OKE Club’s Naval and Military Club Dinner

On 26th of August, the OKE Club had its biggest and most successful event in summer, the OKE Club Naval and Military Club Dinner. This grand event was held at the Naval and Military Club in St James. This grand celebration attracted over 70 talented entrepreneurs and professionals from different sectors. The event contained a pre-dinner wine reception, a formal three courses fine dining meal and also a post-dinner networking session. Many of the guests were amazed by the grandeur of the design of the venue and were impressed that the OKE Club could secure this venue for the event. A lot of our guests have provided positive feedbacks and reviews on the organisation of the event of this has given the club great confidence and encouragement to organise bigger and more successful events in the future.

The event kicked off at 6 p.m with the arrival of our VIP guests. They included Mr David Tang, Professor Hugo de Burgh, Miss Miao He, Mr Lei Zhu, Miss Xu Li, Mr Anton Smyrnov, Mr Cedric Behrel, Mr Peitao Tan and Miss Xianyi Zeng. The OKE Club is extremely grateful and 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 library of the Naval and Military Club where they were greeted and hosted by Mr Victor Kovalets, the founder and Managing Director of the OKE Club. They then had a champagne reception there and also enjoyed a wonderful conversation on entrepreneurship and UK-China economic relations in general.

The other guests of the event were mainly arriving at 6:30 p.m and were led to the wine reception on the second floor of the Naval and Military Club. Each of our guests have been offered the opportunity to take pictures with the official poster of the event. They then enjoyed the pre-dinner networking opportunity in the accompany of wine and professional photographer taking pictures for them. The atmosphere of the pre-dinner wine reception was warm and sensational. Many of our guests were impressed by the elegant design of the room and also the historical paintings all over the place.

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 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. For the first time ever, different tables were named after different provinces and central administered cities in China. This has created great interest and enthusiasm for the guests when they were officially seated. Different tables were engaged in conversations related to different areas and topics. During the dinner, the founders of the OKE Club Mr Victor Kovalets and Mr Peitao Tan walked around different tables and had a toast with all of the guests.

After most of the guests have finished their dinner, the performance by the talented Classical guitarist Bradley Johnson officially began. Bradley Johnson is young and promising guitarist who has received positive remarks by Grammy winning guitarist. He performed two beautiful songs for us and all of the guests were entertained in the beautiful melody performed by Bradley. After the musical performance, our special guest speaker for the event Professor Hugo de Burgh officially started his keynote speech. The main theme for Professor de Burgh’s speech was Britain and China. Professor de Burgh shared some of his personal experiences on the development of UK-China relations in the past 50 years. These include his meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai in 1972 and also his huge admiration of Deng Xiaoping’s decision to undertake the Opening Up and Reforms in 1978. Professor de Burgh witnessed the transformation of UK-China relationship in the past 50 years and the huge impact caused by this relationship on the world. He firmly believed that the UK needs a new China strategy and its leaders need to know contemporary China well. He fundamentally believed that the people to people exchanges between the two countries are pivotal to the progress of this relationship and he has dedicated his whole life on this great cause. He founded the China Media Centre in 2005 and also the first Chinese-English dual language school in Europe, Kensington Wade in 2017. Professor de Burgh’s wisdom and great sense of humour attracted the audience greatly and many of them raised interesting questions on UK-China relations and economic partnerships after the keynote speech.

Around 10:00 p.m the dinner was officially finished and all of the guests were led to the guest room for the final round of networking with wine reception. 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 at the staircase of the Naval and Military Club. All of the OKE Club committee members who participated in the organisation of the networking dinner also took a picture together.

The networking event wrapped up around 11 p.m 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 member and create a welcoming community for China-UK focus entrepreneurs.