For the past year and a half or so I’ve been fortunate enough to speak at several conferences across North America. Mostly these gigs have focused on either financial services or marketing, and sometimes both.

My topics have evolved, and now have quite a focus on corporate social responsibility. It was not totally intentional, but came out of explaining the context of who Vancity is to my audiences.

A few months back, when I was practising my Net.Finance presentation for my peers, a co-worker Tonya told me about the upcoming International Association of Business Communicators’ Communicating Social Responsibility Conference coming to Vancouver in October.

Long story short, after a brief conversation with the conference organizers, I was honoured to be invited to speak at this conference about triple bottom line marketing. I work at Vancity for very specific reasons, due to its ethical nature, and triple bottom line approach where it focuses on economic, environmental and social factors when determining its success.

My topic is called Corporate social responsibility as a key differentiator. I am excited to see some of the other sessions, including the one by my co-worker Tonya, which is called Does anyone care? Communicating out on Vancity’s accountability report. I am also interested in hearing from James Hoggan and see the session called A new International Standard for Social Responsibility: Global learnings for communicators.

One of the great side benefits of speaking at all of these conferences is getting to attend and having my mind opened by all these world-class presenters. This is one conference that I’m super-excited about.