and pushing his views of the work ethic and culture that Taiwan showed at a key time in their growth. Gone are the days of electronics manufacturers starting out in their garages but then that has just shifted. Google and other Internet businesses began in bedrooms - the trick is to work out what the next "thing" is.

Subsequent questions raised a long but very interesting answer about his views on banks and the way businesses had been financed. His experience had been to finance growth from sales and not use the banks. Only when he needed to finance work overseas and experienced long lead times from commissioning to getting paid that he need their support. Keeping that to a minimum was key to the success. That's where we need to be looking now. Make sure your ideas have a sound commercial footing before committing your house and future.

The final question about his worldwide trading raise something I hadn't noticed before. He had traded everywhere except Africa. In fact his products had got out there through third parties but he explained he had never dealt directly as he perceived there was a chance of not getting paid. He did cite one country as an example and one member of the audience from that country took issue with him, explaining that Africa was cleaning its act up and encouraging people to trade there. Lord Sugar's response was typical - if he saw an opportunity in dealing with that country where the rest of us were concerned, which presented an opportunity for him to be the middle man that makes it all happen.

The workshops

I focussed entirely on sales and marketing sessions this year

Kevin Eyres from LinkedIn was the first and probably the most interesting for me. Free Rein pushes email as one of the digital channels we help clients exploit but many of our customers are only just starting to use it as a promotional tool. Kevin's first fact puts that in perspective and raises questions about the pace businesses change in the UK.

18-24 year olds as a group are abandoning email as a channel in favour of combining FaceBook and IM contact. Both channels require contacts to be verified one way of another before the channel is opened. This is clearly a kick back against spammers but it does highlight the need to understand more about you market sectors before you start.

Regrettably the session deteriorated into a "How do I do XYZ on LinkedIn" - wasting an opportunity to talk to a very knowledgeable guys about networking, social media and social networking generally.

One thing that hearted me was his approach to using the media. Too many presentations I have been to recently treat these channels as a quick and unstructured channel. In fact they should be as planned and treated with the same care you would any marketing material. They should be part of your marketing plan, everything should be structured and proofed before going out. Kevin pressed the point of only doing something in these channels when there was a reason.

One thing I took away? "Do you have a company policy on use of social media" IBM has a simple single A4 page in the staff handbook, but it is used as a guide in getting as many staff as possible engaged with clients through social network channels. Just make sure they all present the right brand and image that you want. It helps to give customers closer contact and faces to put to functions. Not necessarily a small company problem but clearly a policy is a sound idea.

Professor Malcolm McDonald from Cranfield University is well known as an expert in and he tried to cram a 2 hour presentation on your approach to pricing into a 30-minute session. Fortunately he set most of the session as homework and we have to download all the workbooks later today and go through the three stage exercise. Again all very familiar but it just helps to have it laid out in a joined up project and reaffirmed. Really goo session and I'll let you know how we got on - particularly as the title was "..take the buyers mind off the price".

Interestingly he highlighted that in all the customer surveys that he had run, the level of clients who were solely price sensitive were less than 10%. Playing around with price discounts does not really help with profitability and it may not be an issue. Playing around with costs has only a finite result. Increasing sales is unlimited. Blindingly obvious of course but how many of us forget that from time to time.

The last workshop of the day was with Gordon Maw (MAW Communications and PR company in Norfolk) and Paul Hill (Business editor of the Eastern Daily Press). If the session wasn't long enough for one person, sharing it was clearly harder for the guys. But Gordon and Paul made the first steps in self PR clear and obvious. Gordon's views on being creative were an interesting pre-cursor to Michelle and he was able to demonstrate some interesting approaches from stunts (Virgin Money) through to knowledge sharing and "expert" views.

Paul underlined Gordon's point and refined it press release aims to a simple set of rules that again are all obvious. Sending a release directly to the special reporter, giving him the facts that make news news and just checking that you give him/her all they need to save them having to do research. All reporters need news coming it but you are the one who knows most about the subject.

Would I go again - emphatically yes. But I'd take a colleague to get the most out of it all.

And Duxford? - The venue is fantastic and although most people went to admire Concorde at some stage (and get to talk to the speakers one on one) it was the Vulcan bomber next door that captured me. Living in south wales for many years not far from RAF St Athan, the vulcon bomber base, it brought back memories. At the St Athan air show you knew ehen they were coming. The sky would clear of other planes and your felt (not heard) a rumble deep in your chest as they approached. Flying low it was several minutes later before your hearing returned - but what a sight,