Q: What do you get if you put Andy Pinkney from Cheltenham Film Festival, Jessica Fox from Calculus Capital, Vincent McAtamney from Vintec, and 35 business sector and creative sector professionals in the same room?
A: The second networking event entitled ‘Inventing the future’ from NewOpus at Southend’s fabulous Hive Enterprise Centre.
Empathic Productions were there, mainly because we helped get them off the ground in the first place together with Roger Tull of Positive Solutions who now runs them, but also because the events have now hit their stride. The events are designed to stimulate local economic and cultural growth, bring investors and new ideas together and provide a mutually beneficial, targeted networking environment.
Today’s session certainly succeeded in all these aims. In all, around 35 writers, producers, directors, creatives, and local business people attended, including the indefatigable Jo Nolan of Screen South, whizzos City-Fibre, who are rolling out super-fast gigabit internet to UK cities, and jazz legend Digby Fairweather. Mr. Fairweather, I hear you say? Bit random? Not a bit of it – he is the CEO and founder of the Jazz Centre which is nestled in the lower floor of The Hive. An extraordinary archive, museum, shop and cultural asset, and probably the best in the UK. No, scratch that, it IS the best in the UK.
The event created quite the buzz, plenty of positive schmoozing was had following the speakers and Q&A sessions. Future NewOpus networking events are planned each month in various locations, (so far Southend, London, and Chelmsford), with a different subject matter. They are well worth checking out. Have a look at their website for further information.
That’s all for now media moguls!
