Last night I was invited to attend the Vancouver Board of Trade’s member reception at the Vancouver Rowing Club. This was an excellent opportunity to network and after reading Darcy Rezac’s (MD of the Board of Trade) article in Make it Business magazine about positive networking, I felt I had to get out more to events like this.

There was definitely a diverse gathering and some of the people I met included:

King George International Business College

Career Plan

MGC Solutions

TesPro Equipment

Meyers Norris Penny

Beamer Studios

C Dot Networks

Summer Hill Promotional Products

Any many others who’s names and coordinates I didn’t collect and don’t recall.

Getting out and meeting peers and colleagues is an important part of running a business. Finding and making time for it will pay dividends with marketing, partnership opportunities, sales and obtaining opinions and business advice from those who have been there, done that.

Trail Canada began as a blog. Six years later it has become Canada’s most popular online travel guide. The Vancouver Sun recalls Trail Canada’s history and looks at Peragro Media as a successful venture that is growing and gaining momentum in the travel industry.

Trail Canada reaches over 190,000 visitors per month (Feb 2008) and has over 7,500 pages of free to view content.

Coming soon: Green Travel Guide. More information on this new website will come soon.

Read the Vancouver Sun article here.

I finally made it out to a Green Drinks event in Gastown, Vancouver yesterday.

Green Drinks is:

Every month people who work in the environmental field meet up for a beer at informal sessions known as Green Drinks.

We have a lively mixture of people from NGOs, academia, government and business. Come along and you’ll be made welcome. Just say, “are you green?” and we will look after you and introduce you to whoever is there.It’s a great way of catching up with people you know and also for making new contacts. Everyone invites someone else along, so there’s always a different crowd, making Green Drinks an organic, self-organising network.

I found the networking fun and very relaxed. A great place to meet people from all different backgrounds and also, if you are new to networking, this is probably one of the easiest groups to get together with.

About Green Drinks in Vancouver.

Vancouver’s Make it Business magazine has a little mention of our recent win at the BC Small Business contest this February.

See the Make it Business page.