Written by Sabrina Sommer
What a different April 2020 than the one we all had expected. I was looking forward to an Easter Egg hunt in the park, taking my partner and my stepson to show them Hamburg and eat some Fish rolls from the restaurant chain which was founded on the small island in Germany where I was born.
Instead, I learned the following: my cat is addicted to the camera of my laptop and appears when I am yet on another conference call. The secret to successfully sharing your "office" - which is now the dining table to have more space and better access to the fridge - with your partner is a mutual regular coffee delivery service. And finally, I learned that being "zoomed out" is an actual thing.
You probably all will be able to chip in with your stories. You probably also belong to the group of business owners that could not just take their business continuity plan for the event of a global pandemic to hand. As nobody thought a scenario of shutting down whole sectors like travel, hospitality and seeing your loved ones only through a video screen, would ever be a thing.
But while we have a long list of things we couldn't do, for us at Cranfield and for many of you that we spoke to, it also has opened up a lot of new opportunities.
When we went "on-air" with our first webinar on Thursday 26th March with our lovely Becky Boston, BGP Alumna from 2015, we all were excited, but 167 registrations in 24h also made us nervous.
Sign up for event alerts on the dedicated page: www.bgpresponseprogramme.co.uk
Now 1 month, 16 webinars and 4 workshops later, we feel very comfortable that we are doing the right thing, and 2028 registrations resulting in 1398 attendees show us, we can make a little difference.
And so, we are moving from our initial phase to deal with the shock and confusion about what is happening into the adjustment and coping phase. Our aim in this phase is to stabilise and to enable a large number of businesses to access our help to stabilise their business direction.
Webinars
We will be taking stock with three events:
- Webinar | 5 May | 15:30
Taking Stock – Key Lessons from the Webinar Series in April
- Panel | 7 May | 15:30
Where are we with this crisis?
- Webinar | 12 May | 15:30
How Covid-19 has impacted my business
"Un-Conference"
And an event we are especially excited about is our Cranfield BGP Response Programme Un-conference on the 13th May (£5 for a single ticket and £50 for a company with up to 15 participants from your company) - click here to register.
It is a participant-driven agenda, where we are focusing on what is most important for you. So, we encourage you to let us know your requests for sessions.
Workshops
Also, we are running a series of workshops for business owners to think through how to adapt your business. Dr Stephanie Hussels and I will be running these on:
- Wednesday 6th May
- Wednesday 20th May
- Wednesday 27th May
The price per seat will be at a highly subsidised rate of £50. As we know even that might be too much for some owner-manager, we are introducing sponsored tickets for £25. These tickets will be given to companies who can prove they are in a tight financial situation and are based on a successful application and are limited to our funds available. To provide sponsored tickets, we ask companies who are in a better financial situation to sponsor seats we can then distribute across the applicants or why are you not sponsoring a place for your partners and suppliers?
Sign up for event alerts on the dedicated page: www.bgpresponseprogramme.co.uk
We would also love to hear from you, sharing your story and how you are doing, what you are struggling with or what you have learned from this crisis. We are always looking for quotes, stories to tell, insights to share. Join our dedicated LinkedIn Group to share these, or get in touch via: s.sommer@cranfield.ac.uk
Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you to help.
Stay safe and well and see you shortly at one of our events!
Sabrina Sommer