Hello, and welcome to the Post-Bootcamp Adventure series, where I plan on documenting my trips to any business events that I may come across, and other fantasy map-related real-life adventures that I may stumble upon from time-to-time. After all, the fun that I've had at the Make a Difference Boot Camp doesn't have to stop there!
In this inaugural post, I am going to provide you with a raw, first-hand account of how things went at the Suffolk Small Business Networking event which took place on the 19th of July 2023 at the University of Suffolk.
For those who don't know what the event is about, the Suffolk Small Business networking event is a business meet-up event that is run jointly by the Business Development team at the University of Suffolk (with the event led from that side by Malcolm Beer), in partnership with colleagues from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). The networking event is usually held in the Atrium building of the University, and takes place every two to three months.
Event experience
The story began at 8:15am on a miserable Wednesday morning, and I was sitting outside the Atrium building, waiting to go in for the networking event. Whilst the doors to the building were closed and nobody was there, I decided to have a sneak peek at the pitching notes that I had gathered from the days before the networking event, anticipating that a one minute pitch was going to happen later down the line. And of course, watching the Estates team doing their litter-picking duties.
At around 8:45am, one of the university staff that came to oversee the event, as well as the first of the FSB delegation began to arrive at the University - begging to be let in to the building. But it didn't take long for that to happen, and I was eventually allowed to go in to the building with the group.
Unlike the Bootcamp days where I would be sat in the main area of the Atrium building (aka the glasshouse) waiting to be called up to the event rooms, there was no need to sit around, as the doors were already open and I could go straight inside.
After having a few conversations with Malcolm about the FSB event and how I got here, I was then invited to take a snoop around the refreshments and food that was on offer. I didn't take any of the hot drinks, but I took a buttered croissant, and man, was I a bit careless to not put it on a plate, leaving a crumbly mess on the floor! Naughty boy, naughty.
The networking room was littered with numbers on each of the tables - and not long after, I would begin to figure out what they meant, as just after 9:00am, I was handed out three sets of numbers which would dictate which tables would I be sitting on during each of the three parts of the networking event. In my case, I was given the numbers "5, 3, 1".
During the first 15 minutes of the FSB event, I got the Bootcamp Grand Finale feeling of the room being deceptively quiet and only having the University staff to speak with. But at least there were some familiar faces that I saw, and some of the Bootcamp participants were also there.
By 9:30am though, the action started picking up, as the room started to fill with budding entrepreneurs and small business owners from all over the county, as well as business mentors and people from recruitment agencies.
Once everyone in the room settled down, it was time to hit the road at 10:00am, as Business Development Manager Malcolm would take the stage to introduce the event and the planned schedule, before moving on to talk about the University's operations, and the support that is available through the Innovation Labs network of hot-desking suites. Then, representatives from the FSB came to talk about the organisation (at one point mentioning that it's not the Russian spy service), as well as the benefits of being a member - such as free banking with the Co-operative Bank and £100,000 legal representation.
Once the introduction to the event has been served, it was time for me to switch over to table 5 and let the first networking event begin, with Malcolm making sure that everyone would get a chance to talk. After each of the participants shared their business ideas and occupations, Malcolm called time on interaction 15 minutes later, and the room fell silent, as the main presenter of the event, Alex Menhams from Here and Now, came up to the stage.
Alex began to talk about how his journey started 10 years ago at an idea centre, meeting a group of pantomime performers, before talking about how his experience going to an event in Bristol allowed him to be able to go on to provide improvisation experiences in other parts of the country such as Woodbridge, and subsequently expanding his venture abroad.
Then, he would go on to introduce the event itself by drawing a diagram that explains the difference between an entrepreneur's expectations in terms of achieving their idea, and the realities that one might actually face.
Not long after came the first practical task of the networking event, which was to create a series of stories, one word at a time. But before the fun could begin, we did some demonstrations of how the story concept worked - firstly, one of the guests came along to practice the concept with Alex, with the story revolving around a trip to the zoo. Things then started to shake up a bit, as Alex now wanted to create a sense of independence, with another volunteer being called up to practice creating another story (this time, the story was about going to the island of Kefalonia, drinking alcohol and having some sangria).
Introduction over, it was now time for everybody to get involved. The story that we came up with as a pair - our experiences at the theatre, and whether we should go there again to watch another performance. At one point, I ended up stumbling on some words and the pair that I was with had to backtrack to get me back in the right place, but in the end I got there, and it was a great deal of fun.
After a clown whistle was used to bring everyone's attention (trust me, the sound was awesome!), things began to quieten down, and it was time for Alex to present the second task of the session - the gifting exercise, starting off with the basic concept of "listen, accept and commit".
Then he went on to explain how the gifting exercise worked - firstly, pretend that you are taking a gift to somebody, then get the other person to describe what you are offering and explain why you have offered it, before swapping around with the other pair. A demonstration of the concept then followed, where I found the idea of gifting some pork, and lead pipes to be quite hilarious to say the least.
If you want a basic visual representation of the philosophy that underpins the exercise that's about to happen next, here is an excerpt from Robert Poynton's book "Everything is an Offer":
For this exercise, I was paired with one of the Bootcamp participants. Among some of the things I had been gifted included some pieces of artwork (nice fantasy map hommage), as well as a little kitten and a car, whereas some of the things I had gifted back included a book and a ring. It was also very interesting to hear what some of the other participants around the room have gifted to other people as part of this exercise - including a genie fish (never heard of that before!).
Eventually, Alex would conclude his session by talking about the objectives that have been achieved from the exercises (which included teamwork, leadership and communication among others), as well as providing an overview of what services the Here and Now organisation provides.
After a short comfort break, I was then asked to switch over to table 3 for the second networking event. In the same way as last time, we sat down to talk about our business ideas, working around the table counter-clockwise. There were some new faces that I got introduced to at the table, as I was sitting with recruiters, representatives from the Co-operative Bank, as well as Malcolm's colleague, Sue Lawther-Brown (who I happened to meet at the Bootcamp Grand Finale).
The main highlight of the networking event for me came when it was time for me to talk about my business idea - as I came round to show the fantasy map portfolio to a group of five people on my table, the responses that I got were absolutely astonishing - it really fascinated them to see that people could come together and put together maps from different eras.
There was no intermission between the second and third networking sessions - as we were asked to move to the next table indicated on our pieces of paper - in my case, being asked to move straight over to table 1. On that table, I was put with a group of recruiters and mentors providing support for aspiring social enterprises and charities, along with a familiar face that I had met at the beginning of the session, on table 5. The conversation was slightly different to the one I had on table 3, as I had some pretty good conversations about the proposed business model and revenue streams, as well as some price statistics that I had gathered from the primary market research.
Once Malcolm called time on the third round of networking talks, the uplifting mood that prevailed over the last one-and-a-half hours subsided slightly - as everyone was asked to get their phones out and go on to Mentimeter to fill out a survey on bus travel in the county of Suffolk. Some of the key issues that were covered in the survey included the problems surrounding bus travel in rural and coastal Suffolk (the main problem seemed to be that buses to the villages were unreliable), and what can be done to address the issue of accessibility in those areas.
After being introduced to the Innovation Labs party that will be taking place on the 25th of July, the FSB event was finished as far as the structured events were concerned - and so it was now time to do some free networking with some of the attendees that I didn't get to meet at the table networking sessions, and go and grab some more refreshments (although this time, I learnt my lesson in getting a plate out!).
After being mistakenly told that the event would be going on until 5pm, the session came to an end, and most of the other participants began making their way back to their workplaces. So the cue came for me to start heading home - but not without one more challenge - it was pouring it outside, and I had to try and make it back home without ruining the fantasy maps! Probably should invest in a plastic cover bag to put the sketchbooks inside.
Conclusions
I have to say that I really enjoyed coming to the Suffolk Small Business Networking event on the 19th of July. Alex's personality and career story resonated really well with everybody during the event, and the activities that he delivered provided a really creative perspective on how we should go about networking with other people. As he described it to me at the end of the event, there were thousands of different combinations within each of the activities that he could have tried presenting at the event, and yet, things would have still remained fun and enjoyable.
The civilian attendees and Bootcamp participants who came to the event were really nice to talk to and wanted to share their expertise and connections with me - but what particularly intrigued me about taking the fantasy map business idea to the networking event is that it completely blew the attendees away in terms of how much creativity and style one can put into creating decent maps - and what made it even more astonishing is that I was doing it with groups of people that I previously thought were unlikely to be interested in my offering.
I would also like to give a shoutout to the university's Enterprise and Entrepreneurship team for offering to promote the FSB event amongst the Bootcamp participants - with the amount of participants that came along for the session, many people from the Bootcamp would have missed out on the event if I hadn't helped out with raising awareness of the event back in June. Consequently, I hope that my experience of coming along will encourage other people within the University community to come along and explore opportunities to link up their business ideas with external attendees.
Would I come back again to an FSB networking event? Absolutely. However, I think I could have bought along some business cards and a website portfolio to better improve my connectivity with other people.
And with that, it is now time for me to sign off and wish everyone who came to the FSB event the best of luck in their future ventures.
Until Somerville,
Jakub
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