Late Summer Social -13/9/21

Speakers
Julie Pope, Office and Stakeholder Manager SWM Anna Bright, Chief Executive SWM Alan Carr, Senior Sustainability Advisor SWM Kristin Lombard (University of Birmingham)

Outline of Event

Sustainability West Midlands run an annual networking event exclusively for our members to understand more about each other and discover ways in which they can collaborate. SWM had previously hosted the ‘Summer Social’ in 2019 in-person, and this had proved a big success with our members. Having not held a social in 2020 due to the pandemic, the overwhelming feedback was that SWM should repeat this again in 2021. To accommodate this, we hosted the (Late!) Summer Social in September via Zoom. The event took shape in two parts with short presentations from the SWM team to start each half. The first half featured a presentation on SWM membership in 2021, ‘What Have We Done for You Lately?’ from Julie Pope, followed by a speed networking session whereby each member had five minutes to get as much information out before being moved onto the next person. The next half featured presentations on the Climate Change Committee third risk assessment (Alan Carr), SWM collaborative projects with members (Anna Bright) and the findings of the first analysis of our Roadmap to 2030 (Kristin Lombard). Afterwards, members then had the freedom to talk, share their goals and network between rooms. Twelve cross-sector membership organisations attended on the morning, with each meeting and engaging with an average of four new members. Overwhelmingly, the ‘speed networking’ proved the greatest success in the evaluation feedback received, with 100% of respondents rating the event as “Excellent” or “Good”. Some of the comments received were: “Excellent event this morning, the 5mins was really good… and getting to speak with someone who is sat in a film prop! How cool is that!” Solihull MBC. “May I thank you for a very useful Summer Social meeting and great to see the range of projects being progressed.” Climate Change Solutions. “…many thanks to you and team at SWM for organising Julie!” “I second that, it was great to connect with so many, thank you for organising Julie.”, SA Green Fitness. “Well done for yesterday. You obviously had a lot of fun putting together that presentation!” Contented Ltd.