Not just “why?” but “why NOW?” – Day 1 of #IFCHolland

So at the time of writing, I’ve been awake for 20 hours, with only 1.5 hours sleep before that... When will I learn that a 3am start on the day of a supercharged international conference (with bells on) is not particularly sensible? Anyway, I’ve lived to tell the tale, or in this case, write the blog, I suppose, so here goes! My first session was a ‘lunch and learn’ hour about mentoring, organised by Sue Morgan of The Tony Elischer Foundation. This is a subject that’s a bit of a personal passion (in fact I’ve blogged about it here) and I was pleased that Sue also focused on the benefits for mentors in this helpful introduction. My thread from the session is below: Starting #IFCHolland with a session close to my heart: the benefits of being a mentor and being mentored, with @TonyElischerFdn. pic.twitter.com/nziDj06u60 — Richard Sved (@richardsved) October 17, 2018 On to the plenary, which was a bit of a curate’s egg. Lots of great content, but not all of it brilliantly presented, and I couldn’t quite see how the various element complemented each other in terms of topic and indeed presenting style. Nevertheless, Sergio Feferovich made us sing and laugh, which was no mean feat, and Asha Curran gave us rich content from the benefit of her experience of establishing #GivingTuesday, riffing on the themes of old power and new power. We are experiencing a shift to new power values in our society, so we need to ensure we are not still clin