For years, I sat through risk management conferences that made me want to leave the profession. The pattern was always the same. Sponsors paid for booths. Sponsors got speaking slots. And suddenly the agenda was full of presentations about software features or broker nonsense that had nothing to do with making better decisions or risk management. The content was empty. The travel was exhausting. And I kept thinking: why does it have to be this way?
I didn’t want to travel anyway. And the whole model felt backwards – the sales people funding the event controlled what got discussed, which meant the conversations we actually needed to have never happened. The solution seemed obvious: take it online. Cut out the sponsors. Fund it myself. Talk about what actually works. The problem was finding technology that could handle it. For years, I looked for a platform that wouldn’t cost a fortune and could actually deliver a good experience for thousands of people. In 2019, I finally found one – a startup that had built exactly what I needed.
So I reached out to the people I’d been learning from. Doug Hubbard. Norman Marks. Sam Savage. Grant Purdy. The experts who understood that risk management wasn’t about maintaining registers or filling out heat maps. The ones who’d been teaching RM2 before I called it RM2. I asked them to speak. They said yes.
Risk Awareness Week launched in October 2019. Over 3,000 people from 120 countries showed up. I was stunned.
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I never thought of RAW as “my” conference. From day one, it was something else – a gathering place for people who knew the traditional approach wasn’t working but had nowhere to build an alternative. We didn’t talk about ERM, GRC, ESG. We didn’t pretend that scoring systems could turn subjective judgment into objective data. We didn’t follow frameworks just because a standard said we should. Instead, we focused on probability, decision science, evidence, and results that could be measured. RAW became what I can only describe as a refuge. Not in the sense of hiding, but in the sense of having space to question things without being told you’re not a “real” risk professional. A place where your ideas had to hold up on their merit, not on your job title or the size of your company.
What surprised me was how hungry people were for this. They came back. They brought colleagues. They shared case studies with actual numbers: cutting insurance costs by 60% while tripling coverage, saving $3 million through proper risk analysis. Not theoretical improvements. Real money. Real decisions. Six years later, the numbers tell a story I didn’t expect: more than 20,000 participants, over 270 workshops, speakers who return year after year because the conversation matters to them. Our YouTube channel has most of the workshops available for free – we hit the Silver Play Button threshold, which still feels surreal – because I never wanted knowledge to be locked behind paywalls.
In 2024, FERMA named RAW the Training & Education Programme of the Year. What mattered to me wasn’t the award itself, but what they recognized: that we were teaching practical skills people could use immediately. No elaborate frameworks. Just decision science that works. That same year, I launched RAW@AI. I taught it using everything we’d built – my articles, our videos, all the workshops. In its first three months, it supported over 50,000 risk analyses across dozens of countries. The idea was simple: make structured risk management accessible to anyone making decisions, without needing consultants or expensive software.
Here’s what I’ve learned: things survive when they prove themselves useful. Ideas that work take root. Ideas that don’t, fade away. RM2 has survived because it delivers results. RAW has survived because it gave RM2 somewhere to grow – not through credentials or marketing, but through people applying the ideas, seeing what happened, and coming back to share what they learned. The risks we’re dealing with now are more tangled than they were six years ago. More interconnected. Crises emerge from places nobody’s watching. Old solutions fail more frequently. Which means we need spaces like RAW more, not less. It’s not really a conference anymore. It’s become something closer to infrastructure – a place where the profession can test ideas, learn from what works, and keep moving without being chained to “how we’ve always done it.”
I hate using the word “ecosystem” because it sounds like business jargon. But the concept fits: RAW works because people find value, contribute what they’ve learned, and the whole thing adapts and grows. Not by design, but by natural selection. As long as we stay focused on what actually works – not what sounds impressive in a presentation or looks good in a framework – this will keep going.
Risk Awareness Week 2025 runs 13–17 October. Full program and registration: https://2025.riskawarenessweek.com
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I paid to join this week’s workshop. What time does it start?