Last week Grafton Media were at the #SMECommunity tweet up in Birr and had a great time networking and making new contacts. Grafton Media’s own Conchubhair Mac Lochlain was amongst the crowd, and here’s what he had to say about the event:
Strength In Numbers
The business environment in Ireland has never been more difficult, in particular for start-ups and SMEs. Access to finance, budgetary constraints, and inflated overheads have combined, amongst other factors, to test any new or existing small business to breaking point. The good news however, is that there is strength in numbers, and people are managing to come up with ever more creative ways to control their destinies, and using new technologies to spread their message. For example, over one hundred representatives of small and medium enterprises from all over the island of Ireland met up on Friday last for a networking event with a difference.
The first ever 32-county ‘tweet-up’ was held in the County Arms Hotel in Birr, Co. Offaly as a chance for representatives from the SME community to come and meet each other, discuss current business and technology trends, network, and perhaps most important of all, to see evidence that they’re not in this alone. It was a gathering of some of the most creative and driven individuals in the sector, coming together with a clear sense of purpose, clarity of vision, and a desire to see their businesses grow into viable propositions, as well as making smart use of the network and technologies available.
Messages From The Day
The event was organised over twitter, having developed from a single conversation on the site some months ago, and so successful was it that by lunchtime the hash-tags ‘#SMEcommunity‘ and ‘#Birr2012‘ were trending nationally. The first talk of the day was from George Mordaunt, public speaker and author of ‘Shepherd’s Pie‘, a book detailing the roller-coaster of ups and downs he has experienced in Ireland in the last few years. George’s talk was a particularly useful one, as one of the main points he had to make was that nobody has ever been in this sort of situation before, nobody can really tell you what’s right or wrong for your business at the moment apart from yourself, and that there is strength in numbers, a theme evidenced by the amount of people in attendance.
Above all else however, one message shone through: That people are absolutely going to have to make more creative and imaginative use of new technologies and their own networks, in order to work together on turning Ireland around. One thing that was extremely noticable was the fact that for several hours last Friday, the function room in the hotel was full of the people who are actually going to create the jobs, provide the goods and services, and inject the cashflow the economy so desperately needs right now, and we at Grafton Media are extremely proud of the part we are playing in that.
It is also worth pointing out that by lunchtime so noticable had the event become in the ether, that a phone call had already been received in the morning from Leinster House, inviting a delegation from the organising group to meet with Ministers Richard Bruton to brief them on what the community are doing, and their plans for the future, a fact noteworthy in the the context of the briefs held by the two at Cabinet level: Research and Innovation, and Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Surely that has to count as a success, no?
Join In On The Networking
If this all sounds like something you’d like to become involved in, why not pop over to twitter with the hashtag #smecommunity, Facebook, or even the LinkedIn Group Page.
