OKE Club’s August Networking Dinner

On 5th of August, the OKE Club had its August networking dinner at the Army&Navy Club in St James. The event attracted over 50 talented entrepreneurs and professionals from different sector. The event contained a pre-dinner wine reception, a formal two courses dinner and also a post-dinner networking session. Many of the attendees were amazed by the grandeur of the venue with its warm and luxurious decorations. A lot of them have provided positive feedbacks on the event and this has given the OKE Club more confidence on organising more successful offline networking events in the future.

The event kicked off at 6PM with the arrival of our VIP guests. They included Mr Jerry Zhang, Mr Peitao Tan, Miss Qi Yan and Mr Simon Alexander Ong. The OKE Club is extremely honoured to have VIP guests with amazing entrepreneurial and industry experiences like them joining us for the networking dinner. The VIP guests were then led to the special room of the venue where they were greeted by Victor Kovalets, the Managing Director of the OKE Club. They then had a champagne reception there and also had a wonderful conversation on entrepreneurship and management strategies in general.

The other guests of the event were mainly arriving at 6:30PM and were led to the wine reception at the smoking room on the ground floor. Each of them has been offered the opportunity to take pictures with the official OKE poster of the event. They then enjoyed the pre-dinner networking opportunity in the accompany of wine and professional photographer taking pictures for them.

Around 7p.m all of the guests were led to the dining hall and dinner was officially served. Before everyone began their dinner, all of the three VIP guests were officially introduced by Victor Kovalets to all of the guests. The guests had an engaging and interesting conversation among themselves while enjoying their meal. Different tables were engaged in conservations related to different areas and topics. During the dinner, Victor and the other committee members at the VIP table also walked around to different tables and had a toast with all of the guests.

After most of the guests have finished their dinner, the interview of our special guest speaker Jerry Zhang officially began. Jerry Zhang is a successful angel investor working for the famous SFC Capital in London. He was interviewed by the Leader of the OKE mentoring programme, Miss Xaiomei Zhang on his journey of becoming an angel investor and also his transformation from a graduate student at university to a professional who has a successful career. After Jerry’s amazing presentation about his journey and career, questions were raised by a few guests on his opinion about how to better help UK businesses entering the Chinese market and vice versa on helping aspiring Chinese businesses in the UK. Jerry answered each of the questions patiently and shared his insights with other guests.

Around 8p.m dinner was officially finished and dessert was served. All of the guests also started the process of introducing themselves to everyone else. The VIP table started the self-introduction part and the other tables followed. The photographer hired by the OKE Club walked around the venue at this time and took many amazing individual portraits of the guests who were giving their self-introduction. For the OKE Club, it has truly been an honour to gather so many talented and experienced entrepreneurs and professionals at our August networking event.

After the self-introduction part, all of the guests were led to the members’ room upstairs and the final round of networking began. This time, the guests could walk around the floor and engaged in a conversation with anyone they wanted to. The photographer also walked around and took many brilliant individual and group pictures of our guests while they were networking. Many of them have exchanged each other’s WeChat and Linkedin contact details and are looking forward to form partnership and collaboration in the future. All of the guests also took a group photo together at the end of the event. The OKE Club committee members who participated in the organisation of the networking event also took a picture together.

The networking event wrapped up around 10PM and all of the guests left the venue in great spirits and excitement. Many of them have expressed the strong desire to attend the next offline event and will continue to support the cause of the OKE Club. The great success of this August networking dinner has given the OKE Club more confidence on organising bigger and more successful offline event. The OKE Club will keep working hard on organising high quality offline events for our members and create a welcoming community for China-UK focus entrepreneurs.