One of the great pleasures I’ve had since my move to the supplier side of things is that it provides me an opportunity to directly give back to the network I have benefited so much from over the last decade or more. Now I’ll admit this isn’t totally altruistic — I have commercial responsibilities these days so I have to demonstrate to my colleagues some potential benefits to my choices but they have been supportive since day one.
I’ve always been impressed by the approach dxw, Futuregov, Delib, Helpful and a few others have taken — they always felt like they were integral parts of the wider community rather than coming at it with any kind of overt sales agenda (I am sure they all have some of the same pressures as me to evidence the worth but it never seems the motivation.)
So anyway the approach I have been pushing is to back grassroots and community events rather than blowing piles of money on glossy, corporate events that boast how many ‘C’ level attendees they have. That isn’t to say that I might not find myself at some of those events — or even explicitly contributing to them — but it would have to be right and I’d need to understand better where I (and we as a company) fitted in with that kind of audience…whereas for good or ill I know that instinctively with these community events….because I was that audience and I’m hopefully still part of that community — just will a slightly different role.
These are some of the events we’ve supported — or are soon to support — I’m always open to conversations about other similar events out there — especially as these days I can outsource the real work to Sara — our Marketing lead ;) — so get in touch if you think I/we might be interested.
