• #ff our ace coauthors @LucidRuth and @PennyPullan who did a fab job last week on their workshop. #

• Penny gave a copy of our book away tonight at "Tricky Projects and Sticky Change". #

Ruth and I visited a range of venues for our Facilitating Risk Management workshop on 21-22nd March a few days ago. Although it was a cold day, the inside of this almost brand new hotel was warm and inviting. We’re delighted to have found such a stunning building for our first Facilitating Risk workshop of 2012. It’s the Radisson Blu hotel close to East Midlands Airport, so it’s very handy for anyone flying in from other European cities. For those who prefer trains, East Midlands Parkway has fast trains to London. The M1 motorway is close by too.

We already have sold many of the places, so please book your place quickly if you would like to come. We’re keeping the numbers low, with a maximum of eight participant per facilitator.

Ruth and I are having fun pulling together the details of the programme for those who come. Programme? Yes, this isn’t just a workshop. The whole group will be supporting you afterwards as you apply what you have learnt back in the workplace. There will be some things to think through beforehand and bring with you, so that we can root our work in your own challenges. We will be holding a teleseminar before the course to give you some background about the case study we’ll use and to answer any of your questions.

Our early bird offer lasts until 21st February. Pay in full by 21st February to receive £100 reduction in the price to £795 + VAT. To cinfirm your place, you can book online or request an invoice to your company.

You can find out much more and book here.

Penny was in Oxford on 1st December, presenting on ‘Making Risk Management Work’ to a large group of project managers. The group included risk managers from a huge range of industries, including defence, mining, power generation, mobile telephony, local government and more. We even had some post-graduates from Warwick University, researching into different aspects of risk.

We looked at various ways to bring the human aspects into risk management, focusing mainly on facilitating risk workshops. We had a wide ranging discussion, from agreeing the purpose of the evening through to how to work with ‘face’ in Asia to identify risks. You can see the outputs here, including the pitfalls people face with risk management and what works with risk workshops.

We enjoyed some Green and Black’s organic chocolate too, apart from the one person who prefered a sweet. (Thank you for your lovely illustration of how people differ!)

Please comment below if you’d like to continue the discussion.

• Pick up Penny Pullan's book on Facilitating Risk Management for half-price (under £9!) at the Gower stall #PMIukSynergy #

• New video with @pm4girls: Penny Pullan talks about writing A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management http://t.co/uUk200d #

• Last talk at the #makingriskwork summit today – our Gower publisher on risk mgmt books, risk mgmt and authors. Join in http://t.co/4hI0Xzh #
• Day 2 of #makingriskwork summit kicks off with Penny Pullan – join in anytime today at http://t.co/N8XcBma Open now. #
• First comments coming in for #makingriskwork Summit: "Well done. I really enjoyed it." http://www.makingriskwork.com #
• Today #makingriskwork summit launches! Register (for free) at http://t.co/N8XcBma for instant access #risk #

Ruth and I seem to be travelling a lot at the moment. I’m in Dubai this week and Ruth was in Nigeria not long ago.

However, travelling isn’t stopping us preparing for our book launch which starts next week. It’s a virtual Summit, focused on Making Risk Work. You can register for free here.

What exactly is a virtual summit anyway? You take part by opening a web page each day at a time to suit you. Each day, you’ll have a different session to listen to and you can respond and ask questions in a LinkedIn group we’ve created.

The speakers are Ruth on Monday 11th July, me on Tuesday 12th, David Hillson (who wrote the foreword) on Wednesday 13th, Anna and Maya on Thursday 14th and Jonathan Norman, our publisher, on Friday 15th.

The sessions are short and fun and packed with useful hints and tips. If you buy, or have bought the book, you’ll receive all the files to keep.

Hope you can join in!

In the meanwhile, I’m off to try out some local pastimes. Penny

• Amazon are now shipping our book in the UK despite saying 'on pre order'. See more http://www.amzn.to/mr8Qml #

To help people understand more about our work on facilitating risk management, we’re organising a virtual risk summit that will happen in w/c 11th July 2011.

We are currently building a special website to explain all about it, and you’ll be able to sign-up (for free) AND get 35% off the price of our book (making it less than £12) AND get the option to listen again to the summit as you wish.

It was great this week to prepare the first two sessions for the summit.  Penny interviewing me about why risk management NEEDS people with facilitation skills, and me interviewing Penny to understand more about what facilitation is and how it helps.  We will be interviewing other practitioners for later sessions – watch this space for more information very soon.