As Learning & Development professionals, the challenges we face and the solutions we explore are very similar - yet mostly we work in isolation from our counterparts in other organisations, with little peer2peer contact, and even less active collaboration.

At our Forum you meet face2face at whole-day conferences with your colleagues from across the public and business sectors and invited speakers, visit each other's departments in managed raids, and may collaborate on projects with others that have "been there, done that". What makes our Conferences really effective is our informal peer2peer action learning format that gives everyone the opportunity to participate and to contribute ideas.

You avoid "reinventing the wheel", you get better results faster, and you can call on external references to gain further credibility for your own internal strategies.

background  We established the Forum in early 2003 because we found in discussion with many key people in the industry that it could help raise the profile of IT skills in the minds of local government management. In 2004 we expanded our focus to raising the profile of Learning and Development in general, and opened the network to the whole public sector. In 2006 we expanded further to include the business and 3rd sectors, and in 2007 we started to work with selected vendors as well at our conferences.

We aim to be not for profit - so you get value for your tight budget; Our approach is focused, sales-free and collaborative - so you make full use of your scarce time.