The Daily Networker

Welcome!  If you’re looking for my current clients and projects, I’ve put together a page here which I hope you will find useful and interesting.  This will answer the famous question, ‘What Do You Actually Do?’!

You can contact me by emailing ‘Oli at Oli Barrett dot com’.

I’m a regular user of Twitter, over here, where I try to share what I’m up to.

Day to day, I have a consultancy business and am retained by a growing number of clients.  I advise them and spend my time making valuable connections for them.  This could be to funding, partners, media or customers.  Typically, I will suggest relationships, then work with the client to secure and attend the meetings.  Current clients include Sport England, Substance, Gemin-i , Enterprise UK  (previously Make Your Mark) and the Flow Foundation.   If you think that we should be working together, please get in touch.

I’m based in London, and here’s what else is keeping me busy;

I write a monthly column for Growing Business Magazine.  You can read it by clicking here.

What happens when you lend 20,000 British school pupils a Tenner, and challenge them to see what they can achieve in just one month?  That’s what Make Your Mark with a Tenner which I started, is all about! 

I reckon that life is a search for people.  That’s why the web fascinates me.  In the web world, we’re always hearing lessons from the heart of hi-tech innovation, Silicon Valley.  So I decided to set up an annual trip to San Francisco, taking 20 leading entrepreneurs to experience the sights and sounds first hand.  It’s called WebMission and you can read about it here.

Business events can be terribly dull can’t they?  Everyone hates getting stuck with a bore, and that’s why I brought SpeedNetworking to the UK, over eight years ago.  I’ve hosted events with everyone from the Prince’s Trust to Coutts Bank, with guests from Alan Sugar to Gordon Brown.  Last year I even went to 12 countries in a month, all to promote the concept.  Would you like to come to an event?  Please get in touch! 

How do you REALLY change stuff for the better in a country? My hunch is that things really get moving when Government, business and the third sector all work TOGETHER.  That’s why I enjoy being one of the 15 members of the Council on Social Action, chaired by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.  We meet every six weeks and there’s more information on that over here.

So what’s it all about?  What’s my passion?  I love looking after people and bringing people together.  I’m passionate about the web’s ability to make that happen.  I love smart social experiments which trigger new ways of solving age-old challenges.  I’m in love with the United States and all that it represents.  I love to combine work with fun. 

The easiest way to contact me is by emailing me at ‘Oli at Oli Barrett dot com’.

Best Wishes,

Oli

Media Links;

Oli Barrett, London, 2009

Personal interview with the Daily Telegraph

Feature by Wired Magazine UK

BBC piece about Web Mission 2009

BBC piece about Make Your Mark with a Tenner