It's that time of the year again, when I remind people of the annual Conference of the Configuration Management Specialist Group of the BCS - I'm on its committee.

I'm on the Committee, not because it pays me any money but because I think that Configuration Management is central, not only to ITIL, but to governance generally. If you don't know what you've got, how it's configured and can't control changes to it, how can you claim it is secure, reliable or well-managed?

Anyway, here is what is on offer this year. You can find more details of the conference and a Call for Papers (closing date 19 March 2012) here.

Configuration Management - How to Ease the Pain of Change

This is the premier UK event on Change, Release and Configuration Management for ITIL and Service Management and throughout the application lifecycle - the BCS CMSG has a successful track record of previous events.

This conference, run by the British Computer Society Configuration Management Specialist Group (BCS CMSG) will be held on the 29 May 2012 at the BCS Offices in central London. We are building on a successful track record of 7 previous conferences.

The main conference objectives are to share experiences in integrating application management and service management to support the business objectives. The role of Change, Configuration and Release Management best practices in adopting an integrated approach are essential elements.

The conference will bring together managers and practitioners working across the service lifecycle (which incorporates the application lifecycle) together in an open forum.

We are looking for presentations by practitioners to cover a wide variety of topics and encourage the cross fertilisation of ideas between practitioners, vendors and users of the CCRM processes, solutions and tools.

Benefits

The conference and workshops will provide a unique opportunity to learn from practical experience and how to better communicate the benefits and value of managing your CCRM processes.

Interactive sessions

This conference will encourage dynamic interaction, brainstorming and discussion between users, practitioners and the vendor community in an independent forum. The knowledge gained from the workshops will create a shared understanding of today's challenges, strategies to cope with these challenges and future needs.

Conference themes

• Practical ways to improve integration between change, configuration and release management
• Streamlining the flow of changes and releases
• Practical ways of integrating application and service management
• Communication of the benefits of configuration management
• Avoiding silos
• Identifying missing essentials (assessment and gap analysis)
• Improving processes for business benefit
• Cases studies for web applications and SaaS
• Automation throughout the lifecycle

Venue

BCS HQ at 5 Southampton St, in central London (just off the Strand).

Conference programme

The conference programme will consist of plenary, parallel and interactive workshop sessions, panel discussions, vendor exhibition, and networking opportunities.

Submissions should be relevant to the conference themes. Particularly, interest will be shown to potential speakers sharing their own experiences.

Submitting papers for the Conference - by 19 March 2012

If you are interested please submit a proposal for a paper/presentation and include sufficient detail to make the audience, meaning and value of the session clear. You can find more details, together with submission forms, here.