Thoughts from ICG member Susie Mullen
I’ll be honest, I’m not much of a networker. I know it’s important and I know I should do more of it but it’s one of the things I find easy to avoid. Earlier this year, spurred on by new year enthusiasm, I signed up for the ICG quiz night. I told myself it would be a good way to meet new people and I quite like a quiz, particularly a competitive quiz!
When I turned up, a few minutes late, I was immediately assigned a table and knew two of my four other team mates, didn’t take me long to get to know the others. The quiz was great fun – we rattled through rounds from Seaside Towns (surprisingly hard) to General knowledge, AI and even a round about the keyboard (very surprised at how much we knew about function keys and the position of the F key and the J key!). I surprised myself (but no-one who knows me well) by how competitive I was – we won by the way. But most of all I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the whole evening, even the mingling during the dinner break and after we were crowned winners.
My only regret was not arriving earlier (and prepared with a punny market research related quiz team name). I left wishing I’d spoken to more people. It was, as usual, a great ICG event. When I first joined the ICG I had no idea I would gain a whole new set of colleagues (and friends) who I can turn to when I’m stuck or share work/leads with when I’m busy or just not the right person for the job. It has made freelancing a lot less lonely than it could be.
Massive thanks to Lucie for organizing, to Deanne and Marc of iPoint Research for hosting and to my fabulous brainy team Josephine, Tariq, Mike and Matt – did I mention we won?
With special thanks to our co-sponsors of the night, Qualzy and iPoint Research
