It has been a great journey in networking and have had attended many large networking events . Jennifer Beale from UnleashPR and Biznetworknews.com does 2 big parties every year for the past 10 years . In early February she host the Business Networking event to start of the year with great speakers, seminar and trade show.
I have been attending her event since 2009 and have enjoyed make great connections and maintaining long-term relationship with many professionals and entrepreneurs throughout Ontario.
At this year’s event Jennifer her team had a great contest the created using online and offline events to promote the event on February 7,2012 at great location near Don Mills and Leslie. 4 weeks prior to event an email was sent out to participants from previous event encourage them promote event online through Twitter, Facebook and social channel we had available. We were given information we could share online and offline to our networks. We would report back our progress where and who we had shared this event information with, point were given out as reward. The prize for this was stage time at the event from 5.3 and 1 minutes speeches at the afternoon session.
I was excited and intrigued to participate and felt very confident that I could win this contest. We were emailed information 5 days a week to tweet, share and post.
On a weekly basis we were give updates on the top 10 contenders for the contest. It was so exciting to get the first email where I saw that I was in 3rd place behind two other people which knew both of them!
This was disappointing at first but I still had time to catch up with events I was speaking ,radio show that I was scheduled to be on and surprise referrals that I was getting.
As the days went by I was out speaking and attending networking event and was update my status regarding the contest.
On February 3rd I appeared on radio show with Fatima Omar Khamissa called American Muslim 360 to share my insights on How to Become a Networking Success. We had great discussion on this topic and at the end of the show I had informed her that I was in first palce and she still unfazed that she would finish first. I admired her determination to win
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The day before I had delivered at talk on How to become a blogging success and invited to great entrepreneur s who had great success with their blogs. Patrick Bizindavyi President of Best Life Motivation and Goal Achievers a Canada and writer of www.journeymanstories.blogspot.com and new blogger Rania Effat who had started her blog in January 2012 www.livingoutmypurpose.com . They both delivered spectacular presentation on their success.
At the end of the event I got a referral for an event that was happening that weekend for the Junior Leadership Program part of Go Vision they were looking for 3rd speaker for the panel to talk to group of 200 students engaged and interested in the power of having a mentor
Three days before the contest got an email update regarding the contest and I was in first place!
I was excited and was in the process of preparing my five minute speech for the event on February 7th.
On Sunday I participated in the Go Vision event where sharing insight and experience on importance on having a mentor in your journey of success (link below).
It was great afternoon to share my story to these upcoming professionals to engage and inspire them to have the ability and awareness to find their future mentors.
As I was leaving Fatima Omar-Khamissa showed up for the evening portion of the event, we exchange pleasantries and as I left she said “every point counts, I have another event tonight”.
We were going to the wire to see who was going to finish #1 for the contest. Monday February 5th at 5:00pm was the deadline for the all the entries to be made. The tension was intense waiting for the email to come through.
The results were below:
The results were below:
Congratulations . . . the winners of the Promotion Partners Business Connects Contest are:
1) Fatima Khamissa - 5 minutes
2) Jim Pagiamtzis - 3 minutes
3) Cheryl Schofield - 1 minute
Please come tomorrow prepared to speak in the given to you. You are welcome to share on whatever you want to get more of what you want in life - ethical/ moral content only of course. In addition to your speaking spots, we invite each of our three winners to participate on the Afternoon Networking Leader Panel from 2:15-3 pm - we want you to share your networking success tips with everyone.
1) Fatima Khamissa - 5 minutes
2) Jim Pagiamtzis - 3 minutes
3) Cheryl Schofield - 1 minute
Please come tomorrow prepared to speak in the given to you. You are welcome to share on whatever you want to get more of what you want in life - ethical/ moral content only of course. In addition to your speaking spots, we invite each of our three winners to participate on the Afternoon Networking Leader Panel from 2:15-3 pm - we want you to share your networking success tips with everyone.
It was a great contest and even though I didn’t finish first I got speaking for 3 minutes and participate in a discussion panel.
Moral of the story:
Enjoy going out networking offline and have fun online and you can get rewarded for you work.
Jim Pagiamtzis sharing his 3 minute speech.
Jim Pagiamtzis participating in panel discussion
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