Business Planning Competition Awards & Networking

After much preparation and musing over what cheese and wine to buy, we finally had the Business Planning Competition Awards Ceremony yesterday afternoon.

The first people arrived for the networking event, where we had some great graduate businesses on display. Everyone was a bit shy about tucking into the local cheese and fair trade wine at first, so I decided to lead by example and grabbed a plate, filled it with 5 different types of cheese, then paraded round the room so everyone could see.  Then I got distracted and put my plate down, and promptly lost it – not sure who ate my cheese and crackers but I hope it was nice, whoever you are…

After that, everyone seemed to get into the swing of things.  We had over 55 people come along and network, from university staff members to students and graduates with businesses, as well as current Management School students and even the head of the university, the Vice Chancellor himself! (Hope you’re all grateful I avoided any “big cheese” puns there)

Then came the awards cermony itself.  We had two of our winners there to collect their prizes – First Prize went to Sam Williams of Eco-Tourism Bonaire, and Second Prize was awarded to Anna Sullivan of Nevo Vardo.  They were also awarded prizes for “Greatest Local Impact” and “Best Social Enterprise” respectively – well done guys!

All in all everyone I spoke to seemed to have had a great time, and really appreciated the opportunity to mix with student and graduate businesses as well as hear about the winning ideas.  I hope we can do something similar in future to make more connections with graduate and external businesses – feel free to post a comment if you have any ideas on what you’d like us to do!

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Posted by Tracey Williams at 5:49 pm.

Tagged: News,Student Opportunities