Highlights of 2012 with Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce

We’ve had a great year here at the Chamber, and it’s whizzed by with some fantastic stuff happening. Here are some of my personal highlights and best bits of the year.

In January, we welcomed the new Mayor of Brighton, Bill Randall as speaker at our inspirational breakfast. Then Christine Taylor of Choccywooydoodah spoke in February, mostly about the benefits of making business decisions under the influence of lots of gin. She was great. 

Also in February, we had a packed big Debate about whether Brighton and Hove should have a voluntary Living Wage. I spoke in favour of the Living Wage, and apparently no one noticed that I was both terrified (Rob Shepherd from the Press Dispensary had told me that I was going to face huge opposition) and under the influence of the flu, which acted in much the same way as large quantities of gin, but was less fun. The Chamber, being full of business people who want to see Brighton and Hove as the centre of a better world, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a voluntary Living Wage for the city, and now we’re running with a big campaign to get lots of businesses signed up. I’m really proud that we’re doing this.

In March, we tried out a new format of a book club, talking about Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and I ended up slightly shocking some members of the audience with an anecdote I didn’t mean to tell on stage. At the inspirational breakfast in March Robert Griffiths from the Martletts made an appeal for more handbags to a packed audience. I don’t know how many handbags he got, but I’m sure the Martletts got some good donations from Chamber members. 

Our bite sized learning sessions have been selling out all year. Some of the most popular ones have been run by Chamber members Think Productive, who have been helping people to become Productivity Ninjas, plus the SEO courses by Ben Kelly at Alphawave Media. We’re re-running these and more in the New Year. 

In April, Judith Young of Potcakes told the audience about getting her first big contract to organise the Labour Party conference, and how her dad, Lord Young (who was part of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet) felt about it. Apparently he was very pleased for her. 

We changed the format of our Spotlight Supper in April and brought out our big interviewer secret weapon in the form of Miranda Birch.  Since April, Miranda has been interviewing some of Brighton’s business characters and finding out their secrets. So far this year, she’s grilled Anthony Zacharzewski (apparently Tony Blair was very nice to him) Mike Herd (interesting points on the type of films watched by oil rig crews in an earlier episode of his career) and Mike Holland (who admitted to being a bit naughty in his ways of getting big contracts.)  I’ve been along to most of the suppers, and have particularly enjoyed the wine and supper format. Apologies for the one where I enjoyed the wine a bit too much, and forgot I was doing the announcements that evening. 

In May, we had our AGM. In typical Brighton Chamber style, we did the AGM bit in 30 minutes, including my talk on the Chamber finances, where I managed to get some laughs for accountancy jokes. It may have just been the accountants in the audience who saw the funny side of accruals, but people seemed to enjoy the presentation and the bad jokes. The AGM was nearly over more quickly than 30 minutes, when Roger French, who was chairing, forgot that there was a vote for President, but luckily we managed to get that one in and I get to dedicate my spare time to the Chamber for another 2 years. 

Chamber Brunches at Terre a Terre were good this year, with some passionate arguments about tofu versus tortilla. The tofu is by far the best choice, by the way, sounds horrible, but tastes amazing. 

In July we fully launched the Chamber Green Collective at Cafe Koba. It was packed with sustainable businesses, most of whom seemed to have a very healthy appetite for drink and chat. And July also saw the first of our Ride the Wave events, which has been an avalanche (forgive the mixed metaphor) of free learning and networking events for the rest of 2012. Hundreds of business people have come along to these events, and the whole programme has been really successful. Some of the people who came along to the free events have even joined the Chamber!

And we launched Wayfinder. I’ve been facilitating some of these groups, where you get four business people together to support each other and focus on the issues facing them and their business. All the sessions so far have been amazing, really wonderful, and I’d recommend getting yourself along to the next one as soon as possible. It’s very different to our networking events, but I think it’s one of the best things we’ve done as a Chamber. I’ve written more about the sessions here.

I missed both Will McInnes and Nicholas Röhl getting emotional when they spoke at breakfast, but people were talking about both of these sessions for weeks afterwards. And passions ran high in a different way at our Big Debate on the night time economy. I thought there was going to be a fight at one point, but Rob managed to calm things down.

November’s breakfast sold out really quickly, with our speaker Brad Jacobsen from Small Batch Coffee attracting a big crowd. I wonder what he thought about the coffee at Carluccio’s? 

We finished the year with an event which Sarah and I never thought was going to work. Come to see a film at 10am on a Wednesday morning?  Our members will all be working, no one will want to come. To tell you the truth, we only did it to be nice to Cineworld, as they’ve been a very supportive member.  Maybe it was the copy from Chimera Communications which sold it, maybe every Chamber member secretly wants to be James Bond, but within 3 hours of sending out the email, we had 115 people booked. We had to get a bigger room, and it turned out to be our second biggest event of the year, with more than 200 people turning out for Skyfall and popcorn. 

These are just some of the highlights for me, and everyone will have their own favourites, but I’m struck by the huge number of events (poor Amanda will have to put her feet up to recover over the holidays) and the sheer range, from serious learning and peer support, to food, wine and networking. It’s been a great year at the Chamber, and there’s lots more for 2013. If you missed out on some of these events, make sure you spend a few minutes over the holidays or in the early days back to work in January, booking in for something new for your new Year.

Julia Chanteray is the President of the Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce as well as running her own business consultancy, the Joy of Business. 

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk