The first speaker was Eileen Brown,  the founder of a collective called Connecting Women in Technology (and here’s a link to Eileen’s blog),  which has members from such IT giants as Microsoft, Cisco, Intel Dell, HP and IBM.  They take it in turns to organise two events per year,  hosted by one of the member firms,  as a way for the women to network outside their own company and across different business and functional sectors.

CwiT has been running events for the last three years,  and Eileen shared their following top three learnings with us:

• Women want mentors and advice from women in similar roles and at similar levels – so try to make sure that you have a good mixture at your events.
• Get senior people (ideally men) to come and speak at your events,  particularly men who manage women – they add value and credibility to the subject in hand
• Allow time for post-event networking and chat,  as well as a mid-event coffee break,  in case anybody has to leave promptly at the end – this way they won’t miss out on the chance to make new connections.

(c) We Are The City

Next on was Vanessa Vallely,  who,  in addition to a very impressive sounding day job in finance,  is the co-founder of the Network of Networks,  a collective of corporate/FTSE companies who come together from time to time to discuss best practices in areas such as networking and diversity.  Vanessa is also the creator of information portal We Are The City,  which is aimed at women in the City (of London) who want information on career and lifestyle issues.  Vanessa is the absolute Queen of collaborating with other people and other networks on events  and she suggested that SUCCESS for women’s corporate networks is dependent upon:

• Getting senior sponsorship for your network – from a senior leader who is passionate, involved and active.
• Creating a really strong business case for your network,  with proper objectives, and resources.
• And while you’re at it – ask for a budget!
• Thinking about your communications – use lots of channels.  And say to your members: here we are,  what do you want us to do?
• Organising a range of diverse events,  for all levels of women in the organisation, with different role models and which take place at different times of the day

In order to avoid FAILURE,  Vanessa recommends:

• Not working as a silo – get lots of involvement,  from many different champions
• Remembering that the network is more than the individuals who run it
• Keeping it simple
• Involving men,  by ensuring that your events are always cross-gender and open to all.

(She reminded us at this point that it can be daunting for a man to walk into a roomful of women at one of these events – which can also serve the dual purpose of providing said bloke with an insight of what it can feel like to be a woman in the workplace,  perhaps walking into a roomful of men.)

A lot of real life networking tends to focus in on events,  so Vanessa’s top tips for anyone wanting to create a successful and vibrant event are as follows:

• Make it exciting!
• Get membership participation
• Canvas feedback – how was it for you,  what could we do better?
• Rotate the organising team and the sponsors (keep it fresh, in other words)
• Have a good mix of what she dubbed both “hard” (business related) and “soft” (lifestyle) events.

And she closed by reminding us to be wary that a network’s reputation takes a while to build,  to remember that you will need a budget of some sort,  even if it’s only tiny and that you can’t be all things to everyone – there will always be some people who just didn’t enjoy whatever it was that you’ve organised.

That’s life – and it’s actually a useful life lesson, too.

All very helpful stuff,  and a reminder that Real World events are a very useful (and fun – cheese! Wine!)  add-on to the social networking piece about which I wrote on here last month.

From my new article on networking 2.0,  published today in TheGlassHammer:

“I haven’t got time for networking”, one senior woman from a major City of London investment bank told me recently.

“All that standing around in rooms full of complete strangers,  drinking either bad wine at the end of a long day,  or bad coffee and stale croissants at the start of another day – no thanks. It’s so unstructured and unfocused,  and such a bad use of my time.  I’m sure there probably ARE useful and interesting people at some of these events – but how on earth do you find them in a packed room,  and what use might we be to each other?”

Other women told a similar tale,  with one commenting that she had now stopped going along to organised “group meet ups”,  as she found that she either knew no-one,  or would see a familiar face in the crowd and then “cling to that person for the whole evening,  thus negating the idea of meeting new people!”

In response to this changing mindset – and independently of each other – two London based women have begun to evolve a more nuanced, “networking 2.0” framework,  which delivers the benefits of what we might perhaps call “old school” networking – expanding your contacts, sharing connections and skills – but which also uses technology and social media interfaces.

Read on here …

They have now made the official announcement about this year’s Women Mean Business conference,  which will take place in Mumbai on December 8th. The conference will centre on the power of information and communication technologies as tools for women to start and expand their businesses;  there will be a particular focus around mobile services, web-based technology, technological learning such as e-mentoring, and social media for business.

I’ve been finding it so interesting to be in touch with my many fabulous Indian friends and contacts,  who have all been very helpful in suggesting speakers and conference participants,  as well as updating me on how social media tools such as LinkedIn and Twitter are now being used in India.

You can see from this advertisement for a housing finance scheme aimed exclusively at women that using text based technology to target particular demographics is already very popular in India – and I’m looking forward to learning more about, for example, how increased access to mobile phones can benefit fledgling female entrepreneurs.

For programme updates or to register your interest, please visit: www.cbfwconference.org

However,  proof of my networking and writing activities came all neatly rolled up into one busy day last week,  when my article about IDDAS‘s report into board effectiveness (as viewed by the chairmen of a number of FTSE 350 companies) and where diversity fits within that model was published on the Glasshammer (here’s the link)  and a piece on travel tips also went live on Alpha Female.

Do check out Alpha Female if you can; it was founded earlier this year by Carol Paterson Smith (whom I’ll be interviewing later this week for a Glasshammer profile, so look out for that too) and is a fabulous treasure trove of useful connections, smart ideas and stylish hints to make life easier for busy women everywhere.

Carol and I met last month when we were seated next to each other at the WIBF awards, and that in itself was an interesting example of what can happen when you’re naughty and move the seating plan around so that you don’t have to sit with your back to the stage … if I’d stayed where I was meant to sit,  I wouldn’t have met Carol,  checked out her fabulous site (you have to create a user name and register to view the content,  but it’s free to do so and well worth it)  and written her a guest article.

* * *

If you follow me on Twitter,  you’ll have seen that I was Tweeting on Sunday about the community party we held on my street in west London in support of the nationwide Big Lunch initiative.  More on that event later this week; as well as being tremendous fun,  it was a fabulous example of collaboration, planning and new friendships amongst neighbours of long standing.

The Foundation aims to offer women better access to business development support networks and finance in areas of the world which include India, Israel, Kenya, Malawi and Palestine.

The CBFfW is now launching  their Mentoring Women in Business Pilot and if you’d like to be a Mentor … read on.

The 10-month pilot programme will support women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, India, Israel and Palestine through mentoring. Approximately 30 entrepreneurial women will be mentored by 40 successful entrepreneurs or professionals. The pilot aims to demonstrate that there are measurable and tangible benefits from partnering women with entrepreneurial potential in developing and transition countries with successful Mentors in the UK using Google’s online applications such as Sites, Docs, Chat and Gmail. The pilot will involve testing exciting new formats and applications, so the Foundation is  looking for Mentors who are willing to be at the forefront of the development of this extraordinary international programme.

Being a Mentor is a great opportunity to share your knowledge and experience while helping others to succeed and learn about other cultures, places, businesses and market opportunities. Your participation in the Mentoring Women in Business Pilot will require a minimum of one hour of your time every two weeks, and the more you engage,  the more you will help shape the future of the Mentoring Programme.  Some of the Mentors applying for the pilot will be matched with a Mentee by July and will be able to start the mentoring relationship right away, while others will be matched in October, when a second group of Mentees will be ready to participate in the programme. Some Mentors will not be matched with a Mentee, but their involvement in the programme will be crucial for the successful management of the mentoring Platform, as they will be able to contribute to the public forums and share their expertise with Mentors and Mentees alike. The pilot phase will finish in May 2011.

Mentors are asked to provide a minimum donation of £100 per year to help support the programme and will be given training from Google on how to use Google’s applications and from renowned experts, Clutterbuck Associates and the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, Cambridge Judge Business School, on how to develop a strong and effective mentoring relationship. The one-day training course for the Mentors will be on July 14^th (it’s free) and will be a great opportunity to learn new skills and to network with like-minded people.

The Platform built with Google to run the Mentoring Women in Business Programme is now ready; if you would like additional information or have any questions, you can contact the programme’s project manager via gc@cherieblairfoundation.org

If, having browsed the site, you’d like to apply to become a Mentor, please apply now, as the the application deadline is 23^rdJune.

And please feel free to share this link with anyone who you think would be a great mentor for these women around the world.

Here’s a link to my article about it,  as featured in The Glass Hammer.

Check it out for a very useful footwear based tip …

Many of the experts are on Twitter, so I checked them out,  added them to the list of people whom I, as The Gender Blog,  now follow and I’ve  been reading their tweets with great interest this week. And,  in the way of the Small World, I also discovered that one of them lives around the corner from me (we were comparing snow reports on Thursday) and I then saw Sarah Pennells of www.savvywomen.co.uk providing financial advice on BBC News 24 yesterday.

Twitter also led me to the Women’s Business Clubs website,  which is a very user-friendly place for women in business to find support and network with each other. Founder Kelly Stevens posted a link to this article about a gadget called a “Poken” – described as a:

“… a ‘social business card’. It’s a small USB social networking gadget that you can store your own details on including your social networking profiles (Facebook, Twitter etc).

When you meet someone at an event with a Poken you simply touch the two Pokens together and your details are passed to their Poken, and theirs to yours. Then when you get back to the office you simply plug your Poken into your computer’s USB port, and download all of the contact data you have collected.”

Now,  I love the idea of a gadget as much as the next woman and,  writing as someone with a lot of business cards sitting in a drawer,  filed only in groups (“People I met in India”, etc) and held together with bulldog clips,  I think any gadget which can make this easier and more automated is a winner.  But I’m just trying to imagine how it will actually work in a real life situation – how do you know who’s got one and under what circumstances do you bring a sentence such as “Please may I touch your Poken?” into a conversation?

Perhaps they should be sold with a lapel badge (“I’m Poken: Are YOU?”) so that the early adopters can find each other with ease and clunk click, every trip. I suspect that Kelly is right and that,  in ten years or so,  business cards will have gone the way of the floppy disk – but it will be fun to see if the curiously named “Poken” will be the tool to hasten their demise.

(Well, I say “dinner” – in fact, it was more “canapés grabbed from the hand of a passing waiter” but still – evening based food, at any rate.)

The amazing writer and author Alison Maitland (co-author of the bestselling book “Why Women Mean Business”) invited me to two events which hadn’t previously hit my radar; the first of these included breakfast at the Ritz (excellent!) and was the launch of the IDDAS report “Board Dynamics: A Female Perspective” – which featured interviews with 24 of the women, described as “an elite group of very hard working people” currently on the boards of FTSE 100 companies. It shared their views on the factors which can both help and derail women at the top level and asked them such questions as: what’s it like being the only woman on the board? What success factors do they bring to a company? What issues do they face? And, most importantly, what are their top tips for other senior women? Even if you’re not quite there, yet, I think these tips can be helpful to all women:

• Enjoy the role; have confidence in yourself and your abilities;
• Choose your board (and company) wisely;
• Work out your value add to the company;
• Prepare your initial impact statement for your first meeting;
• Get to know the business (sector, area) FAST;
• Don’t be pigeon-holed – for example, only speaking up on HR issues;
• Develop strong relationships with all the other board members.

On the same day, Alison and I then travelled to another part of London in order to participate in one of Goldman Sachs’ “diversity week” events. This was a performance of the play “Seven”, presented by the NGO “Vital Voices” – and I can only urge you to both follow the link provided here to read more about the play, view the trailer and to try to see it if the opportunity to do so ever presents itself.

It was a really astonishing piece of performance art, telling the stories of seven women from around the world (Afghanistan, northern Ireland, Nigeria, Russia, Guatemala, Pakistan and Cambodia) and providing us with glimpses into the lives of women who have overcome almost unimaginable barriers and sorrows.

Please – see it if you can; a truly amazing piece of work.

I’ll then be heading across London over to the second of what the Downing Street Project team call “teach backs”. Everyone associated with this exciting, embryonic project to date has been formed into one of four teams (covering such issues as fund raising, training, communications etc) and tasked with coming up with approaches for the future.

I was amazed at how much had been achieved, in terms of ideas, creativity and infrastructure, between the launch at the House of Commons on June 30th and the first teach back session four short weeks later – and I’m sure tomorrow night’s event will show similar progress. We are scheduled to cover and be reminded of the following:

- Why do we need this initiative?
- What problem in society does it intend to address?
- How does the DSP think it will make a difference?
- What is balanced leadership and why is it relevant? What can it deliver?
- What is the time line for the DSP over the next three months, the first year and next three years?

I’m really looking forward to both hearing the updates and also keeping my mind occupied on things other than the end of my job and all the implications of that …

[* It isn’t actually called that. But it ought to be.]

Since word has leaked out that I’m leaving, I’ve had a lot of calls and emails which all have a similar theme and that is, and this is a direct quote:

“Getting a new job shouldn’t be a problem for you with your network.”

I’m not actually sure as yet how true that will prove to be, as the one job for which I am currently in the pipeline has come my way via a recruiter – although it has certainly been very useful in the six interviews I’ve had to date to be able to indicate that yes, I know this person, that organisation, that report, that news story, that network and so on. But, if this job doesn’t come off for me, I know that networking is going to become a key part of Cleo World this autumn.

And that will be OK for me given that getting a new job will effectively become my job, so maintaining my network will be a regular daily activity – but how do you do it when you already have a job, a life, a family and a myriad of other calls on your time?

Yes, networking can be time consuming – but I also think of it as the kind of thing that is useful in terms of keeping the wheels of one’s life, career and health moving along. An analogy might be – where do we find the time to go to the gym, or undertake some other “worthy” but time consuming pastime? For example, people frequently ask me where I find the time to read. To which my response is – we find the time for all sorts of things if we feel that we must, or perceive that they are important and beneficial in one way or another. So I would fit networking into that category; we will make time for it if we truly want to.

(To learn more about networking whilst reading (See? Multi-tasking), check out Steven D’Souza’s book, “Brilliant Networking” in the recommended reading link above.)

I’d also note that it depends on one’s understanding of the word “networking”. I suspect that, for some, it’s viewed as an organised activity, such as an event arranged by one of the many professional groups out there, such as the European Professional Women’s Network - which has a purposeful, self-described networking component built in. So, absolutely – for many people, adding on their attendance at an event to the end of their working day will feel like an extra thing to do and one for which they may lack the time. I could easily be out at some kind of a professional event pretty much every evening if I accepted all the invitations which come my way.

But I would rather go to fewer events but make more of my time at them; I also work very hard to keep in touch with and nurture, for want of a better word, the network that I do have, which is both enjoyable and far less time consuming than attending events. Additionally, I make use of other types of networking, by keeping in touch with people more casually and using on-line tools like Facebook and Linked-In. It’s also helpful to think about what networking you can do during your normal day – can you meet people for coffee, for example? What about breakfast events? The “Starbucks Effect” seems to be a growing trend, picked up on in this article from The Glass Hammer entitled “Coffee is the new lunch”.

Finally, here are some networking tips courtesy of “My Mentor” creator Emberin’s newsletter – reproduced with thanks.

Top 10 Networking Tips for Success

Written by Lisa Butler of Paragon & Associates
Author of Networking Exposed

Networking is important for business, career, leadership and personal success. Successful networkers know that the true nature of networking is developing and maintaining genuinely helpful relationships with others, with a focus on helping them, not you. You should not be selling when you are networking! The top ten tips for networking success are:

Tip 1 - Recognise the true nature of networking and appreciate the value it offers in your business, career and personal life. Accepting that networking is about relationship building and building win-win alliances with others is the first step to networking success. Focus on helping others and you will undoubtedly reap the rewards.

Tip 2 – Be aware of the reasons that stop you from networking. Many people are hesitant to network – often due to negative perceptions about what networking is and its value. Be aware of what stops you, and identify strategies to help you to have the right mindset and get the value networking offers.

Tip 3 – You need to network strategically. Consider why you are networking, and how it will help you to achieve your business and personal goals. This will enable you to more effectively customize and ensure you are networking with the right people, in the right places and in the right way. This focus helps you to save time and gain greater value from your networking effort.

Tip 4 – Have a good system for monitoring and recording your list of network contacts. It is important to recognise that effective networking is more about how you keep in contact with people and look after them, than it is about attending events. A good system should enable you to easily update contact details and be an easy reference tool when you need to find relevant contacts.

Tip 5 – Be genuinely interested in other people. Sounds simple, but it requires effective communication skills (the ability to ask good questions which engage people, and to listen!).

Tip 6 – Treat everyone you meet with the utmost respect and give them 100% of your attention. Never underestimate the networking value of people you meet, as it may come back to haunt you.

Tip 7 – Be able to talk about what you do (when asked!) in a way which is relevant, interesting and understandable to the other person. This requires you to tailor your response and focus on providing information which will enable further conversation’.

Tip 8 – Identify relevant and helpful reasons to continue contact with people you meet. Be on the lookout for opportunities to follow up with people, preferably in ways that will help them not you. It is far easier to follow up with someone when you are doing something worthwhile for them. It is also very powerful.

Tip 9 – Prepare to network. Before you attend an event or even just a catch up with a contact, consider your objectives, who you will meet, the topics of conversation, questions you can ask, research their companies or industries, and generally be up to date. Also consider how you can best achieve your objectives through your behaviour and the impressions you want to create.

Tip 10 – Enjoy it. The most effective networkers tend to be the people who find enjoyment from their networking. Other people are drawn to happy, positive people, and it shows in your demeanour and language. A positive mindset is an important element of networking success.

I would also add my own personal “Tip 11” to this list – do what you say you’re going to do. If you commit to sending someone an article or providing them with some other piece of information: make sure you do so, as soon as possible – and ideally within 48 hours of making the commitment. This, for me, is part of the “safe pair of hands” component of my personal brand and I believe that it makes networking a richer and more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Let’s hope that my networking will pay off for me now, as I gaze down the barrel of my huge and inadvertent life change.