Morethanjustnetworking

#MORETHANJUSTNETWORKING – NEW MEMBERS, WORKSHOPS, NL AWARDS AND MORE………

In the second part of our new #MoreThanJustNetworking series, we go behind the scenes and keep you up to date with events from our involvement within the County and helping to drive the County forward.

We are grateful to everyone who gave us feedback on last week’s launch of this new weekly feature as it brings everything together for people to understand what we are doing and also helps people to understand that a) we’re not all about networking and b) we are a County organisation. We are still referred to as the North Northants Business Network despite changing the branding from red to blue and talking about Northamptonshire on a regular basis so our blog is certainly helping us to keep our message out there.

 

MONDAY

Our week started with meeting after meeting as we had a number of meetings. Firstly, we met with NNBN Member East Midlands Cyber Resilience Centre as we talked further about what we are doing within Northamptonshire and how we can help them share their message around cyber crime further. We all know the disruption that cyber crime and identity theft can play in our lives and it was good to understand more about the work the EMCRC are doing across the East Midlands. On their website you’ll find a number of resources and a free pack to download so make sure you register to receive this key information and help you to take action in the battle against cyber crime. Look out for more in our next NNBN Digital magazine on this and our September meeting at Delapre Abbey as the EMCRC will be our speakers.

Next up it was a meeting with Graeme Kane, Interim Director Place and Economy of North Northamptonshire Council as Simon updated Graeme with the work NNBN has been doing and adding value to the Northamptonshire community since launching 18 months ago. It’s critical that in this day and age that local authorities and businesses engage on a regular basis to help our communities evolve and grow as well as focussing on engagement with each other and we look forward to continuing dialogue as we go forward.

Simon also met with Sunny Singh from the Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce and we’re now working on promoting the Northamptonshire Business Exhibition taking place in September at Northampton Saints Rugby Club. It’s going to be another fantastic day for the County’s business community and we’re looking forward to running the co-branded speed networking on the day for businesses across the County to engage in a very lively networking event!

 

TUESDAY

Simon met with Gus De Silva, Head of Procurement to finalise the arrangements for a new workshop in September at Vulcan Works. Again, local money being spent locally in our communities with local people is certainly something we know helps to work towards a brighter future and following our Procurement Workshop with North Northamptonshire Council a few weeks ago, we’re looking forward to repeating the exercise with West Northamptonshire Council later this year.

Simon then headed off to the Northampton Town Centre Hotel in Northampton for the Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce networking lunch and it was great to catch up with what’s going on across the County. Thank you to everyone who we spent time with to understand more about what’s going on and to enable us to engage with you.

 

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday morning we had a great start to the day as we worked with Digital Future First and new NNBN Members Rock UK Frontier Centre to bring local business owners together to understand more of the funded support available to business owners. A big thank you to Vicky Clark and Tony Knaggs for their presentations and sharing their knowledge around opportunities for businesses and to our hosts, Rich Sewell, James Hodges and the team from Rock UK for looking after us so well.

In the evening, Simon headed over to the Discover Northamptonshire Hub at Rushden Lakes for the launch of the Hi Street! marketing campaign featuring a number of small businesses from Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough and East Northamptonshire to encourage local people to shop locally. We would like to congratulate Sarah Hobbs from North Northamptonshire Council on pulling the campaign together which is launching on Monday so watch our social media as we will be sharing this on Monday as well! It was also great to catch up with Patricia Greaves from the Business & IP Centre Northamptonshire to hear about the new support offering coming soon which you can read about here.

The day ended with another new member joining us as Robin from Vizeo Media joined the NNBN community as a member. More to come on Robin and his services as we go forward!

 

THURSDAY

Simon headed off to Corby for the Love Corby Networking event and it was great to catch up with a few familiar faces at the meeting which took place at Corby Town Football Club. Simon shared updates with the group on what NNBN has been doing but also information from our members such as the EMCRC with the key information.

In the evening, we were in two places at once as Marie headed off to Chester House Estate for the Northants Life Awards and Simon headed off to Delapre Abbey for our networking event in Northampton. We were delighted to support the Northants Life Awards this year as a category sponsor for the Best Beauty Salon and Marie was joined by fellow NNBN Member Nick Freeman as she presented the award to the winners, Maison de Beaute and Co based in Northampton in the packed Chester House courtyard. Again, many congratulations to all the winners at this year’s NL Awards, it’s great to see so much vibrancy in the County.

Our networking event at Delapre Abbey was pretty vibrant too with a room packed of businesses and local people networking and engaging with each other and we were all treated to a great presentation from NNBN Member Kate Taylor from FTRE. Kate shared her knowledge and background around her journey from leaving school to now training business owners with financial software and key areas of accounting that can produce important information to help make better business decisions. You can find out more from FTRE here.

We also welcomed more new members to the NNBN community with Roxanne from Roxannes Hair Boutique and Corrine from Corrine West Photography joining us. We’re looking forward to welcoming them to our community.

 

FRIDAY

We ended the week with a couple of meetings with our members to help them move forward and Simon is off to support our NNBN Member The Chester House Estate with their Queen Tribute concert in the evening, taking photographs and helping to record the action. It’s key we showcase what’s going on in the County and some of the events at Chester House are exciting events for us all to enjoy.

Of course, we’ve continued to share local news stories from across the County, we’ve helped signpost people to business networking events around Northamptonshire, we’ve led and delivered local events and we continue to grow by welcoming new members into our community.

This is why we’re #morethanjustnetworking

Simon & Marie

 

Summer social NNBN EVENTBRITE