Sheraiz Admin, Tue 17th, Feb 2015, 08:52
SIPEC’s premier networking event held on Saturday January 25th 2014 at the White House Restaurant in Bonapriso, Douala. The event started at 5:00pm and ended at about 10:30pm. Most people hung around to chat with friends and new friends they had met there. The event gathered about 150 people.
There was a mix of guests. Professionals from Banks, Audit Firms, Oil And Gas, Logistics, Media Houses, Medical Sector, Real Estate, Educational Sector, Legal, Telecommunications, Aviation, Beauty, Modeling And The Entrepreneurs being promoted.
The mix of guests was very interesting and all evening guests were walking around and talking to people. There were networking games like: speed networking which got guests to stand in different parts of the hall, according to the colors of their invitations. Guests had 2 minutes to talk to the person standing next to them and after that they were requested to move across the room and talk to another stranger, find out their names and what they did.
An overview of SIPEC was shared with the audience and what SIPEC had as its objective and the plan for the year 2014 which is to host a cocktail like this every quarter. After this overview guests were asked a few questions about SIPEC to find out if they followed the presentation.
All the entrepreneurs and their companies were introduced. A joint presentation of all the companies was done highlighting what services each company offered. This presentation triggered a lot of discussions as guests scrambled to meet representatives of these companies to get more information.
New neo-soul artists (Percy and Brian) from Buea gave a musical interlude of popular neo soul songs. They also sang one of their singles. The DJ also played soft cocktail music after each major presentation to allow the guests to discuss among themselves, share ideas and probably more business cards.
The keynote speaker, Mrs Evelyn Martin, Technical Adviser at the National Refining Company (SONARA) and CEO of Evavivres Poultry gave a talk on Entrepreneurship. She used an illustration of the different boxes professionals go through: Employee > Self – Employed > Entrepreneur > Investor and how we must all strive to get to level 4.
She also talked about the Rav 4 being an admirable car and that we should do whatever possible to obtain one. The Rav 4 was a metaphor for success. You may fail many times, but each time you try to do something and you fail, take the lesson and do things a little differently until you eventually purchase that Rav 4. The most important keys to succeeding in business she said were; R – Relationships, A – Attitude and V – Values. RAV. So if you used these 3 keys in your business you will be successful according to our keynote speaker Mrs. Evelyn Martin. For more information on this please go to www.sipec.co.uk/#!key-note/c20st.
Towards the end of the evening a game was played to test guests’ memory and if they knew all the companies represented at the cocktail. The theme of the evening was “networking, a key tool for successful businessâ€. All guests upon arrival dropped business cards in a large transparent bowl. During the game volunteers were asked to close their eyes and pick random cards from the bowl, read out the name of the company on the card while the host asked what that company did. The person who answered correctly got a SIPEC gift. Giveaway items were SIPEC key holders and desk calendars.
