Event for SME Leaders Hopes To Revamp Irish Enterprise, July 23rd

Connect the Dots working in co-operation with Ireland Together are happy to announce their second co-creation event for Irish SME leaders, focused on Exploring Strategies to Reshape, Reimagine and Reinvent in 2020.

I spoke with one of the events coordinators, Joanne Griffin, about the event and what it hopes to achieve. We began by speaking about the festivals origins, and how the second event has come off the back of extremely positive feedback in relation to the first event.

“This is the second event. Our May event had incredible feedback from over 50 participants with 92% of attendees rating it as ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ – this time we are aiming to double that level of participation”.

Joanne explained how the event is in response to COVID-19, the objective being to bring Irish businesses together to address common issues and dilemmas.

“There has been no crisis of comparable magnitude to this pandemic within living memory – while we are not all in the same boat, we are weathering the same storm. Irish businesses continue to navigate the economic fallout of the global pandemic: we have felt the loss of control over our health, our finances, our businesses, and our daily activities. We bring Irish businesses together to address our common issues as a community. It will take a village to get our economy back on track – we’re confident our village has the skills, expertise, and motivation to make it happen”.

We moved on to discuss the various aspects of the event that attendees can expect

“Our partnership with Connect the Dots ensures we build engaging events that are built with the stakeholder in mind. We believe that none of us is smarter than all of us – our co-creation events bring together a diverse group of Irish SME leaders to share insights into our common challenges and co-design a brighter future for the eco-system we live in. Participants provides input into the design of the event, and drive the discussion during the event itself. While the event is entirely virtual, we use the latest online technologies to create an engaging and interactive dialogue between community members (Zoom, Mural, Mentimeter, Slido)”.

Event highlights opportunities, ideas, and challenges

She spoke of how guests have the chance to learn many different insights and perspectives on the challenges that face businesses post COVID-19.

“In a world where we are inundated with one-way conversations via webinars – we take a different approach by inviting our community to connect on a topic, and collaborate on outcomes. Participants will gain insight and new perspectives on the challenges facing businesses today, work together to uncover opportunities and develop strategies to help their businesses thrive in 2020. Our community is entirely pro bono and we welcome new members from all industries, locations, and skillsets”.

She went on to provide some advice for attendees, stating that they should arrive with the desire to contribute their own experiences and knowledge.

“They should show up, bring their own perspectives and ideas, and have some fun”.

Before we finished our conversation, Joanne discussed Ireland Together in detail, so that I could have a better idea of what they do for businesses.

“ Ireland Together is an online community for leaders within micro, small and medium-sized companies. Having launched on April 1st, 2020 in response to the deepening humanitarian crisis brought on by the pandemic, our immediate efforts were focused on providing resources, and a sense of community to business leaders as the impact of the economic lockdown unfolded. We now have over 460 businesses actively connecting and collaborating across 35 Slack channels”.

She elaborated on how members of Ireland Together provide them with useful insights in terms of what is troubling modern-day Irish organisations.

“Our member sentiment shows that SME leaders are experiencing the greatest difficulties across cashflow, marketing, and adapting their business models. The power of our community is in peer learning and in collaborating to solve these challenges together – 23% of our members are offering expertise in reviewing business models, with 16% offering knowledge on communications and marketing. We are confident that our community can create value for our members through reciprocity and knowledge sharing”.

If you are looking to get tickets,  new members joining Ireland Together can sign up here

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