There has been a long overdue groundswell behind a better, more rewarding way of working that is fit for the current age in the past year.  Indeed, Dan Pontefract riffed recently about how pleased he was that the Enterprise 2.0 Summit held recently in Paris focused primarily on the cultural aspects of work and moved finally away from the technology focus that has dominated the industry over the last few years.

So it was interesting to get an invite to an event held at the RSA called the Smartworking Summit.  The event is an annual affair run by Quora consulting group, and has been in operation since 2002.  They were launched because they felt that improving the workplace was a systemic affair, and therefore required cross functional cooperation and collaboration to achieve.

Therefore the event hoped to bring people together to share their personal experiences and knowledge to help achieve better workplaces.  The Summits are PowerPoint free zones where CEO’s, CFO’s, CIO’s, CHRO’s and Property Directors freely discuss their challenges with an audience of typically 100-150 of their peers.  All share a common cause – namely rapidly adapting their workplaces and work practices to reflect new ways of working.

The event is taking place in April and features a nice cross section of some of the things I’ve written about on this blog before.  For instance Chris Kane will be discussing how the BBC use the layout of their premises to encourage creativity.  Dr. Nicola Millard from BT will be gazing into the future of collaborative organisations, and Shane Mitchell will look at how to create connected communities.

Those are just some of the speakers due to be attending the event, which promises to be an interesting one.  You can find out more about it here.