A day in the life of: Sue Roberts

Remind me why I'm doing this?

Its 6.30am and within an hour I have be parked, registered and ready to smile! Breakfast routine at home is abandoned and the kids will just have to do it themselves for a change!

No two breakfast seminars/networking events are the same - even if there are a lot of familiar faces. Today's speakers are from the legal profession with tips on IPR and HR issues.

Coffee and Danish pastry precariously balanced, I set off to see who there is to meet. I will have looked over the guest list the night before and determined if there are any particular new contacts that I'd like to introduce myself to. One thing I do like about networking events now is the lack of pretence about why we are all there. It makes it so much easier to move on from one conversation to another without causing offence.

Amatica has the ability to serve both large and small organisations with a diverse range of services from simple web-sites to straight through processing, from bespoke application development to high resilience hosting. When I meet a new person, it's my task to try and understand the nature of their business quickly and assess whether Amatica could be of assistance - nearly all organisations need some help with business process improvement!

The flip side of networking is having the ability to listen. Taking time to understand what the other person has to offer and keeping an open mind; there may be partnership opportunities or an introduction to someone else that I could make that would be useful to both parties.

Putting together these events is no easy or inexpensive task and whilst those that host and fund the events do get increased PR, they deserve a vote of thanks for widening their target audience and thereby increasing the interest between those attending.

The seminar topics can vary wildly but today has highlighted a few useful HR points that I need not to forget!

After the event it is back to the office and catch up on all those business cards I've collected! By 4.30pm I begin to feel as if the working day should have already ended - ah yes, that's why... It started earlier than usual!