The Lunch at the Circle event on February 16 was with Emilie Gobin, CEO and co-founder of Usine á Design.
A design and web entrepreneur: “how I created l’Usine @ Design”
Emilie Gobin is co-founder and CEO of Usine-à-Désign, an e-shop that sells custom made designer furniture directly to consumers at affordable prices. She will tell us her story: from how she started the company, over the challenges of raising over a million euros in capital to get it off the ground, to dealing with designers (you know!). In short, the story of how a young and successful French entrepreneur manages to survive! Emilie will speak in French.
ROI in online marketing. How can you measure success and effectiveness? With Sophie Callies, SO’xperts
Some while back we had a Lunch at the Circle event with Sophie Callie, who spoke on how to measure return on investment in marketing on the internet. Here’s a short video interview with Sophie:
Sophie talked about marketing in a digital and conversational world where metrics are all over the place and where return on investments is very hard to evaluate. Yet an increasing part of the marketing dollars are spent online and on social media. She talked about benchmarks and best practices and will show some examples of high tech companies that are leveraging social media for pipeline building and cross-selling.
Sophie Callies founded SO’xperts in 2007, a consulting company specialized in marketing performance management.
Before founding SO’xperts, Sophie had a track record in driving marketing performance at worldwide level in fast growing companies such as Apple, Netscape, AOL, Alcatel and Cartesis. More information on Sophie here: http://fr.linkedin.com/in/sophiecallies and on her company SO’xperts: http://www.so-xperts.com/. Sophie was also a driving force in the creation of Lunch at the Circle back in, oh, 2003!
Marc Timmerman was the guest at Lunch at the Circle on October 3. Here is a short interview with Marc:
Marc talks about talent management in fast changing environments with a particular focus on the technology sector; on the challenges of identifying and developing top talent, the trends for the future and the increasing complexity for leaders, and which solutions are key in making an organization be more attractive as an employer of talent.
Before joining Axiom consulting Marc was Executive Director of the European Talent Management practice of Hudson Highland group. Previous to that he led the HR consulting practice of De Witte & Morel, and was a Partner at Ernst & Young in Belgium. More information on Marc and on Axiom here: http://www.axiomcp.com/
Growing your business outside your home country without burning your fingers, with Tom Thorelli, founder of Thorelli & Associates
The US market in particular, but also other foreign markets, are a challenge. It is easy to make mistakes, to think that things work as “at home” when you do business there. Many business that try and penetrate the US market, or other foreign markets, make simple and silly mistakes that can be avoided. Tom Thorelli has worked with many French (and European) companies to help them get established and win business in the US – without getting fingers burned – by taking the market and the competition seriously, by understanding contracts and legal issues, by knowing how to negotiate, and how to protect one’s interests. Tom will explain do:s and don’t:s based on his practical experiences from helping many foreign companies to success in the US.
Tom Thorelli is founder and managing partner of the Thorelli & Associates Law Firm in Chicago (Illinois). Tom is of Swedish origin (yes, again; I don’t do this on purpose!) and currently lives in Paris. And two days after this Lunch at the Circle event he will try to run the Paris marathon.
More info on: www.thorelli.com. “The law firm has five lawyers, four of which are located in Chicago. The focus of the firm is in protecting intellectual property rights; negotiating contracts; structuring companies; providing a full array of immigration service; and dispute resolution.”
A previous Lunch at the Circle event was on “security” Joseph Graceffa, co-founder and CTO of Advens.
Information security in a world with both traditional IT and social networking: it’s all about people.
Today it is not enough with “IT security”, it is really a question of information security, both for companies and for individuals. Wikileaks, l’affaire Renault, a Dutch web site that collects information from Facebook and blogs to show which houses are empty (to burgle) since the inhabitants are on vacation, someone “looses” (really?) a smartphone with the company’s entire client list on it…
On one side you need to avoid unauthorised access to your systems and information by having proper protection. On the other side you need to give people good tools to work with, especially when everyone is travelling or working from a home office: smartphones, remote VPN access, webmail etc. And then you have the “social networking” aspects: Today business is more about sharing and collaborating than what it was a few decades ago. And also about using Facebook, blogs, Twitter and other tools for the benefit of your company. But all this leads to security risks.
Information security is about technology of course, but it is also, and increasingly so, about people, their behaviour and awareness of the issues.
Joseph Graceffa, co-founder and CTO of Advens, will give us an introduction and insight into these questions.
Joseph Graceffa is co-founder and CTO of Advens, an information security company. Advens provides a full range of security services to medium and large enterprises in France and across Europe. Before creating Advens some 10 years ago he was in charge of network security at Decathalon and a consultant with Bull. More info: http://www.advens.fr/
The next Lunch at the Circle event will be on Thursday February 16 with Emilie Gobin, CEO and co-founder of Usine á Design:
A design and web entrepreneur: “how I created l’Usine @ Design”
Emilie Gobin is co-founder and CEO of Usine-à-Désign, an e-shop that sells custom made designer furniture directly to consumers at affordable prices. She will tell us her story: from how she started the company, over the challenges of raising over a million euros in capital to get it off the ground, to dealing with designers (you know!). In short, the story of how a young and successful French entrepreneur manages to survive! Emilie will speak in French.
The next Lunch at the Circle event will be on Monday October 3 on Talent Management:
Talent management in technology, challenges and solutions, with Marc Timmerman
Marc Timmerman is partner at Axiom Consulting.
Marc will talk about talent management in fast changing environments with a particular focus on the technology sector; on the challenges of identifying and developing top talent, the trends for the future and the increasing complexity for leaders, and which solutions are key in making an organization be more attractive as an employer of talent.
Before joining Axiom consulting Marc was Executive Director of the European Talent Management practice of Hudson Highland group. Previous to that he led the HR consulting practice of De Witte & Morel, and was a Partner at Ernst & Young in Belgium. More information on Marc and on Axiom here: http://www.axiomcp.com/
When & How
Time: Monday October 3, 12.15 (we will sit down for lunch at 12.30). Lunch ends at 14.00.
Location: only on invitation
Cost: only on invitation/
(Salade de canard confit, vinaigrette ‘poireax’ | Daurade sauvage poêlée, petit ragout Paimpol | Quetsches rôties & rafraichis, fine semoule au lait vanillé | bon vin | eaux pour ceux qui résistent | Café Balthazar – If you have “special dietary requirements” please inform me before/ the event.)
Lunch at the Circle meeting February 24: ’Strategic investments in technology and environment by the French sovereign wealth fund – an inside view’
With Marc Julien, investment director at the Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement (FSI).
Marc Julien is director of investments at the Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement (FSI). FSI is the sovereign investment fund launched by the French government a few years ago to promote development and entrepreneurship in French companies. Marc is focusing on the FSI’s investments in the areas of technology and environment. Marc will talk both about the overall strategy of the FSI and specifically about investing in “his” sectors. Marc was previously SVP at Schneider Electric and a consultant at LEK and Estin & Co. Marc has an MBA from INSEAD. More on the FSI here: http://www.fonds-fsi.fr/
This is a video interview from the Lunch at the Circle event on November 17 with Lindsay Adams.
Lindsay Adams speaks on Teams that work: “Teamwork as we knew it in organisations is dead”.
In this presentation Lindsay focuses on the elements that are now needed to work in “Teams That Work”. In the sixties and seventies academic researchers formulated models around teamwork that some companies today are still following at their peril. Lindsay will share his current research that shows teams now function in entirely different ways.
In today’s fast paced business environment business owners and leaders have to take into account a different set of factors when addressing the make-up and management of their teams. With organisations downsizing, resizing and remodelling it is imperative to have the right tools to manage the key to your organisations success, your teams!
You will learn how you to build effective teams while taking advantage of the constantly moving talent pool in your organisation.” Lindsay is founder and director of Teamocracy, a company helping corporations work more effectively by doing better teamwork: http://www.teamocracy.com/.
Lindsay is Australian and comes to Paris for a few speaking engagements, one of which is L@C. He is also president of the Federation for Professional Speakers. Lindsay comes to speak at L@C thanks to David Ednie.
