What did you miss?
Our April meeting was held at the Lansdowne Club where we welcomed four new members; Kofi Atuah, Mark Cardale, Fred Firmin and Andrew Newton. We also had two guests – who we hope may become members in the future, continuing the momentum in new membership that is starting to happen. The new members will be introducing themselves on a broadcast over the next few weeks. If you have been a member for a while, and would like to re-introduce yourself to the wider membership, please let me know.
Our speaker was the inimitable Ges Ray who was talking about publishing a book and building a set of products around his service offering. Ges trains people in public speaking, and his presentation demonstrated his techniques, keeping everyone focused on what he was saying. We practised “whoops” and explored the way that the voice can come from different parts of the body – and that was just the introduction. Ges then talked about the reality of creating a book with some suggestions on what had worked for him, particularly the benefits of working with a publisher who can provide support and advice. His publisher, Richard Hagen, who had presented to us in January was also in the audience. It was useful to see both sides of the publishing process.
Ges also talked about his plans to productise more of his offering by providing content and tools for effective public speaking, emphasising the need to create an ecosystem around the basic offering in order to drive additional revenues and create a brand.
The session was videoed and broadcast live to members who were unable to join us in person – and will be available as a recording shortly. If you haven’t tried the remote access, please contact Ian Watkins for details.
Our session in May will be on CyberSecurity and we will be running a simulation of a cyber attack on a business to explore how we react – and learn what we need to do should this actually happen to us. The session will be on 8th May at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, starting at 6pm. I look forward to seeing you there.
Calum Byers
Chair, XTEND