What an evening!

Last Tuesday (28^th) we held the VIP Launch Event at MShed in Bristol. Local business people, core team members and sponsors were there, all to hear a bit more about the challenge and the reasons for doing it.

The last few weeks and days leading up to this were frantic – emails flew around, plans changed and changed again, the guest list grew, and talks were prepared. I tried to think about what people would be interested in hearing, and who might be best to talk about all the different areas.

We had a group of fantastic speakers in the end, each bringing something very different to the table:

The whole evening was a bit of a whirlwind for me. I spoke to lots of different people and felt like I never quite had the chance to speak to anyone. At one point there was a photographer from the Bristol Post; I stood outside in the cold to be photographed with the lights from the city behind me, looking in on the event suite at MShed, and feeling thoroughly grateful to everyone who was in there helping to prepare the event. I had amazing support from a whole lot of people who voluntarily gave up their time to make this event work, from photographers to speakers, those who prepared name badges and those who wore them.  Thank you everyone!

It was a brilliant evening, and I look forward to seeing where it takes us, particularly following the Mayor’s challenge to the business community to get behind the row in the run-up to Bristol as European Green Capital in 2015.