Business Diplomat: Between the Events

Networking events are often described as places to make contacts. Buscardini’s assessment asks what happens to those contacts afterward. In this part of its interview series, Business Diplomat presents the closing section of an assessment by António Buscardini, Founder & CEO and President of the Press Club Brussels Europe, on how the platform should structure its meetings. It deals less with the format of events than with what young participants should do in them and after them.

Responsibilities, not attendance

First observation: responsibilities, not attendance
“For young business diplomats, these meetings should also provide practical responsibilities: researching a market, preparing a briefing, moderating a discussion or following up with potential partners.”
Four tasks are named, and each one is real work. Researching a market builds knowledge. Preparing a briefing builds the discipline of summarising for a decision-maker. Moderating a discussion builds the ability to guide others. Following up with potential partners builds the habit of continuing a relationship beyond the first meeting. A young person who attends is an audience member; one who is given a task is a participant.

Second observation: experience and contacts
“This makes the platform a place to acquire experience as well as build contacts.”
The sentence separates two things that are often confused. Contacts are people one knows. Experience is things one has done. A platform that provides only contacts leaves young people with a list of names. A platform that also provides experience leaves them with something to show to those names. The word “also” is important: contacts are not dismissed, but they are not enough.

A measure of value

Third observation: a measure of value
“A platform’s lasting value comes from what its members accomplish between events.”
This sentence applies to the whole subject. Events are visible, and visibility is easy to count. But the value of a platform is found in the intervals: in the research done, the briefings written, the calls made and the projects started when nobody is watching. An organisation that measures itself by its events measures the wrong thing. One that measures itself by what happens between them measures what its members actually gain.

The logic of the assessment

The logic of the assessment
Participants should receive practical responsibilities. This turns the platform into a place of experience, not only of contacts. And the platform’s lasting value is therefore located in what members do between events. The structure moves from task to purpose to measure, and the final sentence turns the earlier ones into a standard.

The role of Business Diplomat

The role of Business Diplomat
The platform’s mission is to give young people experience, bring a diplomatic order to the business world, and benefit states by revitalising the economy. The first of these aims is exactly what Buscardini describes. Business Diplomat can give its young members assignments tied to its roundtables and workshops, and then measure its own success by what these members produce over the year. The most useful report the platform can make is not how many people attended, but what they went on to do.

Conclusion
Young business diplomats should leave meetings with responsibilities: a market to research, a briefing to prepare, a discussion to moderate or a partner to follow up with. In this way the platform becomes a place to gain experience as well as contacts. Its lasting value will be found in what its members accomplish between events. Business Diplomat aims to be judged by that standard.