Aspinall Business Club 14th July 2010 at Port Lympne

http://aspinallbusinessclub.co.uk

Visitors and members present

Suzzane Emson http://www.kentwildlifefund.com
Jaci Godmin-Irvine http://www.estatelegacyservices.co.uk
Carol Arter http://www.arterworks.co.uk/
Lee Freeman http://www.kentbusinessdirectory.co.uk
Alan Noake http://www.theicelab.co.uk
Barry Nutley http://www.viridisec.co.uk/
Christine MacSween http://www.lionaid.eventbrite.com
Trevor Cobb http://www.microwaveservice.co.uk
Steve Orca http://www.OrcalocalHythe.co.uk
Chris Raines http://www.copy-link.co.uk
Peter Wood Hawkeye
Robert www.aspinallfoundation.org
Dreda Van-beer http://www.juststyle.me
Jo Dodds http://www.jododdssocialmedia.com

The Meeting

Robert Boutwood introduced the meeting, giving us an update about the animals that have been born over the last month; an Elephant calf that was rejected by the mother as it was her first baby. The keepers have hand reared it over the last six weeks spending 15 hours a day feeding and caring for the calf, the latest news is that the calf has been accepted back by the elephant herd so is doing very well.

Mark Kingstone Jones – Eduction and Research Officer

Mark gave a talk through a thunderstorm about the varied work that the Port Lympne does to educate children, teenager and adults and companies about the conservation work. This takes different formats depending on the audiences.

School Groups

At school groups it is mainly talking about conservation, zoos, and adoptions. The zoo has out-reach officers go to schools and give talks Port Lympne also offer junior keeper for the day experiences http://www.totallywild.net/schools/index.php.

Mark and his team run Enrichment programs for the animals that makes the visitors experience much more interesting as well. Using ropes and karabiners supplied by a company Port Lympne have made the snow leopards life much more interesting by hanging prey from a tree see this great video of the snow leopard in full flight climbs a tree to get a special treat in the snow.

For the children they give them a task of taking the lid off some black barrels, putting in a selection of food, then writing their names in large writing on the barrels and putting the lids back on securely. The barrels are then carefully placed in with the Gorilla, to work out how to get the lids off and into the food. The children can see which barrels are theirs because of the writing and the Gorilla’s can have an interesting thing to play with.

Corporate Team Building

Port Lympne also run corporate team building workshops which are tailored to what the company wants to get out of the day, how many people are involved, and how much time they have available; one activity we saw was four teams making a reindeer for the lions to play with. The team members all had fun making the reindeer from papier-mâché. The lions then loved tearing the reindeer apart and throwing them up in the air to catch in their mouths.

Lion Aid

The English Lions, the Dutch Lions and the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon all lost the battle for the World Cup

Real Lions are also losing their battle for existence in Africa. Join Lion Aid on 22nd July 2010 for the Lion Aid Challenge Trophy and ensure lions will participate in the WILD CUP forever. Brad Burton, the MD of 4Networking, will be dressed up as a lion and we invite Company teams and individuals to participate in the competiion to splatter Brad with paintballs. An amazing Business Networking opportunity and a chance to support Lion Aid. The participants will take part in the following challenges:

• Paintballing
• Par 3 (9 hole) Golf
• Water Walking & Archery.

The venue is Great Chart Golf and Lesiure centre, Great Chart, Ashford, Kent, TN23 3BW. Whole day including lunch is offered for only £35. Ticket and information www.lionaid.eventbrite.com
chris@lionaid.org. Phone 07772697498

Alan Noake

Trip to the Aspinall Reserve in the Congo

Alan Noake gave a talk about his trip to the Republic of Congo to visit and do some voluntary work for the Aspinall Foundation at their Western Highland Gorilla reserve. Alan talked about the Gorilla explaining that they eat 9K of fruit a day and that adult males weigh up to 200Kg. A Gorilla spends approx 30% of its time eating, 40% sleeping and 30% travelling. The gorillas are social animals and live in groups with one dominant male, 5 to 7 females and infants. Female gorillas have one baby approx every five years. While there Alan saw the lodges that the Aspinall foundation are building so that they can have visitors close to the Gorilla so helping with the funding of their re-introduction of gorillas into the wild.

Taster Paper Sculpture Workshops

from 10 – 12 Saturdays
Last 2 Saturdays in July and through August
Price: £10 on the door
Ages: all ages from 7 – 70+
Location: Business Stationery Store behind Tesco, Whitstable
Special offer: Last session free if attending all.

Other Events

Giacometti style wire & papier mache sculpture

2 full day workshops to be held in the Barn, Kingston with all materials/refreshments provided and inclusive of a pub lunch
Cost: £65
Date: October 9th.

Christmas Themed Paper Sculpture

23rd October
Details on the website

Come to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park for the August meeting of Counterpoint Networking in conjunction with Aspinall Business Club and hear Sharon speak on the cross river gorillas.

An opportunity to do some networking with other small businesses in the beautiful surroundings of the Port Lympne Mansion, near Hythe, Kent.

Timing: 6-9pm

Food will be supplied.

To book please follow this link

Come to the Red Lion Hotel in Hythe for this meeting of Counterpoint Networking’s new ‘Networkers Anonymous’. This has been put together ‘by popular demand’ by those people who can’t bear to wait 4 weeks in between Counterpoint Networking Meetings!

It will be even more informal than our main events. The idea is that you don’t need to book, just turn up on the night and pay £5 cash to partake of the sandwich buffet. If you don’t want to eat you don’t have to pay the money! We have the use of the room at the back as usual and we will confirm numbers for the buffet on the night.

This really was invented as a result of a discussion at our last meeting about meeting more regularly. It doesn’t form part of the membership (hence the £5) but it should be good for those members who can’t make the main meeting but who would like to catch up with everyone sooner than a whole month away. Obviously visitors are welcome as always, the more the merrier.

There will be no presentations, just chat and good old networking and relationship building.

Date: Tue 31 August

Timing: 6-9pm

Food is optional (£5 cash on the night).

What a great meeting it was!

We had three new members join:

Babs Seymour – Forever Living Products (FLP)
Barry Nutley – Viridis
Steve Holley – Orca Local

And some visitors (as well as the usual members!)

Sarah Washford – Writer and trainer
Andy Setterfield – Hoodner’s Horse, Great Chart
Allison Hogben – Mobile Beauty Therapist

We had a talk from Adrian Harlam – Director of Animals at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park

Adrian started on the large Carnivores section in 1986, progressed through the ranks and become a Director.

Poaching in Tanzania

Recently Port Lympne has returned two Rhinos to Tanzania and these returned pair had a calf; so in two years the population has increased by one. 13 Rhinos have been killed in a 15 month period. The reason for the killings is that the poachers want the Rhino horn which sells for up to £25,000. The horn is used in remedies for rheumatism, arthritis and other alternative medicines. When the average yearly wage is £1500, then from a financial point of view, there is a big incentive to kill the Rhinos, and the poachers just cut the horn off and leave the rest of the body where the Rhino fell. Adrian also showed us an elephant tusk again recovered from smugglers, the ivory is used to make knife handles, and in the past, piano keys, snooker balls, and Japanese ivory carvings.

Lions

There are about 20,000 lions left in the wild. In South Africa they organise canned hunts; you choose your animal and they supply it and you shoot it. They breed the lion cubs and then take them away from their mother, so the lioness comes back into season. In the wild when the leader of the pride become old, he would either die from disease or be killed by a younger stronger lion. At the moment in South Africa, as they have a lot of visitors for the Football World Cup, they are offering two for one, shoot a male lion which is what everyone wants to do and also get to shoot a female lion as well for free. As these lions have been handreared, they don’t run away when they see man approaching, they think that they have come to play.

Port Lympne have a theatre group travelling around Africa performing play by mime to educate the African population about the wild animal population and how it is declining because of the poaching and hunting.

How to reduce poaching

One way to reduce the hunting would be to ban the import of animal trophies and skins into the UK. The UK has a very influential place in the Commonwealth so if we took the lead we could convince other European countries to follow suit. LionAid are campaigning for this currently.

Education at Port Lympne

Port Lympne see their role as to educate visitors about the animals, to get the visitors to like the animals and have an affinity with them. Then to progress onto why the animals desperately need the visitors’ help otherwise there will be no animals left for our grandchildren to see, they will only see them in old films or documentaries.

The Aspinall Foundation website talks about the international conservation work that Port Lympne is involved in.

Counterpoint Networking member Alan Noake’s business, The World’s Most Expensive Link website is celebrating being around for 4 years! Here is a press release from Alan.

It all started as a bit of fun and an experiment (after a few beers in the pub!) – however along the way it has become a cool whacky new way to cost effectively get lots of brand exposure for your website.

In the last four years…

• 150 websites have added their link to the www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com
• To date the site has generated a total revenue of £3118.69
• £687.55 has been allocated to local, national and international charities.
• We have supported 21 nominated charities to date.
• £1374.84 has been allocated as commission to participants.
• The remaining income has all been invested back in to supporting & marketing the site.
• 23 sites have held the prestigious top spot and are in the Hall Of Fame
• The site now has a Google page rank of 3/10 (Let’s see if we can get it to 4/10 soon!)
• As the site gains exposure and kudos on the internet a link from it grows in value.
• The top spot has reached a value of £500 and is has currently been held by www.anthonygrayclocks.com for nearly 200 days.
• The longest spell at the top was also www.anthonygrayclocks.com for 568 days, 37 minutes

A big thanks to everyone who has participated to date. We are dedicated to promoting your sites.

Onward and upward!

Best Regards,

Alan

Why you might like to add or top up your link on The World’s Most Expensive Link?

Why you might want to consider listing your site on www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com?

As the site becomes more established it is slowly but surely becoming a “Beverley Hills of the Internet”. Traffic to the site is increasing. Referrals from the site are increasing. By listing your website you are effectively moving into a new exclusive online neighbourhood. As more and more people become aware of this unique and fun way to promote their website your site will continue to get even more exposure for no ongoing cost. The more we shout about it the more publicity we get for our participants, the more people visit the site and the more money is raised for charity!

We are often asked how or why anyone would find www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com?

We tweet about it! We shout about it! We even have our new fun 4 meter banner to promote it at public & business events / locations out and about…!

We will be promoting the website on our website and on other websites.

We will be promoting it in emails we send out.

We tweet about fresh activity on the site on Twitter.

We encourage all participants to link to www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.comfrom their website or blog.

The site is self-publicising in that the more people that participate the more people know about it.

Every time someone else joins the site they will see your link till at least 31st December 2012.

We send out a monthly newsletter by email to promote the site.

Commission payments are sent out monthly promoting the site.

Charity payments raised are made in the name of www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com

Lots of people have been asking me recently how is the commission calculated on www.theworldsmostexpensivelink.com?

OK, it is our policy to be entirely transparent about this so here goes, I guess the best way to explain how commission is calculated is to use a real example…

Let’s say Fred pays £50 to add or top up a link.

Fred basks in all the glory of owning the top spot or moving higher up.

• £1.90 will be paid to PayPal for credit card processing fees.
• £6.27 will be paid to HM Customs & Excise as VAT.
• £20.91 (i.e. 50% less PayPal Fees & VAT @ 17.5%) in commission is shared out proportionally* between all the existing site participants (including Fred if he is topping up his link).
• £10.46 (i.e. 25% less PayPal Fees & VAT @ 17.5%) in charity donations is shared out proportionally* between all the existing site participants (including Fred if he is topping up his link).
• £10.46 (i.e. 25% less PayPal Fees & VAT @ 17.5%) is our remaining profit and also covers our administration costs of running/marketing the site.

* Someone who pays £50 will get 50 more shares of any commission money than someone who pays £1.

I think that’s about it – obviously the longer you have been on the site the more commission you are eligible for a stake of.

So basically The ICELAB Ltd make 25% (less VAT & PayPal Payment processing fees) of all income – the rest is all invested back in commission payments and charity donations.

It is all bit of fun and an experiment – we will continue to keep shouting about the site to get all participants some benefit of listing their site.

Come to the Red Lion Hotel in Hythe for this meeting of Counterpoint Networking’s new ‘Networkers Anonymous’. This has been put together ‘by popular demand’ by those people who can’t bear to wait 4 weeks in between Counterpoint Networking Meetings!

It will be even more informal than our main events. The idea is that you don’t need to book, just turn up on the night and pay £5 cash to partake of the sandwich buffet. If you don’t want to eat you don’t have to pay the money! We have the use of the room at the back as usual and we will confirm numbers for the buffet on the night.

This really was invented as a result of a discussion at our last meeting about meeting more regularly. It doesn’t form part of the membership (hence the £5) but it should be good for those members who can’t make the main meeting but who would like to catch up with everyone sooner than a whole month away. Obviously visitors are welcome as always, the more the merrier.

There will be no presentations, just chat and good old networking and relationship building.

Date: Tue 27 July

Timing: 6-9pm

Food is optional (£5 cash on the night).

Come to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park for the August meeting of Counterpoint Networking in conjunction with Aspinall Business Club and hear Rob Gordon speaking about Animal Photography.

An opportunity to do some networking with other small businesses in the beautiful surroundings of the Port Lympne Mansion, near Hythe, Kent.

Timing: 6-9pm

Food will be supplied.

To book please follow this link

Come to the Red Lion Hotel in Hythe for this meeting of Counterpoint Networking’s new ‘Networkers Anonymous’. This has been put together ‘by popular demand’ by those people who can’t bear to wait 4 weeks in between Counterpoint Networking Meetings!

It will be even more informal than our main events. The idea is that you don’t need to book, just turn up on the night and pay £5 cash to partake of the sandwich buffet. If you don’t want to eat you don’t have to pay the money! We have the use of the room at the back as usual and we will confirm numbers for the buffet on the night.

This really was invented as a result of a discussion at our last meeting about meeting more regularly. It doesn’t form part of the membership (hence the £5) but it should be good for those members who can’t make the main meeting but who would like to catch up with everyone sooner than a whole month away. Obviously visitors are welcome as always, the more the merrier.

There will be no presentations, just chat and good old networking and relationship building.

Date: Tue 29 June

Timing: 6-9pm

Food is optional (£5 cash on the night).

This time at our local business networking group we have the privilege to have a fascinating talk from one of our members.

In May 2009 Alan Noake had the unique opportunity to pay a short visit to the Aspinall Foundation’s reserve in the Republic of The Congo. Alan will share some stories of his experiences of touring this fascinating country in particular the tour of the Gorilla orphanage.

There will also of course be time to network with fellow local businesspeople at the Port Lympne Mansion and hear from Amos about Overses Projects at Port Lympne.

Timing: 6-9pm

Food will be supplied.

To book please follow this link