EEAC 2026 - One Amazing Day in Cambridge

There are days when you come home tired and then there are days when you come home tired, slightly overwhelmed, possibly still talking at 100 miles an hour and thinking:

Well. That was absolutely amazing!

The first Assistants Together: East Anglia Conference has officially happened.

And honestly?

YAY BOMB. 💥

On Thursday 17 September, we took over Cambridge Junction for a day dedicated to the brilliant people who spend so much of their working lives making other people’s businesses, teams and organisations work better.

VAs. EAs. PAs. Fractional professionals. Business support specialists. People already established in their careers. People changing direction. People wondering what might come next.

We wanted to get them into one room.

We wanted brilliant speakers.

We wanted practical learning.

We wanted conversations that continued long after the session had finished.

We wanted people to meet people they would never otherwise have met.

And, most of all, we wanted everyone to walk back out of the doors of Cambridge Junction feeling just a little bit more excited about themselves, their skills and what they could do next.

And THAT happened.

The bit where it became real

You can plan an event for months. You can have spreadsheets. Schedules. Speaker calls. Emails. Ticket lists. Lanyards. Catering conversations. Sponsor conversations. Last-minute conversations about things you didn’t even know you needed to have conversations about but none of that tells you what the room is actually going to feel like.

Then people started arriving. There was coffee. There were pastries. There were introductions. There were hugs. There were people meeting LinkedIn connections in actual 3D human form.

There were professional headshots being taken.

There was noise.

There was laughter.

And suddenly this thing we’d been talking about for months wasn’t an event plan anymore.

It was a room full of people.

Yay bomb number one. 💥

And then we started learning

One of the things we were determined about from the beginning was that this couldn’t just be a nice day out so we brought together speakers with very different experiences, perspectives and expertise.

Lindsay Taylor kicked off the learning with an interactive training workshop and got the room involved from the start.

Jane Cattermole tackled delegation, influencing leaders and setting boundaries all those deceptively simple things that become rather less simple when you’re the person everyone relies upon.

Then Sam Parnell asked us to think differently about the role assistants can play in business, moving from admin to architect and looking at how assistants can help drive digital transformation within SMEs.

We also brought the conversation out into the room, exploring what happens when people who have traditionally worked behind the scenes begin to step forward, recognise their expertise and take up more space.

Then we talked careers, confidence and being seen

After lunch and a LOT more talking we moved into an afternoon that was really about possibility because the role of the assistant is changing.

The world of work is changing, the technology available to us is changing and the routes available to talented people are becoming much broader than a single traditional career ladder.

Milo Dunne took us through LinkedIn, why our profiles matter and some of the easy wins we can make when it comes to being visible professionally because being brilliant at what you do is one thing, making sure the right people actually know that you’re brilliant at it is another.

Marie Daines followed with confidence, visibility and self-belief three things that can make an enormous difference to what we put ourselves forward for, what we charge, what we ask for and what opportunities we allow ourselves to imagine.

And yes, we talked about money

Because we should.

Rob Case from Case Wealth Management joined us to talk about financial planning for assistants and one deceptively important question:

What do you want your own financial future to look like?

When so much of your professional life can be spent organising, supporting and planning for somebody else, making time to think seriously about your own future matters.

We also talked about the bit we absolutely cannot ignore

Our final panel brought together Ralu Atomei, Caroline Prout, Rebecca Wiggans and Sue Royle to talk about wellbeing, sustainability and how we build careers that don’t require us to completely flatten ourselves in the process and it felt like exactly the right conversation with which to begin bringing the day together because career development isn’t just about doing more.

It can also mean working differently.

Choosing differently.

Building better boundaries.

Using better systems.

Recognising your value.

And creating a working life that actually works for you.

The magic wasn’t only happening on the stage

This might actually have been our favourite bit. Everywhere we looked, people were talking, often with someone they’d apparently known on LinkedIn for three years but had never actually met.

This is why rooms matter. Information is everywhere. We can Google something. Watch a video. Ask AI. Take an online course but there is still something completely different about putting people together.

Someone says something that sparks an idea or conversation gives you permission to try something. This is when you discover that the problem you thought only you had is something six other people are dealing with too.

That is the stuff you can’t put neatly onto an agenda and there was loads of it.

A massive thank you to our sponsors

Days like this don’t happen because three people have an idea and get overexcited about it. They happen because other people and organisations decide to get behind that idea too.

So an enormous thank you to our Sponsors.

And a particularly enormous thank you to YOU

To every single person who bought a ticket, travelled to Cambridge, walked through those doors and decided to spend the day with us:

THANK YOU.

Thank you for asking questions.

Thank you for talking to strangers.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Thank you for supporting our speakers.

Thank you for swapping details, making introductions, laughing, learning and joining in.

Thank you for trusting us with a day of your time.

You created the atmosphere.

And it was really, really special.

So… what happens next?

This was our first year.

In many ways, it was a test.

We believed there was a need for a space in the East of England that brought assistants and fractional business support professionals together around skills, careers, confidence, connection and opportunity.

Now we’ve done it and we think we might have been onto something.

The future of business support is changing rapidly. AI and digital tools are changing what businesses need. Portfolio and fractional careers are creating new ways of working. And businesses across our region need access to skilled, confident, commercially aware people who can help them navigate all of it.

We want this community to be right in the middle of that opportunity.

So yes, there will be things we tweak.

Things we’ll change.

Things we’ll add.

Things we’ll probably look back at and wonder why on earth we thought they were a good idea.

That’s what first years are for.

But mostly?

We’re leaving year one feeling ridiculously proud of what happened in that room.

And ridiculously excited about what we could build next.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

See you next time. ❤️