With the dust now settled on the 2013 IFP Annual Conference and Exhibition now is for reflection.

A great deal of time and effort goes into the production of the conference and not just by the team at IFP HQ but also by the speakers, the exhibitors and also the time the delegates themselves give up to attend.
Feedback is therefore invaluable and the IFP is grateful to those attendees that took the time to complete what is quite a lengthy feedback survey. Almost 70 per cent of delegates were Financial Planners and 53 per cent business owners. Paraplanners made up 8 per cent and compliance professionals 3 per cent.
As expected, the main reasons for choosing to attend were professional development, the programme itself and networking. A fantastic 95 per cent rated the event "excellent" or "good" and of those 64 per cent rated it as excellent.
Delegates were asked to confirm their top speakers.
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The keynotes were the standout favourites, led by Bill Bachrach. Other top picks included Daniel Priestley's 15 stages for growing a successful enterprise, Seán Weafer's session on building your personal brand and Michelle Hoskin's create and lead your 21st century professional practice.
Some 98 per cent said they would recommend the conference to others and here Madeline To of Blueberry Financial tells why: "The IFP Conference combines brilliant speakers with fantastic content, amazing networking and great fun. Makes you really think about your business and how you run it for the benefit of you and your clients."
The IFP is always striving to improve the conference and keep it fresh. The suggestions for sessions, speakers and format changes are appreciated and will be considered by the IFP and the events committee. The 2014 conference returns to Celtic Manor from 6 to 8 October.
Conference session audio recordings now available
IFP Conference sessions were this year audio recorded and delegates can access the audio recordings, slides and additional resources, where available. This provides the perfect opportunity for delegates to catch up on sessions they might have had to forego in favour of other sessions or perhaps to refresh their memory of sessions attended. This is a real value add for conference delegates considering there were almost 50 sessions in total covering a wide variety of subject matter from the technical through to personal development and ethics.

Conference Tweeting a new phenomenon
The phenomenon that is Twitter continues to surprise and its use at this year's conference demonstrated how important it is both to conference attendees but also to the wider world. The conference hashtag, #IFPconf, was very well used and attendees were using it to comment on the speakers, the sessions, to share sound bites, photos, arrange meetings and more. If you haven't done so already, check out Phil Calvert's blog on how Twitter and Social Media is transforming conferences and events, you can find it on the annual conference page of the IFP website.