It’s amazing how these things happen: we started discussing during a Pitch and Mix Meetup about having a summer social event… then we mentioned this to the organisers of other groups in Cambridge and… a week later we were having a meeting among 6 of the most succesful groups and deciding date and time for the BIG Summer BBQ.

Why Creating Cambridge? Because of the independent nature of this event we wanted to have a separate name that would not privilidge one group against the others.  So we simply registered creatingcambridge.org booked venue and now we are actively looking for participants.

For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we’ll have people that network in high tech (electronics, software, hardware) groups as well as life sciences groups.

If you are interested please hurry up, because we have a limit of 200 people and we will have to stick to that number.  Please book now by following this link.

Posted under Cambridge, Networking

I often have business meetings in suitable cafes and hotels around Cambridge: last week I met a local business owner in a hotel just outside the city.  I was pretty stunned when I drove past an advert while leaving and noticed a spelling mistake in their advert, meant to attract clients to their health centre.  I even decided to drive around the hotel and quietly stop the car, pull out my mobile phone and take a shot for you to enjoy

I am really wondering who is the agency that managed to design an advert, had it approved by the client (the Marketing Manager or Executive?) and sent it to print on a 5 metres banner without anybody noticing that Receive should not be spelled Recieve.

Posted under Cambridge, Marketing

I will start this post with some questions:

• Have you ever been invited to a party, conference or another important event?
• Would you find natural to reply, if you were invited by a personal invitation from somebody you know?
• If you replied YES would you find natural to turn up trying to pay attention to place, date and time?
• If you cannot make it at the last minute would you find natural to let your host know?
• If you turn up would you find natural, as soon as you arrive, to go and look for your host to let him know you are there?
• And at the end when you leave would you find natural to look again for your host, thank and say bye?

Without any doubt for me the answers are 6 times YES!

Perhaps it’s me and my way of dealing with people, perhaps it’s my way of demonstrating I appreciate other people and make sure they know it but how is it possible that any of the above has a NO as an answer?  Let alone that I am talking about an event where all visitors have the opportunity of meeting likeminded business people and exchange opportunities for business.

Well, what happened this morning made me think many people are very different in appreciating true business opportunities and respect for those that invite them: I was mong the organisers of a large visitors’ day for two joint chapters of BNI in Cambridge. BNI is a large (probably the largest) networking organisation in the world and I happen to currently be the director of the Trinity chapter in Cambridge. The well managed organisation paid back greatly: among the combined 50 members of the two chapters we managed to have over 120 visitors in the great hall at Hometon College and the whole event was a true success.

Nonetheless the inspiration to write this post came at the end of the morning when I did the math for my own guests.  I invited to this event 28 people out of a selected list of contacts, following some constraints we were given.  Here are some facts:

• 4 of them thanked me for the invitation and accepted without the need for a follow up J
• 1 of the others was kind of upset when I called him to find out if he was coming along: let alone I have asked him in person before sending the invitation and he was keen then…
• At least 5 did not return my call when I followed up the invitation to check whether they were interested in taking part in the event
• Between phone calls and Emails the total number of guest as of yesterday lunch time was 12 J
• By 6pm the list was down to 9
• This morning 7 people turned up J
• 2 did not bother to say hello when they arrived
• 3 left without letting me know they were leaving or saying bye
• I found 1 Email of one of the missing guests that something came up very late last night
• 2 sent a thank you Email J
• 1 tweeted a thank you J

Perhaps there is scope for basic courses about how to network successfully by simply paying attention to common sense and good manners?  Or is it that most people in small businesses tend to be so overwhelmed, so overly busy that they forget how to behave?

Perhaps they need a coach

Posted under Cambridge, Marketing, Networking

Cambridge is an old city and, like many others, has serious traffic and parking problems, not really helped by an apparently car unfriendly City Council.  Public transport is encouraged by very high parking fees and relentless traffic wardens that are collecting hefty fines around the historical centre.  That is not a solution to typical situations of people that, like me, need to go to different places in a single trip, carrying bags and luggage and need to park in between.

A very annoying thing that often happens to me is finding a parking area where you would easily fit, say, 5 cars but because of the way other careless drivers have decided to park you can merely fit 3 or 4 and you waste many minutes driving and polluting, looking for another parking.  Another typical example is when, like in these pictures, people arrive, see an empty space at the end of the lot and they park close to the next car, wasting precious space that becomes totally unusable (highlighted in red).  When this happens I am always asking to myself: is it possible that they just don’t get it?  Can’t they see that nobody, until they move, will be able to use this space?

Obviously the right way is to park closest to the edge, without wasting any space: there will be a large gap between your car and the next one  but when that moves it will allow other drivers to park properly, helping the whole community to save time, CO2, money and anger .

Posted under Cambridge, Traffic