Getting the band back together

Last week we held our first face to face event for members since 2019 and if I’m honest I think we were nervous about how it would go.? Would people turn up, would they stay for the whole day or sneak off at lunchtime – obviously I’ve never done that! We’d done everything we could – engaged great speakers, sorted lunch, sent out personalised timetables etc (and when I say we I mean Lisa, of course but you all knew that) and we just had to wait.

The day started a little slowly – the usual last-minute cancellations – covid is back.? Then suddenly there was a wave of people all looking pleased to be there and wanting to say hi to Lisa, of course. By the time we started there were over 80 people in the room from over 60 organisations so an amazing start but would they engage with the speakers and each other? Well the answer to that was a resounding yes – the energy in the room was amazing.? They talked to old friends, to people they’d been meaning to catch for the last 3 years and never quite round to it and to people they didn’t know – who does that at a networking event! The challenge was not getting them to talk to each other it was getting them to stop!

Of course it didn’t run to time, of course there’s nervousness about speakers you have never seen present before (they were all brilliant by the way), of course there were worries about lunch (you can never go wrong with NCVO potato wedges) and would people start to drift off – not they didn’t.? For us as a team this was first real test of the ‘new’ CHRN, more members, more products, new team and so about half way through the day we (Lisa Lavender, Kerry Smith and I) stood at the back of the room and allowed ourselves a brief – we did this moment.

The day ended and everyone disappeared out into the rain and then something started to happen which I don’t think any of us expected – we went (albeit briefly) viral.? Linkedin was full of people saying how well the day had gone, how much they had enjoyed it, the speakers sharing their experiences – someone used the word ‘wow’ – that’s definitely a first. At that point several things happened – we realised why we had done it in the first place and the challenge of next years event suddenly dawned on us!

I know virtual meetings have revolutionised work – according to the survey from TPP maybe not as much as we thought, but it turns out we are social animals and we do want to meet each other and eat lukewarm potato wedges.

So a huge thank you to the team that put the day on, the speakers and most importantly all the people who came to the day, threw themselves into it and made us all feel incredibly proud of the Network and the work we do.