Brentwood Business Networking Blog – 17th July

Chairman’s Business Networking Blog Thursday 17th July 2014.

What a fantastic turnout! 24 members present and 3 visitors; Alex Pink a video producer, George Smith a recruitment manager and for the last time as a visitor Janice Bentley-Pearson, business adviser. She has made her application and been accepted by the Committee as a member.

The meeting was buzzing and got off to a great start with Marcelle’s Education Slot which, with the clever use of epigrams illustrated how we should approach our membership of EBF and more generally networking. Her clever use of the epigram was best summed up by her first effort “it’s not the people you know, but what you know about people”. Marcelle, please liaise with Scott over putting it on the website, it was a great effort.

Whilst next week we should be having a new member induction, this week we had Stuart Smallcombe dealing out the prizes for the World Cup draw. The winner of course was Howard Bullock, who celebrated the occasion by dressing up in the nearest he could get to lederhosen. Others who challenged the hot weather included Scott Griffiths with some wonderful check shorts and Kevin Brooks who looked the holiday icon he has become wearing rather fetching pink matching shorts and tee shorts and flip flops. A pair of sun glasses would have really finished it off nicely. Thank you for brightening up the morning guys.

From the resulting 60 second round the things that stood out for me were as follows:-

Howard Bullock, Kevin Brooks and Scott Griffiths followed one another in short order, all wearing shorts!

Richard Reed always grumbles if he doesn’t get a mention so I am pleased to be able to tell you that he produced 2 offers this week both for 7 nights in 4 star accommodation in Madeira and Tenerife respectively, the most expensive being £699.00 per person. By the way, there is no truth in the rumour that I am getting a percentage off the price of a holiday of 5% for every time I give him a mention.

Mike Rogers has bought a Japanese car and statistically deals with an awful lot of Katies. Similarly Kevin Radford apparently deals with Eric which, just to show that I was listening, this stands for European Risk Insurance Company. Apparently it’s gone bust. He reminded me of the joke about the white horse who walked into a bar and asked for a whisky. Do you want the brand named after yourself enquired the barman, yes please replies the horse…its Eric….. Ok, my only excuse is that I do spend a lot of time sitting next to David Plumley whose contribution this week’s was talking about backups, not backs up but backups.

The person who had the most exciting week seems to have been Nick Cooke who has been involved with a dangerous structure, living on the edge as usual.

Alan Shaw’s contribution was back to its whimsical best, the Shaw “Cafe’” at the Metropolitan Police Sports Ground was not named after him but his grandfather who 25 years ago designed the stables. That must rank as one of the most interesting facts of the day.

It was left to Tina however to steal the show and the Oscar with an acronym on football to illustrate her various areas of expertise – Well done Tina!

This week it was Alan Shaw’s 10 minutes of fame and it all started very well; apparently he has a tattoo on his left buttock.

Two themes came from his offering, the first was a reference to the first reinforced concrete building which was apparently built in 1942 and a brochure was being passed round illustrating this impressive edifice, whilst Alan moved on to the second part of his presentation by showing us a scheme for the centre of Pitsea. This is the one where you build things on it, rather than dropping a bomb on it. He discounted the possibility of newts being present in Pitsea to hold up any potential development thus illustrating the fact that you can prepare feasibility study without actually visiting the place.I hereby deputise anyone other than myself to be involved in the opening of the Essex Business Forum’s new Pitsea meeting! What’s this got to do with Alan Shaw Architects I hear you say, well…it was interesting to hear him comment on architectural matters, it was useful to know he has an interest and depth of knowledge of his subject and therefore you also know that he is a member we can readily make referrals to, and that dear reader is what the 10 minute slot is for. Alan stayed on his feet and handed round the slips during the referrals round which remained light-hearted but with a good number of referrals and recorded business in excess of £12,000 which was solid performance.

Terry Maylin won the speakers prize but like many of us do, Alan had forgotten to bring it with him. A scale model of the development of Pitsea might go down well Alan.

This week’s meeting was not only characterised by wonderful attendance numbers but I hope it was encouragement for everyone who turned up this week, to turn up next week and perhaps bring visitor.

I look forward to seeing you all again.