Sunny skies, cruise ship, charming island views ... and lots of meetings

Every event organiser wants a captive audience. Spend all that time and money planning a meeting, and you want to make sure people stay in their seats. But book a boring location that offers no distractions ... and there's less lure to attend. That's the enduring challenge of conference management: offer a venue that's sexy enough to get people out of the office, but without the temptations to drift away from business.

On this front, Richmond Events scores as perhaps the perfect event organiser. For years now they've been partnering with P&O to hold various corporate directors' forums on cruise ships. The model is simple. Two days and an evening, a handful of high profile keynote speakers, presentations on best practice and career development, networking with an impressive peer group. Plus great meals, free flowing alcohol and suites with balconies overlooking the sun-kissed Channel Islands. All free. But there are no free lunches, or free cruises. Attendees spend about half their meeting time, and all of their meal breaks, with agencies trying to sell them services. The agencies pay for the cruise, all for the opportunity to get in front of budget holders from large corporations who wouldn't, under normal circumstances, accept their calls. And because the meeting is on a cruise ship ... which stays at sea for the entirety of the meeting ... there's the appeal of an unusual venue combined with a complete inability to escape.

I hadn't been on the Communications Directors' Forum for four years. Times have changed. The meeting is smaller, by far, with only about 100 attendees to the approximately 250 of my last outing. Thus there are more forums on the same ship; we shared our cruise with HR, IT and finance directors. Past cruises featured a mix of big and small agencies; now it seems to be the exclusive domain of boutique shops. Four years ago the emphasis was on PR and brand management; now internal communications (or "employee engagement" in the latest parlance) is the dominant discipline. Whether it's the fear of strike action, the need to motivate recession-damaged employees or a desire to keep people from jumping companies when the economy gets better, the big corporates are clearly turning their focus inwards, and the agencies are following.

A couple of memorable presentations stuck with me. Former professional poker player Caspar Berry ran a great workshop on gambling versus calculated risk, and how you need to manage the latter to be great at your job. Hamish Taylor had an impressive career before going on the speakers' circuit, running brand management at British Airways before becoming CEO of Eurostar and Sainsbury's Bank. He argues that incremental change never delivers massive benefit, you need revolution. And revolution most often comes from outside your day-to-day life. Indeed, from outside of your industry. He told a great story about BA transforming their check in experience by calling in colleagues at Disney to give them ideas on managing queues.

A colleague from Electronic Arts gave a fascinating presentation on social media, and how the company has justified the communications costs of managing it by looking at the cost reductions on the recruitment front. A refreshing example of disciplines working together for the overall benefit of the company.

As ever, these kinds of meetings have their greatest benefit in reminding you that you are not alone. Most of my colleagues are experiencing at least 80 per cent of the problems I deal with every day. Nothing is unique. And a problem shared is a problem halved. I came away from the boat with some good ideas, some interesting new contacts and with pride that some of the work I've done in the past year is well ahead of the average. Despite small budgets and cut teams. That's the benefit of getting out of the office for a while. Even if they do hold you captive.