Networking in Surrey News - week beginning 14 February

Doh! Valentine’s Day – and I scored a typical ‘own goal’! Not only did I not take my long-suffering partner Angela out for a romantic candle-lit dinner, but I went out networking instead – and what’s more, to a fab dinner at the Woodlands Park Hotel with Trafford Enterprises. Talk about the St Valentine’s Day Massacre :0)  Even the dozen long-stemmed red roses I’d grabbed in Waitrose didn’t get me off the hook, so it looks like I’m going to be putting up an awful lot of shelves in the coming weeks...

Closing in on our 1,000 Member target
Still, on the major upside, we’ve just reached 400 Members on Networking in Surrey, as Julie Jenkinson of Surrey Air Ambulance joined this evening – hooray! Meet all the new Members here...

Chris over at Networking in Berkshire romped through the 500 mark this week by employing the ‘Vindaloo’ gambit. He’s created a group on NiB to help the informal (and hugely popular) Wokingham Curry Club stay in touch, together with a mini-website. We’re happy to do the same for any small networking groups without a website, so please just ask me.

Biscotti’s going Crackers!
Networking events are filling up nicely again – check out hundreds on NiS right now in our Events and Regular Grouup Meetings sections. Nigel Parsons tells me that Guildford First Friday was jam-packed  this month - and the free Business Biscotti at Wentworth had 72 attendees! Free networking is obviously flavour of the month, and you’ll find plenty of that here on NiS. Biscotti groups are springing up all over the place, with new Surrey venues in Weybridge and Epsom (hosted by new NiS Member Soraya Anderson).

BNI rocks!
There’s lots of BNI activity as usual, including a free, all-welcome, ‘get to know us’ evening at the NY Bar & Grill in Cobham on Monday, and Kingston Royals BNI Visitors’ Day breakfast at the Holiday Inn on Tuesday.

Traffic 'Jam on it'
Our own visitor numbers continue to soar too, so our clever advertisers are reaping the benefits of being seen thousands of times a week by hundreds of visitors – and they get a deserved mention here too, because they help us to keep the sites free for everybody:

 Sarah Martin's  Ladies at Eleven - networking for women who are serious about their business

  Mike Rutherford's Ignite at Danson Digital- the first system born to run online businesses

 Tessa Hood's My Video Talk - branded video emails & video broadcasting  for smaller businesses

   Howard Nichols  at Surrey Copywriters - for all your online and offline copywriting needs 

 Shân Hughes at Plug That Gap - business expertise and interim project management in support of busy business people just like you

 John Edward and the Team at 4Networking Walton and Weybridge- a super-friendly group within the fastest-growing 'in-person' networking organisation in the UK

Fancy advertising your own business on NiS in March? We have three slots free (well not free, of course, but at the amazing value price of just £60 per month) so please call me on 01932 845814 or email keith@networkinginsurrey.co.uk to grab yours now!

Diary of a Networker...
People are telling me they are finding lots of events on the site they would otherwise have missed, which is the whole point of NiS – getting us all networking face-to-face more often. I’ve met dozens of people in person in the last few days, including lots of NiS Members – but then, there are a lot of us about now! And that's where the local focus of NiS offers something different to the global Social Networking sites: we're all meeting each other in person out there in Networkland, and that's how real-world relationships are formed, generating profitable business opportunities (for my money, 'meatspace' out-networks cyberspace every time).

My week started at Wentworth Biscotti with Katrina Warne, Tessa Hood, Ian Jackman, Christine Chalklin, Barbara Bradbury, Shân Hughes, Soraya Anderson and of course, organiser Tina Williams. Then there was Jeremy Webb at the Trafford dinner, and the following evening Richard Guillaume at the free Surrey Chambers Meet the Members evening in Guildford, along with Nigel Devenish and new Members Farzad Afkham and Sarah Orchard (who’s presenting at the Bracknell Expo - be there!)

This evening I’ve been to Elaine Hickmott's free Commercial Connections event at the magnificent Gorse Hill, Woking, where I enjoyed catching up with Sarah Martin, James Webster (enthusing about his Bracknell Expo and the major Lifestyle show he’s staging at Sandown Park in the summer), Sally-Ann North (who’s taking over Farnham Ladies Who Latte from Elaine), Evonne Brown, Lynne Skinner, Katrina Warne (again!), Nigel Parsons, Nigel Devenish (again – and we both won prizes in the draw), Andy Hamer, Sonia Duggan and Rowan Johnson. Apologies to anybody I've forgotten (it's me age, you know).    
Happy Networking!