A Very Busy Week
I’ve had an extremely full (and generally exciting) week which has only just finished last night – starting on Tuesday with a series of meetings in London. On Tuesday night I was part of the black-tie FSB annual Chairman’s Dinner - a grand affair with guests including Vince Cable and George Osborne. Some of the titles were a tad over-powering, spending the early evening talking about gadgets with Carole Van Eyll – First Secretary – Political and Economical Affairs – Embassy of Belgium – how’s that for a mouthful.
Because the FSB was organising this, I had my own table which include amongst others – Robery Oulds of the Bruges Group (who I already knew from previous dinners) and Helen Woolley who is Director General of the Country Land and Business association – a cracking evening which ended up seeing me walking back to the hotel to clear my head!
Wednesday after getting up at 6:30am to go into the London office to edit Vince Cable’s video I was buried away in meetings all day and then first thing on Thursday morning I headed off to Gibraltar as guest of ESBA – the European Small Business Association. The FSB is a member of and key player in ESBA.
I’d never been to Gibraltar before and the schedule was packed but thanks to some extremely good weather and very early starts, that didn’t stop me bagging a boatload of photos of the place – which if you’ve never been before, as I hadn’t, is amazing not least because of it’s history.
The main board meeting was held, wait for it at a stunning meeting room at the very top of the Gibraltar Rock – I have to say, THE most excellent location you could imagine for such a meeting. We arrived by ski-lift but our Chairman and I chose (possible unwisely) the hard way back down – which took us half way around the country (it’s not a very big country) taking in some stunning views along the way but not before stopping to take pictures of the many resident Macaques. At the top of the rock we were warned to hide any plastic bags as they would surely be stolen by the monkeys (£500 fine for feeding them). In one of my many photos, a baby macaque is seen with his mum, cuddling someone’s shoe!
Yesterday, I sat through an excellent presentation on how the organisation uses Microsoft SharePoint as an Intranet – which was one of the main reasons I went in the first place and by lunchtime found myself with some free time, so once again a couple of us took off to check the place out.
I took every opportunity possible to take photos of the trip and most of them are available here. Next time you’re pondering on where to go for a few days holiday, if you’ve not been there already I would strongly recommend a trip to Gibraltar. We spent much of our time in meetings so I’m planning a trip back in the summer with Maureen when we’re at our place in Spain.