Business Networking Events Are Over! (For Now)

Well the business events are over! Phew, I can now let out a huge sigh of relief.

Lots of hours when into them planning, preparing, sourcing, co-ordinating, creating, promoting, walking, talking and door knocking. And guess what, we will be doing it again next year!

Particularly I'd like to thank Philip for acting as the Chair and ensuring that we all kept to time. A big thank you to Greg and Ian who set up the room and the AV equipment and ensured everything was working smoothly. Thank you to Bill, Geoff and Philip for doing the walk around the local business neighbourhoods to drum up support and to Yvonne who may have felt slightly swamped with the amount of people last night but did a stirling job to act as a charming host at the door. Thanks also to everyone else who spoke to their own networks, friends, colleagues and business people they know and brought them to share the evening with us. It's been greatly appreciated.

So what did you think about the evenings? Did you find them useful? Engaging? Did you find having a spread of ages and professions at the presentations interesting?

For me, it was an opportunity to observe that simply by sharing the evening with a wider group of people, we were all connected through business. Also, some of the feedback I was getting was that there was a real genuine feeling of openess and friendship in Rotary that inspired non-Rotarians to rethink or look at Rotary Clubs in their own area. In effect, even though we may not get any members, our club has been instrumental in promoting Rotary to others.

However, we can't stop at just one set of business networks. In order to be successful we need to get a 'name for ourselves' out in our community and continually keep holding these events. So next year, I believe our promotion will be made just a little bit easier because the people who attended this time around can also be the ones who spread the word. If anything, we will still need some door knocking to be done to get local businesses to come along so any assistance here would be greatly appreciated. I've already created the flyer for February events and registrations are now open online so please continue to spread the word!

Next week we are having a social night - we've earned ourselves a break - until we get back to the normal meetings. Greg has kindly organised a banquet meal at the Bombay Club at 556 North Road Ormond. The reviews on Urban Spoon show that this restaurant has some great food so it's not to be missed! We will need to get 20 people there on the night as the restaurant is opening the doors JUST FOR US! So please invite your partners and friends along so that we can be ensured of a great night. The cost will be $30pp.

So thank you once again to everyone for your support in the Business Networking Events. Already City of Kingston will advertise and promote our events in their business newsletter. I have made a limited colour print run and will hand these out to people to actively promote in December and January. Maybe we can set up a small team of people to go door knocking for a couple of hours over a weekend or during the week?