The Problem with CSR Conferences

Over the course of the past couple of months, I've blogged about a number of CSR conferences, including Intertek's Ethical Sourcing Forum, the NY Forum for Social Change, the NY BBB's CSR Forum, EDF's Solution's Lab, and the annualCeres conference. While I have had some favorable things to say about most, I am repeatedly struck by the missed opportunities affected by the conference formats. Before closing out this blog for the month, I wanted to take a moment to comment on several complaints I've heard repeatedly from conference attendees:

The usual suspects: People say there is nothing new under the sun, but are there really no new people on the scene? Again and again, I find the usual suspects speaking at these conferences. Does it really make sense to spend precious funds from the CSR budget on expensive conferences with few new players?

Talking heads syndrome: What is the purpose of a panel discussion? I had thought it was to provide a forum for conference attendees to listen to several experts with contrasting perspectives go at it. Instead, panel discussions typically consist of a moderator and 3-4 panel participants, each of whom are given open reign to give their usual stump speeches crafted with the help of PR departments. After ten minutes apiece of canned remarks, there is typically little time left over for meaningful discussion between participants. If we really wanted a digest of each company's standard fare CSR PR, couldn't we visit their corporate websites?

Problems, but no solutions: More and more, conferences are claiming to provide environments for CSR practitioners to move beyond the typical rehashing of age-old problems and collaborate with other attendees to find practical solutions that can reasonably be implemented following the conference. But with conference attendance open to anybody who will pay, are the right people in the room to find and implement solutions? And even if they are, do those individuals really identify fresh, new solutions not considered before? And even if they do, are those fresh, new solutions implemented in short order?

Too expensive to justify: The networking opportunities afforded by conferences have historically been a perk of managing CSR programs, but in an era of layoffs and tightened belts, are expensive conference fees a reasonable use of scarce resources?

I am sufficiently realistic that I don't expect this post to result in widespread reform of CSR conferences. But if you are organizing a CSR conference in the near future, I urge you to give these common complaints some thoughts and see if you can make your conference worth every penny.

Photo credit: Incase