Chairman’s Blog – Thursday 18th April 2013-04-18
A reasonable turnout 26 members 1 guest, Alan Peck of B Bright Cleaning Associates.
The Education Slot was delivered by Alan Shaw and it lived up to our wildest expectations. His topic was Quality; quality travel, quality hotels and quality airlines. I had no problem with the title, given the Company that I represent. Alan Shaw apparently thinks it’s a good thing that you embrace quality in your travels. He found himself sitting near to Neil Kinnock on a flight… but he did not exchange any words with him. His daughter, travelling in similar luxury found herself next to a scruffy oik who turned out to be an international footballer. So wide was his renown that Alan did not know who he was and unfortunately his daughter does not appear to have become a wag. Suddenly everything is heading down hill. Quality travels did not seem to be yielding any positive results. Nonetheless his recommendation pleased Richard Reed who has been trying for weeks to sell us things at a greater price than £15,99.
From one highlight to another. No sooner had we finished with Alan Shaw’s deliberations than we went helter-skelter into a new member induction. He is now a fully fledged member, welcome Stewart Roberts.
Good things often come in 3’s and the 60 second round lived up to such expectations. Having renamed Power Groups, the term Synergy Team was translated into an attempt to get everyone to use the term synergy in their 60 seconds. Nick Morgan won the prize for the most convoluted. As I can’t remember what it was perhaps he could remember it for me on a comment to this blog. Alan Shaw was quickly back into action with a synergetic reference between the drawings necessary to his business and a visit to an art gallery.
Nick Cooke themed his contributions to the meeting with reference to brick. His 60 seconds was a reference to brick walls and how he can be very helpful to owners of the same. I will return to his theme later on in this blog. Jaimie Harrison produced a poem full of jargon and David Plumley was talking about “small” clients.
It was Stewart Roberts who brought us back down to earth by illustrating how we are never too old to get back to basics. This was mirrored by contributions from Adrian Crosdale talking about LEDs again and Brian Painter talking about the hazards of smoking. Terms like stroke, angina, thrombosis rolled off his tongue and just in case anybody hadn’t finished their breakfast or had not properly digested it, the production of a picture of a gangrous foot was positively stomach churning.
Everyone took up the challenge of making reference to synergy or synergies apart from old grumble guts, Mike Rogers. He grumbled about it so much that he probably mentioned the term more than anybody else in their 60 second. Scott’s contribution moved synergetic to holistic in our approach to using the web and associated electronic advertising. It always strikes me as odd that people who are Holistic can most easily be categorised as people who cannot spell. I have always spelt whole with a W, never mind…
Richard Reed was inspired by Alan Shaw’s Education Slot with an offer to the Maldives at the price of £1,369. He made that absolutely clear and immediately absolutely beyond my pocket.
It was left to Ed Crocker to produce the definitive synergetic recital. The inter relationship between the various forms of vehicle used in transporting a mobile home to a site represented a wonderful catalogue of disaster or near disaster. Finally capped by a Sat Nav flying out of an open window. In my view that is probably putting a Sat Nav to its best use.
The Bard of Hadleigh was missing and he was the current holder of the Oscar. Accordingly it fell to Chris Holmes to adjudicate and he quite rightly gave Ed Crocker the valued statue.
The true work of the Synergy Teams was brought to the meeting however by Richard Reed who reported on the Business to Commerce Team’s recent meeting and the development of their leaflet that is going to be given general distribution. The Finance/Professionals Team also is planning a leaflet, all under the general supervision of Dawn.
The 10 minute presentation was Claire’s, who amongst other things revealed that she was 6th out of 40 in a banger race. Nobody seemed to have the nerve to ask her whether she was talking about riding a sausage or driving a vehicle but none the less it seemed a worthy achievement at the time. It was as she went on to explain the various mediums by which you could deliver your companies message that Nick Cooke, fresh from his 60 seconds, enquired about embroidering a brick. This was not a fa brick, but real brick. Nick often has interesting speakers prizes and I am looking forward to his next 10 minutes. If he teamed up with Alan Shaw he could put a brick with his name on it in a cistern and thereby have us all save water in a way that also would give a referral to Claire.
Finally Terry Maylin confirmed the arrangements for the lunchtime boat trip next Wednesday. Please make sure you have the details from him. We all have to make our own way to the Embankment Pier outside of Embankment Tube Station. The boat starts loading at 12.30 so if everybody could aim to be there for 12.15 we should be able to board the boat as a group.
Please note that the boat leaves at 1.pm and they will not wait for anyone.
There are 12 of us in all, to date. If anybody wants to be considered in addition, please let Terry know and he will try and get you booked, but no promises. I hope to be reporting on a very successful day out at our next meeting.
Yes, thanks for Alan’s contribution in the Ed slot. I think the 1st-class.business-class travel idea would pay off in time …in much the same way that going to a renowned public school would create the life-long contacts that assist with success.
BTW I was impressed with Jamie’s cliche-soaked 60 seconds. Very amusing and well thought out.
100 bonus points awarded to david for being the only member to successfully navigate to the blog this week and leave a comment before I realised i’d missed out the link in my email.
Unfortunately, -150 points are also awarded to david for terrible jokes for the last 2 years. I also think that I have been very fair for it only being -150.
In answer to Aiden’s question having explained that it is not just possible to illuminate entire signs but also individual letters I went on to claim that I had recently been asked if we could fit LED lightS IN A G. This claim was of course completely untrue, I made it up in a feeble attempt to be funny and memorable. Clearly I failed on both counts and in future I will leave the puns to David.
Plenty of good banter, good business done and a good English breakie. With our two newest members giving the best 60 seconds, Ed Crocker providing the most humerous & Stewart Roberts giving the most basic of sound advice – shame tho’ that Jamie didn’t sing her’s as that would probably have stolen it.
Great ed slot Alan. Great meeting as usual, looking forward to the boat trip and hope the weather stays dry. Have a good weekend and see you all Thursday.
Great meeting as usual, really hope that Alan Peck joins as I have always got plenty of work for cleaning companies.
Hope you all have a great time on the boat trip, I really wish I could make it but you all keep giving me too much work!!!
Adrian Crosdale just shared this video with me and I couldnt resist posting it on here also. Our member Nick Cook has been secretly filmed on his recent holiday. Niiiiiiiice moves Nick!
I think perhaps if we get stuck for a 10 minutes speaker, Nick could show us his moves, with Kevin Radford on vocals and maybe David on instrumentals.
Great meeting as always and thank you to Chris for the great pictures.