Networking – Dead or Alive?

An Online Elbow Room Group Discussion – Wednesday 4th May 2022 – 5pm to 6.15pm

Elbow Room Networking

This is an Elbow Room Networking Event with a big difference. Devonshire House is built around Networking and great Topics/Speakers. But the Covid years – and other equally as powerful forces for change – have had – and will continue to have a dramatic impact on all aspects of our private and business lives. Networking has been turned on its head! Understanding this and working out – personally – how best to handle it is important for ourselves and for our businesses.

Devonshire House Elbow Room Networking Events provide the opportunity for you to meet new people and catch up with people you may have met before. They seek to replicate the style and feel of actual physical face to face networking events. Networking has been at the heart of the Devonshire House offering since its original founding in 1967. Our purpose is to create for our members thinking time and space for key business issues, and where people make the difference.

About this event

We also see this through the lens of www.WorkingFree.co.uk, our partner company, with whom we have prepared an Occasional Paper titled “Networking – Dead or Alive?” See this link. It’s all about what has changed in the last three years…..and which affect how we handle all this change – how we interact with others – how we Network. It’s about how we – and/or our businesses – can best be successful from now on in a changing world.

The Event Format

To get the best out of this networking event we would like you to participate by responding to one of our networking related questions below.

We will be giving priority to those that have confirmed they would like to respond to a specific question and have given us a some details of their response – please email Events@Devonshirehousenetwork.co.uk

The Event will be recorded as a Zoom Event and also as a Word Document transcription in which we will include ALL (maybe slightly edited) submissions in our Post-Event Report which we will email to all those email addresses on our Eventbrite Booking Form.

(Note the irony! Here we are, claiming that Elbow Room Networking is an acceptable substitute for real Face-to-Face Networking – and at the same time taking a hard look at whether Face-to-Face Networking is still the Silver Bullet!)

Your inspiration might come from the Occasional Paper – or – it might come from the suggested Question listed below – or – and this may well be more likely – from your own assessment and judgement of the changes over the past three years – and which you are happy to exchange with others..

We will get as many of these as we can into 30 minutes – but the others will still be published – so let us peer into your own original thinking as soon as you can……………..!

We want as many Attendees as possible to have their say including who you are and what you do.

This will be followed by 20 minutes of discussion – with everyone on screen.

Here are the Key Questions that we invite you to answer:-

….. questions that are NOT usually answered by formal books, online tutorials or even most seminars.

• Professional Associations, what are you a member of or thinking about Joining?
• What are your views on the CBI, the IoD and Chambers?
• What are your views on Free Webinars – The FT, KPMG; (What others can you mention?)
• Any good ideas about follow ups to Free Webinars?
• Paid-For Events – Can you recommend any?
• Can you recommend any networking groups / organisations? Do you have to pay/ join/ etc?
• Are they in person or online. How do you weigh up the cost in time and travel?
• How do you assess others attending? – do they need to be senior levels?
• Do you collect names and email addresses from attendee Lists and do you follow up?
• How do you use social media to help with networking and keeping in touch?
• Why should a senior Executive – doing well and happy where they are – want to Network?
• Should Directors and similar level Professionals promote themselves through the Media?
• Should Partners in Professional Practices leave it all to the Marketing Dept?
• What are your three favourite ways of securing a conversation.
• What do you have to do to prepare the ground for a meeting?
• Name your three best ways of keeping in touch with people you know and on your list?
• Give One example of an accidental windfall piece of work – and what you learnt from it.
• Tips on leveraging attendance at live actual conferences and seminars
• What are your two best Keeping-in-touch Questions? Does it vary between those you have met and those you haven’t?
• Should you promote your business interests through Friends and Social Contacts?

Meeting Agenda

5.00pm – Welcome and Intro from Devonshire House.

5.05pm – 30 minutes of delegate responses to questions.

5.35pm – Comments, Feedback and discussion.

6.00pm – 6.15pm – Formal Close.

About Devonshire House

Devonshire House is a people-focused membership club for Director-level professionals in leadership roles who have an instinctive focus on the human side of enterprise. Our purpose is to create, for our members, thinking time and space for key business issues and where people make the difference. At the heart of Devonshire House are senior decision makers keen to discover and explore original thinking and information generated from all the Events we promote. Delivered primarily through our broad range of high-level Speaker Events, Forums, Panel Debates/ Discussions, Information dissemination and peer-to-peer networking, our Members and Members’ guests discover more about organisations and how the effectiveness of their people can be nurtured and grown. Please see – www.DevonshireHouseNetwork.co.uk