Dear Members,
Ahead of the summer break I wanted to thank you all for the warm welcome and assistance offered by many of you for my tenure as your Chair. Firstly, I want to congratulate Steve on a fabulous season, as I said at our July dinner you will be a hard act to follow!
Thanks also to many of you for completing the survey, some 75 of you completed it in full and 88 partially completed it. I will share the results from that ahead of our return in September.
As is customary I have identified the key themes I would like to explore in my season, CREATIVITY – With an AI focus, COMMERCE with a closer look at E commerce, and CRISIS – or rather – how to manage it. But as many of your previous Chairs have been advised, I will not stick to these if we simply have a great speaker open to us!
Our first speaker for the 2023/24 season does however know a little about crisis. As I shared at our last dinner, a former No 10 Communications Director, previous National Newspaper Editor and one time inhabitant at HMP Belmarsh. Andy Coulson will join us. Eleven years on from that event in his life, Andy today runs a successful communication consultancy, advising clients on how to positively manage crisis of all types, a successful podcaster with his series “Crisis what Crisis”. The podcast, he created during the pandemic, is anchored by the belief that there are invaluable lessons to be learned from those who have faced and survived significant challenge.
In his own words Andy describes himself as “I’ve been poacher, gamekeeper and for a period of my life, game. As a result, I’ve got some useful perspectives for anyone facing challenge in their life.”
Andy will share what he learned at that time, and since then, and what it has taught him about how to build opportunity from crisis. Our first dinner will be on Wednesday 6th of September, it should be a brilliant evening and tickets are now available on the website – click here to book
One change for this first dinner is that Claridge’s have asked, if on this one occasion, we might consider moving venue to The Berkeley, this will allow Claridge’s to take a three-day booking across that week and as our longtime partner we have agreed to host at The Berkeley, Wilton Place, London SW1X 7RL. This will be at the same terms as we have at Claridge’s. Some of you have expressed a desire to try out other venues and so we have agreed to move for this one dinner, helping out Claridge’s and giving us a chance to try something different.
I hope you all have a wonderful summer break and I look forward to seeing you in September!
Jess