CREATIVE COFFEE LEICESTER, 13 MARCH 2013

The fortnightly meeting of Creative Coffee Leicester at Phoenix takes place this morning. For the second session in a row (unusually for us) we have a speaker: Jim Willis, founder of Leicester-based digital agency, Bulb Studios. The numbers are holding up really well, with more than 35 attendees today.

I'm glad of the chance to catch up with Sophie Hardwicke, who used to frequent Creative Coffee as a freelance artist and illustrator - with (and I quote myself here) "probably he loveliest business card I have ever seen". Now she's working for Shinebright Creative Communications as their Account Executive. Sophie's new business card is an example of clean, effective and modern style. We have a bit of a lark round our table inventing job titles that would raise an eyebrow on anyone's business card, such as "Account Hunter" or "Client Wrangler". While attending an occasion like Creative Coffee may be considered essential as a freelance, a couple of hours out of the office has to be justified as productive use of time when you're gainfully employed as part of a team.

A quick meeting of the Management Team follows at the end of the session (well, four of us anyway). We agree that we'd like to build relations and do complementary work with other networking groups and occasions in Leicester, so that those engaging in such activities can have more of a joined-up experience and will be able to find whatever it is they're looking for somewhere in the mix.

CREATIVECOFFEE CLUB, 16 MAY 2012

At Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre this morning for CreativeCoffee Club. Last time I blogged about CreativeCoffee Club (21 March) I mentioned that I hadn't been for a while - not like me, I said, to have missed three in a row. I'd never done that before. Well, maybe that is just like me these days, because I've done the same thing again: not by choice, I've been busy on those alternate Wednesday mornings. But it's nice to be back today.

Things have clearly changed while I've been away. There's a free buffet this morning! "Alright for some", you may say, faithful reader, but I'm glad to say that it's not mere self-indulgence. Phoenix Square is introducing a new menu in the cafe bar and we're being used as guinea pigs, testing out the new range of buffet snack foods. Well, when I say "we", I mean "they" since I don't actually get to taste any of it myself. After the food is laid out, I keep doing what I'm here to do - networking. Several people urge me to get to the table and help myself, but by the time I do, everything is gone. Not a bit of it left. The traditional English proverb springs to mind: "He who hesitates is lost." I might be well advised to apply that to a few other things going on in my life these days! 

Maybe I'm too much in love with the sound of my own voice, and in the end that will be my undoing. I'll keep talking and starve to death, despite all the food I could eat being laid out for me, free and unasked for.

However, since we're being asked this morning to respond to Phoenix Square's Catering Manager, Richard Smith, about food, I take the opportunity to raise a matter that has weighed heavily on my mind for several months now: jelly babies. That was going to be a single paragraph in this blog entry, but it's grown and grown. If you want to follow that thread, faithful reader, then click here.

I chat briefly with Cheryl Gill (Enterprise Support Officer at LCB Depot and Phoenix Square) whose hand is on the tiller of CreativeCoffee Club these days, about playing a part in setting its future direction. I keep harping on about being the longest-surviving participant in CreativeCoffee Club, from back in the day when it was held in the Graduate Bar at De Montfort University, starting in the late summer / early autumn of 2007. I don't know if that long track record is reason enough to stake a claim in determining its future. I sat on a short-lived committee that met once hardly eight months ago and which (despite the best intentions of its members) took CreativeCoffee Club down a bit of a dead end. I don't want to do that again. But I reckon I owe it to Cheryl (and to the legacy of Jayne, Shani and Professor Sue) to give it another go. This new committee will get together immediately following the next meeting on Wednesday 30 May. If I can finally get a space between the separate words, "Creative" and "Coffee" then my work here will be done.

I have the pleasure of meeting Sophie Hardwicke, freelance designer and illustrator, for the first time today. Check out her superb website showcasing her nostalgic retro style. Sophie has probably the loveliest business card I have ever seen; and I consider myself a connoisseur of such ephemera (I own a terrific book, The Best of Business Card Design). If you have the good fortune of meeting Sophie, make sure you get one of her cards!