Friday, January 29, 2010

Small Business Community Network Mixer a Great Success

The networking event organized by Linda Ockwell-Jenner at Caesar Martini's on the evening of January 26th was a resounding success with some approximately 50 people in attendance for a long and enjoyable evening of networking.

I was struck by the quality and quantity of the people attending the event.

There seems to be a thirst for genuine networking opportunities in the Kitchener-Waterloo area where people can make fresh contacts and find the bits and pieces they need to advance their businesses.

You can visit the Small Business Community Network on-line at http://www.sbcncanada.org/.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

What is the Role of the Kitchener-Waterloo Entrepreneurs?

We had an open discussion at the last meeting of the Executive of the Kitchener-Waterloo Entrepreneurs LinkedIn Group on Friday January 15th, 2009.

What I took away from the roundtable discussion is that there is a perception amongst our now 350 group members that the Kitchener-Waterloo Entrepreneurs LinkedIn Group is a different kind of networking group than Communitech or the Chamber of Commerce.

Communitech and the Chamber of Commerce do a great job doing what they do.  Communitech is great for people and companies actually in the technology-side of their businesses and the Chamber of Commerce a great place for local businesses to learn about each other and look after their mutual interests. 

Communitech's CEO Roundtable is a great place for Executives to swap stories that can help each other as they are almost like case studies from which lessons can be learned.  Membership, to my understanding, however is limited to CEOs from larger companies.  The discussions are also confidential.

What the Kitchener-Waterloo Entrpreneurs LinkedIn Group does is allow members to work on solving individual business problems by providing a forum of trust wherein members can get together on their own to form subgroups to solve their problems and learn from each other.  In short, it is in many ways a CEO roundtable for CEOs of smaller companies or anyone interested in advancing their business or career.