Today was the day for making final preparations before the seminar participants arrive tomorrow. Many months, and even years of planning have gone into preparing this seminar so hopefully the day before is just about finishing touches rather than major issues.
Fortunately this was the case and the seminar leader (Claire) had got everything very well organised. I also made some preparations during the evenings this week as I had an important meeting to attend with my work today which could not be re-arranged for a more convenient time. Comfortable that everything was under control I snuck off for my meeting for around half of the day.
My meeting was about bringing a group of farmers, land managers and conservationist together to look at how special areas of grassland around the UK are managed, and how people can make a living by using animals to graze these important natural areas with unique biodiversity, and then selling the meat from these animals with special branding to reflect the diets of the animals which give unique qualities to the meat.
It was a very productive meeting and we made some positive steps. I would not normally mention this on this seminar blog but when driving back to Malvern I reflected on how actually the meeting was very relevant to our seminar theme: business innovation and entrepreneurship transforming rural communities. Some of the people I met at the meeting were being very innovative and entrepreneurial working with a variety of different stakeholders (eg. landowners), obtaining funding and income from a variety of sources and successfully marketing their products, to provide a service to the environment and to consumers. It was a great inspiration for the week ahead as it not only demonstrated a working model for being successful in business, but also showed the opportunities available for transforming parts of our rural communities.
When I returned the prep team were all setting up their blogs so that we can keep a record of our activities and reflections during the seminar. We will be encouraging participants to do the same and this will allow anyone who is not on the seminar to find out all about it.
We sorted out the final bits of paper for our grant funding and travel reimbursements, and prepared the participant packs with goodies for everybody when they arrive. Gareth (Gaz) then briefed us on everyone's arrival times tomorrow and how they will be getting to Malvern, with the whole prep team involved in their welcome - it felt like we were planning a military operation!!
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