09 January 2008

My First Blog....well here goes

I spent some time over the Christmas and New Year holidays playing around on the internet and found myself reading blogs created by many people around the world, but mainly reading stuff relating to Ukraine. I also spent maybe too much time on my wifes laptop, much to her anger, creating a business plan and new materials for the British Business Club in Ukraine.

Why did I create the BBCU? Well mainly because, being a Brit living in Ukraine, I felt that not enough was being done to encourage and help British companies and British people to do business in Ukraine. Likewise, I wanted to help Ukrainian people and their companies in meeting and maybe doing business together with contacts from The United Kingdom. Plus.. to be honest I thought it would be a great way for Brits and Ukrainians to get together at least once per month and 'network'. (I still hate that word) But you know what I mean.

During its first year, the BBCU cost me a small fortune. I say we, because my colleague Richard Brady decided to also put in alot of work into making the BBCU a success. Richard has done a great job in coordinating most of the monthly meetings and finding new members. Although we attracted many members to join and actually pay membership fees, the running costs and the costs of the monthly meetings were in excess of the income. But, I knew this was not a money making venture from the beginning and we quickly decided we would have to find sponsors for the monthly meetings. Thankfully through our relationship with those wonderful people at INTER TV Channel in Kyiv, we were provided with the use of the 6th floor of their administration building for our monthly meetings.

We also launched a web site: www.bbcu.com.ua and we can say that the BBCU has become a success but also an expensive hobby. So why did I decided to write this blog?
See next entry.

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