Finalists in the Midlands Business Awards

Midlands Business AwardsAt Real Point we're big fans of networking. For us it's been one of our major ways of growing our business. So when we heard about the Networker category in the Midlands Business Awards, we decided to give it a go!

The good news is, we've made it to the finals! I was interviewed earlier this week by an intimidating line up of seven judges, more than anyone on X Factor or Strictly faces (or so I'm told!). With questions on why I think networking is important, why I network, where I network, how much time I spend networking and how I use Social Media in networking, the ten minute interview felt like two and before I knew it I was being hustled back out the room.

Now we just have to wait and see. The awards are on the 3rd February 2012, so we've just got to hold our breath till then! We have some tough competition from some well known names on the Midlands networking scene, so glad to have made it this far and may the best one win . . . .

November 10, 2011 at 2:25 pm | Business Technology, Design, Real Point News | 1 comment

Open letter to Andy Preston

The following is an open letter to Andy Preston, following his no-show at his breakfast meeting I tried to attend this morning.

Dear Andy Preston,

andy preston keynote linkedin pageI'm writing, following your no-show at your Key Note Breakfast meeting this morning at Regus in Brindley Place on the subject of LinkedIn. I had booked on this when you first advertised it, via LinkedIn, and received confirmation from yourselves by phone and email of my booking.

I was very disappointed, therefore, that having invested time and money to attend your event at 7am this morning to find that the reception at the Regus building knew nothing of the event. I might have thought I had venues, times and dates wrong, but no, there was another delegate awaiting your arrival, plus I was still able to go onto LinkedIn and view the event which had no notes or information regarding any cancellation.

As a social media expert and as you were speaking on and using LinkedIn to promote this event, you will be aware of its potential to be a double edged sword and, therefore, I'm inviting your response in the public domain as to why you didn't use social media to inform me of the event's cancellation. At the very least you could have updated the event's title on LinkedIn to say "Cancelled:" even late the night before as I did check before leaving home. You could have also used LinkedIn's messaging tools or even, as you took my phone number and email, used those old fashioned methods to contact me!

I would like to point out my costs in attending your, non-happening event are as follows:

  • 20 mile round trip = £9
  • parking charges = £1.20
  • hour of my wasted time from office (7:30am-8:30am) = £55
  • my morning hour lost with my 8 month old son (6:30am - 7:30am) = priceless and irretrievable

I look forward to your response. Regus, with whom I had left a card at reception, have contacted me to apologise, but it appears details of my booking had not been passed onto them from yourselves.

Ian O'Donnell
(Director of Real Point)

September 23, 2011 at 7:58 am | Business Technology, Business Thinking, Design, Social Media | 1 comment

Business Networks in Coventry, Solihull, Birmingham and surrounding areas

With our web design and social media work you may expect us to live almost entirely in the virtual world, to do all our networking online through social media from Linked In to Twitter. While this is a strong part of our marketing strategy it's certainly not the only one, and is actually made more effective by developing great social networks in the 'real world'.

So you will find myself and other members of the team here getting up at unearthly hours to attend local networking breakfasts or, for those who enjoy the extra hour or two's sleep, going to business lunches and evening talks and nibbles.

As people know that I network widely, I often get asked about what events are available locally. With that in mind I thought it might be useful to put a list together of local networking events. If you know of one I haven't added then do comment and let us know. Big thank you to Becki from Learn2 for supplying details for many of the clubs on this list.

Ones we attend regularly

We are also actively involved with the Federation of Small Businesses who run a wide variety of events at various times accross the region as do the IOD.

Other local clubs

February 11, 2010 at 12:47 pm | General, Social Media | 2 comments

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