I came to Canada and was immediately, overwhelmingly, welcomed.

Some of it was people I already knew — friends from online, from conferences, from random corners of the world who happened to be in the same city at the same time. Some of it was strangers who became familiar within hours. A pub full of Canadians who adopted me on the basis of a red bucket hat. A room full of communicators who turned up with problems and left with each other’s contact details. A community that has been warm in the way that only happens when people genuinely care about the work they do and the people they do it with.

I love people. Specifically: being in rooms with them.

This fortnight provided an almost unreasonable quantity of that. New conversations. Old friends. Conference corridors. Hotel bars. Dinners that ran late, then turned into windowless speakeasies. The peculiar magic of finding yourself among people who understand your niche corner of the world without requiring a fifteen-minute explanation first.

And then, after several consecutive days of exactly the thing I claim to enjoy, I fled into the Quebec wilderness and spent a day hiking alone in relentless rain.

One of the more annoying discoveries of adulthood is that liking people and needing a break from them are not, in fact, contradictory positions. So I’m heading home today full. Full of conversations, ideas, and new connections.

Also, briefly, full of rainwater.

(regular readers — hello, Mum 👋 — will note there was no weeknote 24. I was just crazy busy and it fell off my radar. Bumper edition this week to make up for it.)

The last two weeks at work

The last fortnight was largely consumed by Toronto, where I spent the better part of a week oscillating between IABC World Conference and Comms Reboot. But it actually began a little earlier, with Jon and me delivering our Infozempic webinar — our increasingly elaborate attempt to explain information overload through the lens of weight-loss drugs — to communicators across Denmark, Sweden and Germany.

The session went well. The audience was engaged. The feedback was positive.

And yet presenting to a gallery of muted thumbnails remains one of the least natural activities modern working life has invented. Human beings spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving to communicate face-to-face and have somehow landed on “talking enthusiastically into a laptop while occasionally wondering whether everyone has quietly gone to make tea”.

Sunday was considerably better.

I opened the IABC Heads of Comms Special Interest Group, delivering essentially the same material to a room full of actual people. Lots of questions. Good discussion. The sort of session where you can feel the audience thinking with you. Every time I do both formats back-to-back I’m reminded that online may be more efficient, but in-person is still better.

Then came three days of the main conference.

There was plenty worth taking away. Fred Cook from USC Annenberg shared data showing the proportion of CEOs who think companies should speak publicly on social issues has fallen from 89% to 52% in just two years, which feels like one of those statistics that tells you rather a lot about the current moment. There was a surprisingly interesting session on what communicators can learn from DJs. Lots on AI, segmentation, employee engagement and the usual industry obsession with measuring things that may or may not actually exist.

I came home with a notebook full of ideas and an even bigger ‘to read’ pile than I had before.

The week finished with Comms Reboot, Jenni Field’s unconference. If World Conference is about learning from experts, Comms Reboot is about locking practitioners in a room together and seeing what happens. No speakers. No slides. No carefully polished case studies. Just people bringing problems, experiences and opinions. After three days of sitting in rows, it was refreshing to spend an evening sitting in circles.

More broadly, the whole week was a reminder of how much I enjoy spending time with people who think deeply about this work. Not people collecting hot takes or chasing engagement, but practitioners wrestling with genuinely difficult questions about trust, leadership, culture, technology and communication. I came away with pages of notes, half a dozen new ideas, and several things I thought I understood that now require further examination. Which is generally a sign that you’ve learned something worth learning.

It was also a welcome break from the strange economics of LinkedIn, where every problem can apparently be solved with a carousel, every case study is a triumph, and everyone is either disrupting, transforming or revolutionising something. There’s a lot to be said for spending time in rooms where people are allowed to admit that the work is complicated.

Back in the real world, both client projects moved forward nicely. We also picked up a new IA piece with a returning client, which is always gratifying. Winning new work is lovely. Being asked back is better.

A couple of other opportunities continue to move through the pipeline. One scoping conversation was rather more adversarial than I’d hoped, but occasionally consulting involves politely explaining that reality exists. If a prospective client can’t handle that, that’s probably not a project worth taking on.

Meanwhile the book is now less than two weeks from publication, which means the marketing machine is cranking into life. This is either exciting or terrifying. Possibly both.

Also this fortnight

I turned another year older the day before leaving for Canada. Did very little to mark it. Birthdays at this age are less a celebration than an administrative update.

The timing of the trip was fortunate in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The World Cup had just kicked off, and Toronto was a host city. I took the train in just before Canada’s first game began, dropped my bag at the hotel, changed into red and white, and headed for the nearest pub. Where I was immediately adopted by Canadians. There are worse ways to arrive somewhere.

A friend I met at a conference in Aarhus a decade ago happened to be in the city for birthday drinks of his own, which meant an unexpected reunion — one of those pleasing discoveries that some friendships travel well across a decade and an ocean. The following evening, a jetlagged dinner with one of my Colombia Flashpack group, Jenna.

After four days of Comms Reboot, I was finished. Not with the event — the event was excellent. Finished with people. Finished with noise. Finished with eye contact. Finished with hearing my own voice.

So I took a bus to Mont-Tremblant National Park and spent a day hiking alone in what I can only describe as rain with intent. Rain that had clearly reviewed my plans and taken them personally. The trails were deserted. The sky was the colour of a corporate e-learning module. By mid-afternoon I was essentially a mobile ecosystem. It was magnificent.

The Dutch call it uitwaaien — literally, “to blow out”. What I’d failed to appreciate until that afternoon is that sometimes the most effective way to stop thinking about work is to become completely preoccupied with whether your socks have dissolved. If your job depends on people, you’ll recognise the feeling. The peculiar exhaustion that comes not from hard work, but from constant connection. Eventually your brain becomes the spinning beach ball of death. At that point, mindfulness apps are of limited value. What you need is wilderness, hostile weather, and absolutely nobody asking if you’ve got five minutes for a quick chat.

The rain followed me to Montreal, where another Colombia Flashpack friend, Andrea, came to meet me for the weekend. Montreal, it turns out, is entirely unbothered by rain. We were tourists, unashamedly. It was exactly what was needed.

Consuming

Normally I’d tell you what I’ve been reading or watching. This fortnight I have been watching football. This will surprise anyone who knows me, as I have historically had the relationship with football of someone who is aware it exists and considers that sufficient. I do not have opinions on football. I do not follow football. I have never, to my knowledge, voluntarily sought out football.

And yet here I am, having thoughts about squad fitness. Tracking recent form. Trying to work out the progression paths for any of the myriad teams I am apparently entitled to support, on account of having what I can only describe as complicated nationality. The Dutch. The English. The Scottish. The French. And, because I happen to be here, Canada.

It’s a lot of flags. It’s a lot of feelings. A lot of football.

Connections

Too many to list — between IABC World Conference and Comms Reboot, both my heart and my notebook are full. But I’ll try.

It was wonderful to spend time with Lucy Eckley, Kathryn Kneller SCMP, Janet Hitchen FIIC, Eduvie Martin, Katie Macaulay, Lisa Riemers, Simon Cavendish SCMP, Simon Finch, Mike Klein IABC Fellow, Ann-Marie Blake, Sia Papageorgiou FRSA FCSCE IABC Fellow SCMP, Andrea Greenhous IABC Fellow, Monique Zytnik and Matisse Hemel-Nelis, Shannon Hofmeister — and to meet so many brilliant new faces from across the global community, including Pinaki Kathiari, Darlene Wilson, Mel Loy, Mirko Petrocevic (and tens of others!)

At Comms Reboot, it was a joy to see Jenni Field and Chuck Gose and Priya Bates — and to meet a whole host of new faces from the Greater Toronto area.

The IABC EMENA AGM took place a couple of weeks ago, and the new board slate was ratified. I’m on it. I’ll be taking on the Professional Development portfolio — which means I’m now very keen to hear from members about what they want to learn, and equally keen to speak to people who have knowledge to share and might want a platform to do it. Word Conference was a fab opportunity to spend time with the IABC EMENA crew, and I’m looking forward to doing that a lot more in the year ahead. If you’re an IABC member with ideas, ambitions, or expertise, do get in touch.

Coverage

Two pieces out in the last fortnight.

In In.Comms, I wrote about what happens when your internal community turns on the company — and why every tool in the standard moderation playbook becomes an escalation tool the moment it does. The short version: you can’t moderate your way out of a legitimacy problem. The dissent isn’t noise to be managed down. It’s the signal.

And in PRMoment, Ann-Marie Blake wrote up my IABC Heads of Comms keynote on infobesity — the argument that information overload is structural, not personal, and that the comms equivalent of GLP-1 isn’t telling people to manage their inboxes better.

Travel

Currently: Montreal, with 24 hours left before the long journey home.

Then 24 hours at home — enough time to do laundry, presumably misplace something important, and remember what my flat looks like — before heading out again.

Not my finest logistical work. Wish me luck.

This week in photos