I got this today. I don't know who is behind it or why, there's so many quangos these days, but I hope there's a sandwich or something on offer. All I can find out is that the facilitator is a research company employed by a charity who work with local government who employed someone who hasn't a clue about capitalisation (of the grammatical sort).
Not to be cynical, but what's in it for me to attend this apart from a chance to give my opinion (which is always welcome to the usual suspects)? So that's the what but to whom, for what end and why? Not a good 'sell' is it? As it is, the trains arriving at Lowestoft rail station (a few yards from the yacht club) don't arrive from the south until 16.30 (too early) or 18.33 (too late) and from Norwich at 17:41 and 18:44
I wonder how many will turn up late because they were stuck in traffic because of the bridge? That'll be good research.
We know it's short notice, but if you run a business in Waveney or are thinking about setting one up we would love you to come along to our event.
24 March 2009
Understanding Enterprise in Waveney
Sun Lounge, Royal Norfolk Yacht Club, Royal Plain Lowestoft NR33 0AQ
6.30pm - 8.30pm
It's a research session, run and facilitated by professional researchers, designed to surface the barriers and challenges relating running a business in the area.
Do you feel you are getting the support that you need? Are you listened to?
Please come along and share your views. We have also invited a number of leaders from across Suffolk who are hoping to listen and learn from your experience.
Hopefully see you there.
Becky Rowe
Research Director
ESRO Ltd.
www.esro.co.uk
Hi, I'm an *the* Becky Rowe from ESRO and I am really interested to hear your views.
ReplyDeleteThe event you mention in your blog was part of an experiment to see how different forms of 'consultation' work (i.e. looking at the way public sector organisations currently consult and to think about affordable / practcal methods to improve consultation). A sub-objective was to challenge some dominant assumptions about the nature of enterprise in Waveney and find out what business owners thought of the support that is on offer in the area.
As a consultation sceptic, I was expecting no one to come - in fact, about 10 people came, which is not a great turnout but revealed some interesting points of view.
Hope that explains the rubbish poster and lack of explanation of what the event was about.
Dear Becky, thank you for commenting and explaining the situation. I hope my comments were useful to you that case. In the end I didn't make it to the meeting for the reasons I explained e.g. public transport issues, and because I wasn't prepared to invest the time to attend a meeting with such a vague offer. I've had some meetings with Business Link and other local gov business support and to be frank; as a sole trader in a very niche area I found them unproductive. It would be interesting to explore 'virtual' means of consulting or meeting such as Skype as transport locally is both expensive in cost, time and CO2.
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