Editor’s note – June 2026

By Mike Klein 

This past month, I had the privilege of spending some time with my fellow communication pros – a rare treat given that I live in Iceland and most of my peers are scattered around the world.

While I’ve long been an advocate of remote work and virtual gatherings, there’s really nothing like being able to have quality face-to-face conversations, be they at the coffee machine, the hotel bar, or the across the table from one of our sponsors (the excellent David Bowman from Fresh Intranet at IABC World Conference in Toronto).

At Strategic, we’re staking out a space as an industry leader in participative live events.

Building on the success of our Communication Leadership Summit unconferences in Brussels, we’ve just opened registration for our first Communication Leadership Summit USA in Washington on 16 October with the active partnership of IABC.

We’ve also launched the Innovation Sprint London, a one-day event pairing communication and business leaders for 17 September.

These events not only reflect our passion for gathering communication leaders together, but also to doing things that complement the work of our associations rather than competing with them.

In my conversations at IABC and at the European Association of Communication Directors (EACD) in Brussels last week, one thing became clear – we need more gatherings, more communication tribes, and more opportunities where communication leaders can cross-connect and cross-pollenate.  

Does this involve time and money? Absolutely.  

But not attending, not showing up, not connecting has its costs too.

So many communication pros work in isolation or near-isolation: “teams of one”, “solopreneurs” hustling work from their home offices, “shadow” comms pros embedded in change teams or corporate functions with no nearby peers.  

And the momentum of day-to-day work can easily put comms pros into a position where they’re so overwhelmed by outputs and deadlines or by cost and resource pressures that they feel they can’t prioritize or own their professional development.

Professional isolation doesn’t cure itself – and I get it’s hard to notice until one gets out from under their work pile and connects with peers who can share new ideas while offering reassurance about current challenges and pains.

At Strategic, we’re doing our part to help. Join us in Washington and London this autumn.

Best from Iceland, 

Mike

Mike Klein
Editor-in-Chief
Strategic

Written by: orlaclancy