If I have a spanner, but don’t have a nut that fits – the internet will help me find nuts and someone who can supply them – quickly and cheaply. Great!

But, if I have a business and that business is not growing how I want it to grow – can the internet help? No, not really. I can’t search for ‘business growth’ and expect to find the solution.

So, for product buying the internet is great – but where the solution is not yet defined – or where they may be multiple possible solutions – then the internet doesn’t really work.

Square hole – square shape

Do you remember that child’s game where the child has a plastic table with different shaped holes in it? And the purpose is to find the blocks that fit each different shape? So, the round shape goes in the round hole, the star shape in the star hole and the square shape in the square hole?

Well, the internet (or database searching on the internet) is rather like the square shape, square hole problem solving.

But can it go further?

May be it can – and this is the key aim of the semantic web which seeks to find more subtle meaning in searches and matching.

But, the reality is that after more than a decade of email, massive increase in mobile telephony and wonderful google search algorithms, we still do business by meeting people – face to face – in a similar way.

So, as with so many things, can the internet replace our existing ways of working? No – but it certainly supplement with new ways of working and support existing ones more effectively.

In fact, the key benefit of face to face meetings isn’t reduced or replaced by the internet – so long as those face to face meetings are of a high quality.

And that is now the key question for any business meeting – how good (or what quality) were the conversations?

The low value meetings can easily be replaced by the ability of the internet – through search or social media – to match people.

Hence, Media Modo has been developing high quality face to face business events whilst seeking to use the internet to support and enhance the after-effect of those events. These events began with connecting freelancers in the creative, media, digital and marketing sector meeting potential hirers and entrepreneurs (Enterprise Freelance Fair) but will shortly expand to include face to face encounters between investors and start ups.

However, the key for both events is this – can we improve the quality of conversation?

We believe we can – and we do this via a mix of workshoping and pre-event profiling.

These two elements – combined – help to ensure that attendees are put in the right frame of mind to do business – and share a common language or grammar on how to talk to each other.

Okay, this sounds a bit technical – let me explain it more simply. How good are you at picking out the 5 best people to speak to in a room of 50 delegates? And, when you’ve found them, how do you make the few minutes of talk useful and directed to offering business problem solutions?

Well, even the very best networkers find this difficult – but if there was some way of doing this – without having to become an expert networker – then wouldn’t that improve the quality and value of the business event?

Okay – for this, Media Modo are developing unique profiling algorithms and training/ workshop structures and then integrating these into existing and new events.

If you’d like to know more or hear how we can help you improve your business events, then please get in touch.

Successful and would-be successful entrepreneurs can access several video clips containing the first few points of the 7 Point Plan – ‘Accepting today’s business reality’, ‘Rapid product and service innovation’ and ‘Creating a local pool of freelance talent’ – at www.ragstowreckages.com. To access the remaining four points from the plan, they will need to sign up to the free Rags to Wreckages Successful Entrepreneur newsletter. The newsletter delivers a helpful monthly digest of all the latest news and feature articles on the Rags to Wreckages website.

Subsequent video clips will cover business overheads, marketing innovation, business efficiencies and ‘you’.

Digital magazine Rags to Wreckages… to Riches offers business strategy advice to successful and would-be successful entrepreneurs based on the premise that we can learn more from our mistakes than our successes. It offers short, insightful articles on various topics, from business goal setting, to outsourcing, and the benefits of keeping a business lean.

Neil Lewis, publisher of Rags to Wreckages and partner of its parent company MediaModo, says: “As business leaders, we are living in difficult times – we have less cash and fewer resources, but have the same need to grow. Added to that, we know that government cuts to spending are inevitable and will impact at least some of our customers if not our businesses directly.  Surviving is all about flexibility and speed. At Rags to Wreckages we’ve looked at how successful entrepreneurs are preparing to weather the storm and we share these insights in our 7 point plan.”

– Ends –

Notes for editors

About Neil Lewis and MediaModo

Neil Lewis is a media entrepreneur and business leader based in the North West of England. A partner in MediaModo and the driving force behind new digital magazine Rags to Wreckages to Riches, Neil has over 20 years experience in publishing and investment. His specialist skills include business strategy, online publishing and media plus business investment and start-ups.

Neil is soon to publish his first book 100 Rules for Successful Entrepreneurs and also regularly speaks at university and entrepreneurial networking events where he shares what he has learnt from his experiences. MediaModo offers a contract publishing service to businesses and entrepreneurs. They also recently won a North West Development Agency grant to develop a new entrepreneurial accreditation scheme that will revolutionise the way investors and entrepreneurs work together.

For more information on Rags to Wreckages… to Riches, visit: www.ragstowreckages.com

For more information on MediaModo visit: http://www.mediamodo.co.uk/

Media contacts:

Sarah Leatherbarrow
sl@mediamodo.co.uk
MediaModo
Tel. 01865 861717
Mob. 07900 887987