Notes from our member meet-up

Last night we held our member meet-up. Thank you to everyone that came, we hope you had an interesting and informative evening. We very much appreciate all your energy for our local currency and your honest feedback. If you didn’t have the chance to come along, you can catch-up with our notes from the event below.

18:00 – 18:30 Welcome drinks and canapes

We started the evening with some drinks and delicious canapés provided by £B members, The Market Kitchen. These went down very well, the goat’s cheese and cashew crostini being a particular crowd pleaser. After some introductions, everyone settled to hear from £B MD Diana Finch.

18:30 – 19:15 Diana’s presentation

Diana started her presentation by explaining the developments that have happened at £B over the last year; this included the new £B notes designed by local artists, the new £B team – with Diana taking the lead as MD, £B app being refreshed and relaunched, University of Bristol agreeing to fund research to help improve £B business network and the team moving to new offices at business incubator SETsquared.

Diana then went on to discuss what the £B team have learned this last year. She discussed the development of a new business model, the need to change messaging to increase engagement across the city, especially in areas where there isn’t much take up off £B, and the need to improve velocity of £B spend and to incentivise usage.

Following this Diana outlined the new strategy for £B going forward. This involves creating a sustainable businesses model that adds a real vale proposition for SME’s using research being conducted by the University of Bristol. Also, the need to scale up to deliver more impact by increasing engagement through community champions (people championing £B in their local community) and business champions (businesses who are leading the way in their engagement).

As well as this, Diana explained the need to develop the digital currency through a data driven approach and by making app and online payments more frictionless. Also, to lead the way for other local currencies and addressing the joint challenges of becoming a cashless society and economic exclusion.

Diana rounded up her presentation by stating our vision – to build a resilient, inclusive and sustainable city economy, create vibrant high-streets and communities, be the best business network for Bristol’s SME’s and to lead the way in local currencies.

19:15 – 20:00 Open space workshop and networking

After Diana’s presentation and follow-up questions, guests were invited to join in an open space workshop relating to the 3 areas £B are looking to improve upon this year; engagement, business model and digital developments. Participants were asked to discuss in each of these sections what £B should keep doing, should do differently and for any new ideas on how to improve.

After the workshop there was time left for extra canapés and drinks and we asked for feedback on how our events should run in the future.

Thank you to everyone for their feedback and we hope to see you at one of our future events soon!