In 2020, virtual working went mainstream. At the Virtual Working Summit, we’ve been working virtually for decades, not months, and our virtual conference is now in its 11th year.
You are invited to join participants from more than 70 countries around the world. With them, you can listen to five brilliant speakers, and to send questions for us to ask. Our theme for 2020 was ‘Virtual Working in Lockdown and Beyond’ where we supported all of our participants, whether they joined in 2010 or only just discovered virtual work due to the pandemic.
How does it work? Each day, we focus on one inspiring virtual leader, sharing an audio interview lasting 30-40 minutes. The questions we ask are drawn from the summit participants. We have an online discussion for you to join in with. There is no set time – you can access the session and listen to it at a time to suit you. The summit is a unique, virtual way for you to develop your skills, without hassle. There is no charge to register to listen in to each speaker via the web each day.
Who should attend? Anyone who wants to make their virtual work even better. This year, that could be anyone: People who can’t be in the office but need to keep going remotely. People in a hybrid working situation. People who manage a team or projects across cities, countries or continents. Professionals who work with clients, or sell to them, remotely. People facing travel restrictions. People who need to build trust and engage others, despite the distance between them. Teleworkers and digital nomads. People who want to reduce their own impact on our climate. People who want to work smarter, not harder.
Meet Our 2020 Summit Speakers
Dr Penny Pullan
Graeme Codrington
Perry Timms
Jacqui Harper MBE
Dr Lynda Shaw
Leading Virtually for Lockdown and Beyond
Adaptive Intelligence: Don’t Merely Survive Lockdown; Build a Better Team for the Future
What if Everything our Organisations Need Beyond Lockdown is Already ‘Lying Around’?
Virtual Presence
From Fear and Uncertainty to Creativity and New Ideas
I promise to protect your privacy. You can find out the details of how I do this by looking at our privacy policy. By signing up, you consent to receiving e-mails from me, Penny Pullan of Making Projects Work Ltd. The summit uses e-mails to inform you of future summits and speakers, to ask for your input on possible speakers and your feedback. We use e-mails to ask you to send in questions for the speakers, to let you know what’s happening each day of the summit and to provide you with links to summit sessions. In between summits, you’ll only receive occasional emails, which may include links to useful resources related to virtual working, Penny’s books and other related resources. You can of course unsubscribe at any time.
Dr Penny Pullan, our founder and host, says: “In 2020, virtual became the norm. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have done all their work and social contact virtually, as a pandemic has changed things in a few short months.
In this world of work, and as we emerge into a new normal with hybrid working, with some from home and some in offices, how we approach virtual working is of paramount importance. We’re making history. Future generations will look back and ask about what we did in the pandemic. This summit aims to support us to be the best we possibly can be, to support our teams and colleagues to be the best they can be, and to build the new world of work to be the best it can be.
We have five top speakers all with unique contributions to make, on leadership, on virtual presence, on transforming HR, on using neuroscience to move to creativity and new ideas, and to the future of work itself.
As well as hearing these superb sessions, let’s also tap into each other’s knowledge and experience. During the summit, our LinkedIn group will be the focus where we share what works and inspire each other to become even better. Once you register, you’ll receive the link to join this group by e-mail.”
Meet Our 2020 Summit Speakers
Penny Pullan
13th July 2020
Leading Virtually for Lockdown and Beyond
Dr Penny Pullan is your Summit Host will kick-off your summit on 13th July on ‘Leading Virtually for Lockdown and Beyond’. Her book ‘Virtual Leadership: Practical Strategies for Making the Best of Virtual Work and Virtual Teams’ has become a bestseller in the pandemic and is recommended by CEO Today top five book for CEOs to read in lockdown.
While most of the world went virtual in 2020, Penny went virtual nineteen years before. 9/11 grounded her as she was about to fly to her first programme’s two week kick-off meeting in New York. Instead, it had to happen virtually! Since then, she has supported organizations and individuals all over the world and across industries to be more effective virtual leaders, across industry sectors from banking to telecoms, and pharma.
Penny is a director of Making Projects Work Ltd, and she has hosted Virtual Summits since 2010. Her next book will come out in 2021: ‘Making Workshops Work: Creative Collaboration for Our Time’. She has co-authored the forthcoming Managing Successful Programmes and several other books. You can contact Penny on Twitter at @PennyPullan or by responding to the summit e-mails.
Graeme Codrington
14th July 2020
Adaptive Intelligence: Don’t Merely Survive Lockdown; Build a Better Team for the Future
It would be tragic if your organisation survived Covid, but couldn’t make it through the rest of the 2020s. The Covid-crisis and Lockdown have shone a spotlight on many organisations, highlighting their inability to deal with deep disruption. This does not bode well for their ability to deal with the rest of the 2020s. After Lockdown and Covid are gone, we’ll still be facing some of the biggest disruptions of our lifetimes, from AI, automation and virtual working to climate change, trade wars and shifting geopolitics. Don’t just focus on surviving Lockdown and trying to “get back to normal” as soon as possible; rather use this time of deep disruption to build true adaptive intelligence into yourself, your team and your organisation.
Graeme is a futurist and scenario planner specialising in the future of work. He helps companies around the world understand the forces that are shaping our lives, whether it’s the current Covid-disruption or the disruptive trends that will define the rest of the 2020s. Graeme is an author of six best-selling books and lectures at a number of top business schools. As one of the founders of the strategy consulting firm TomorrowToday, he works with a global research team to ensure his insights are constantly updated and relevant to each of his clients. He now works with clients around the world from his fully equipped home video studio in Johannesburg.
Perry Timms
15th July 2020
What if Everything our Organisations Need Beyond Lockdown is Already ‘Lying Around’?
We’re faced with exponential challenges like never before and yet, the solutions are – as famed rebel economist Rutger Bregman put it – lying around. It is his assertion that the neoliberal economic model we have was formed by Friedman and Hayak from economic principles and models that were ‘lying around’.
And so it is to my work in HR, Organisation Design, Development and Change. Much of what we need to thrive post-pandemic is lying around and in this talk, I will share what I think they are and how we can assemble them to reinvent work, business and how we live more fulfilling lives in what we do.
HR and organisational design enthusiast and author Perry Timms will look at how we can design our way into a post-pandemic, more virtual way of working with more togetherness, responsiveness and creativity.
Perry Timms is the founder and Chief Energy Officer of PTHR – an 8-person global consultancy, setting out to create better business for a better world. Perry is an international and 2x TEDx speaker and award-winning writer on the future of work, HR & learning
Perry’s 2017 book Transformational HR was an Amazon.com Top 30 HR seller shortly after its release (and is due for a second edition in 2021), but before that, his second book – The Energised Workplace – is published in August 2020.
Find Perry at his website or on Twitter.
Jacqui Harper MBE
16th July 2020
Virtual Presence
Jacqui Harper is a presence expert. She transforms the presence of leaders to help them achieve career ambitions or drive change in their organisations. Her successful results come from her experience as an acclaimed author, a visiting professor at INSEAD and a former BBC news anchor. Her book ‘Executive Presentations’ was recognised as outstanding by the Business Book Awards 2019.
Find Jacqui at her website, on YouTube or Twitter.
Dr Lynda Shaw
17th June 2020
From Fear and Uncertainty to Creativity and New Ideas.
In times of uncertainty and not knowing what is going to happen next the brain fills in the gaps. Often this is unhelpful as we rehearse and rehearse scenarios that may never happen feeding fear and anxiety. It’s not easy to come out of this, even after lockdown. But come out of it we will, the key is to make it sooner rather than later so that we embrace creativity and new ideas for a new improved ‘norm’. Dr Lynda Shaw is going to share with us ways of doing this quickly and easily.
Lynda is an experienced entrepreneur having owned 3 businesses. She holds a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience, specialising in unconscious processing of emotion and behavioural change. She works with senior leaders and their teams who want to better understand the science of change and development and harness this power through heightened awareness of how their brain works, limiting beliefs and how to take charge of one’s behavior for the better in this fast-changing world. She is founder of the Neuroscience Professional Development Programme designed to help professional people use applied neuroscience in their work. Lynda’s work is always informative, fun and extremely practical.
Find Lynda at her website, on LinkedIn or on Twitter.
Here’s Why You Should Sign Up for the 2021 Virtual Working Summit
Attend from the comfort of your own home or office
All the interviews can be listened to online. There’s no travel or hotels to book, saving you money and avoiding you having to take time off work and arrange cover to attend, and spending time away from work and your family.
Online Access to the Interviews
The interviews will be available online, for free, on the appropriate day of the summit so you can listen to them at your own convenience.
A panel of hand-picked expert speakers
Your expert speakers have been chosen by your host, Dr Penny Pullan. They will expand your thinking and provide tools and techniques for you to try out, safe in the knowledge that they’re coming from experts.
The Chance to Upgrade
To gain access to all the interviews, forever, and one to one interaction to discuss each session with the Summit host.
I promise to protect your privacy. You can find out the details of how I do this by looking at our privacy policy. By signing up, you consent to receiving e-mails from me, Penny Pullan of Making Projects Work Ltd. The summit uses e-mails to inform you of future summits and speakers, to ask for your input on possible speakers and your feedback. We use e-mails to ask you to send in questions for the speakers, to let you know what’s happening each day of the summit and to provide you with links to summit sessions. In between summits, you’ll only receive occasional emails, which may include links to useful resources related to virtual working, Penny’s books and other related resources. You can of course unsubscribe at any time.