How to prepare your business for a sustainable future

Posted on September 4, 2023 by per

Join us for the next L@C speaker lunch, with David Laurent, who will speak on how to prepare for a sustainable future.

Time to book your participation now.

David is head of Climate and Resources for Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE). The EpE is a think-tank created to help companies face future climate and sustainability challenges. An impressive list of major French companies are members of the EpE. See the membership list here: https://www.epe-asso.org/liste-des-membres/

David will talk about the challenges they are tackling and their specific approach to help large companies grow more sustainable processes and adapt their business model to future requirements that will leave Earth in good condition for future generations.

You can find more information about the Entreprises pour l’Environnement here: https://www.epe-asso.org/.

Next L@C lunch:

Date: Monday September 18
Time: You’re welcome from 12.00. We sit down at the table at 12.30.
Place: you will receive info when you book.
Speaker:
- David Laurent
- Head of Climate and Resources for Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE).
Fare: 48€, you get a two-course lunch (main + desert) with wine (or water) and coffee (when you book, please let us know food allergies in advance)

Book now!

If you are interested in attending this lunch event, please contact me.

One of the first Lunch at the Circle events, in 2003

Posted on August 24, 2023 by per

The Lunch at the Circle (LAC, L@C) events started early 2003. The very first meeting was a lunch with twelve friends of mine, all in the tech sector. It was a very turbulent time for technology companies. Much more so than these days.

It was “just” a lunch, without a speaker. Together with two friends (one of whom is in a picture below), we decided to make it a regular event and – to add a little extra value – we agreed to have an invited speaker every time. This made it even more valuable than “just” a networking event.

The events have mostly taken place at the Cercle Suedois (Swedish Club) in Paris. But even if that is the case, there is no link between Lunch at the Circle and the Cercle Suedois. LAC is a totally independent “organisation”.

The first even, as well as several of the following ones, were in “The Nobel Room”. It is called thus since in a corner there is a small 19^th century desk, and on that desk Alfred Nobel wrote his will, the will that created the Noble Prize. On the wall above the desk there is also a copy of the will.

After some time, there were too many attendees to fit into that room (it only takes twelve people) so then we move out into one of the salons of the club.

During a couple of years we held the events at the Restaurant Maceo instead. It is an excellent restaurant not far from Les Halles.

I happened to look through my picture archive the other day and by chance if found two photos from one of the first lunches. It is not the very first lunch but rather it is the first or the second, I believe, with a speaker. You can see the speaker at the back of the photo. Some of the people on the pictures are still occasional participants at the LAC.

One of the first Lunch at the Circle event on April 23 2003

L@C on June 5: Anne-Céline Martel: On interim management

Posted on May 2, 2023 by per

Join us for the next speaker lunch, with Anne-Céline Martel, who will speak on being an interim manager.

Relevant, for example, if:

You use or might use an interim manager for speeding up company transformation. How to do it better.
You might consider working as an interim manager yourself. How to be successful.

Anne-Céline Martel has worked as an interim executive manager since 2012. She will talk about how she began and how others can do it, why companies resort to outside temporary executives (quite different from consultants), and what the keys are to being successful.

After a 20+ years in corporate executive roles, Anne-Celine decided to continue transforming companies, but in a new role, as interim executive manager. She has since accompanied companies ranging from 100 to 10,000 employees, on short term assignments as a Chief Transformation Officer, CEO or other change-driving roles. Her missions have covered a wide range of responsibilities including implementing post-merger acquisitions, restructuring businesses, optimising performance and delivering changes in business models. Anne-Celine is a graduate of INSEAD and a pilot on her free time.

Next L@C lunch:

Date: Monday June 5 (the day before the fête nationale suédoise)
Time: You’re welcome from 12.00. We sit down at the table at 12.30.
Place:
Speaker:
- Anne-Céline Martel, executive interim manager.
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/annecelinemartel/
- The presentation will be in French (with some English)
Fare:

Book now!

Book your participation in this Lunch at the Circle here: You need to contact someone who is part of the Lunch at the Circle if you want to participate.

Marina Niforos on Web3

Posted on March 25, 2023 by per

On March 6 we had the pleasure to welcome Marina Niforos to Lunch at the Circle. She spoke about Web3, block-chain, NFTs and much more.

Watch the video interview with Marina below.

Marina Niforos is an experienced board member, advisor, investor and academic, working at the intersection of deep technology and impact. She is world recognized expert on blockchain and web3 and a member of the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum. She is lead author of the IFC-World Bank report on blockchain: Opportunities for Private Enterprises in Emerging Markets and a frequent contributor in media (Bloomberg, FT, CoinDesk and others). She is also Affiliate Professor of the Future of Work at HEC Paris business school EMBA programs. EU Startups named Marina one of “one of five female leaders driving change in the European blockchain ecosystem”.

Marina spoke about web3.

Web3 is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain technologies, and token-based economics (Wikipedia).

I should also point out that Marina is sitting next to the desk where Alfred Nobel wrote and signed his testament creating the Noble Prize. It is just barely visible at the edge of the frame. A copy of the testament hangs on the wall.

Marina Niforos speaking at Lunch at the Circle on Web3

Jörgen Eriksson on International Entrepreneurship and Disruptive Finance

Posted on July 4, 2022 by per

On June 13 we had the pleasure to welcome Jörgen Eriksson who spoke about international entrepreneurship in a disruptive environment, and particularly in finance. Jorgen also spoke captivatingly about his experiences of building business all around the world.

“Jörgen has 30 years experience from executive and advisory work on four continents with both the public and private sectors. As a tech executive in the 1990s, he was overall responsible for delivery of the systems that powers the ECB and the introduction of the Euro. As a management consultant, he has been involved in regional startup eco-systems from United States to South Africa, and public sector projects such as strategy for new cities from China to Egypt.”

Jörgen on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgen-eriksson/

Here’s our video interview with Jorgen:

Some pictures from the event:

Jorgen Eriksson and Per Karlsson at Lunch at the Circle

Jorgen Eriksson and guests at Lunch at the Circle

Per Karlsson and guests at the Jorgen Eriksson Lunch at the Circle

The three organisers of Lunch at the Circle

Posted on June 2, 2022 by per

The Lunch at the Circle lunch events and networking group was started almost twenty years ago by Per Karlsson, Laurent Charreyron and Sophie Callies.

Today it is organised by Stefan Norberg, Fabrice Teboul and (still) Per Karlsson.

The purpose of Lunch at the Circle is simply to give people an opportunity to meet in an informal way over lunch to listen to an interesting speaker, to network, to share, and to enjoy. Over a nice meal with some good wine.

Here are the three organisers:

Stefan Norberg, Per Karlsson, Fabrice Teboul, the three organisers of Lunch at the Circle

“International entrepreneurship in the age of internet and disruptive innovation”

Posted on May 10, 2022 by per

The next Lunch at the Circle event is on June 13.

Speaker: Jörgen Eriksson

Theme: International entrepreneurship in the age of internet and disruptive innovation

“In one of his recent mandates, Jörgen was the CEO of QuickBit, a fintech company started in 2016 and listed on the NGM Nordic MTF stock market in 2019, and in 2020 he started a London based ‘fintech factory’, combining an incubator, investor and accelerator in one organization, with the purpose of changing the way value moves in international banking.”

Date: Monday June 13
Time: You’re welcome from 12.00. We sit down at the table at 12.30.
Place: //on invitation//
Theme: International entrepreneurship in the age of internet and disruptive innovation
Speaker: Jörgen Eriksson. Jörgen has 30 years experience from executive and advisory work on four continents with both the public and private sectors. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgen-eriksson/
Bonus: you get a two-course lunch with wine (or water) and coffee (please let us know food allergies in advance)

A railway carriage in ruins, copyright BKWine Photography

Therapeutic hypnosis with Doctor Laurent Taton

Posted on March 31, 2022 by per

The first Lunch at the Circle “Season Three” event took place a few days ago. Judging from the feedback, it was a great success. People were keen to meet IN PERSON again.

We had an exciting and unusual speaker who over lunch who explained how he works with hypnosis to alleviate or improve impediments to good performance and normal life. For example stress situations (that many of us are all too familiar with), smoking, vertigo, sleep or food irregularities or other things that may interfere in daily life or work.

Dr Laurent Taton at Lunch at the Circle

A Lunch at the Circle event in Paris:

Speaker: Le docteur Laurent Taton

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/docteur-laurent-taton-b6942719a/.

Theme: L‘hypnose thérapeutique, comment peut-elle contribuer à l’optimisation des performances ?

Le docteur Laurent TATON est médecin spécialisé en hypnose médicale. Il intervient auprès de cadres du secteur privé et de la fonction publique, ainsi que d’entrepreneurs pour les accompagner dans leur gestion du stress.

Enseignant, auteur, il intervient aussi sur des problématiques individuelles ou en entreprise pour des formations et actions de prévention. Il consulte à son cabinet ainsi qu’au C.H.U. Cochin.

Plus d’info sur l’activité de docteur Laurent Taton ici : https://www.medecin-hypnose-paris.com

Next Lunch at the Circle event: June 13.

A short video interview with Laurent Taton :

Dr Laurent Taton speaking at Lunch at the Circle

Dr Laurent Taton and Stefan Norberg at Lunch at the Circle

Martin McCourt on Mergers & Acquisitions

Posted on July 1, 2019 by per

On June 17 Martin McCourt shared his experience about how mergers and acquisitions can play a role in corporate development with the guests at the Lunch at the Circle lunch.

Watch the video interview with Martin below.

Martin was Executive Vice President M&A and on the management board at Gemalto for around a decade and involved in a number of acquisitions, from some 10s of M€ to 890 M USD with SafeNet (in 2014).

Gemalto is a world leading digital security company providing software applications, secure personal devices such as smart cards and tokens, and managed services. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of SIM cards. (source:Wikipedia) Gemalto is now part of the Thales group.

Organised by Lunch at the Circle:
https://www.lunchatthecircle.com/

With Per Karlsson, BKWine:
https://www.bkwine.com/

Martin McCourt speaks at Lunch at the Circle, copyright BKWine Photography

Content curation or not?

Posted on July 9, 2012 by per

Content curation has become a very “hot” subject over the last couple of months. I remain to be convinced of the value of content curation though. In many cases content curation seems to be a way to avoid having to put a little more thought and effort into writing a proper article (or p”post”). A bit like a glorified and re-branded twitter feed.This is accentuated by the “fake curation” tools that simply creates what is supposed to look like a curated contents from an automatic feed, e.g. from a twitter stream.

In most cases I prefer when someone has taken the trouble to write a post / article and am not very interested in what someone might have “curated”. (In addition, it sounds a bit like museum pieces, doesn’t it?)

But it is very popular.

Someone who is more enthusiastic than me about content curation is Therese Torris, a long-time Lunch at the Circle participant and frequent guest and the author of the interesting blog Return on Clicks.

Therese has just written a rather substantial article on her views on contents curation: Content Curation Tools for Brands.

Here are Therese’s conclusions on the subject:

Here is what I concluded from this research:

Content curation does help content discovery. Curation helped me discover and share content on my favorite topics. Numerous reports show that social content curation à la Pinterest brings traffic to brand sites. Curated content embeds brand content into a rich inbound context of external content.

Social content curation fosters customer engagement. Consumers who curate a brand’s content not only send it traffic, they also bring to the brand and its product a much needed validation. Brands like Whole Foods that participate in social curation on Pinterest increase their customers’ engagement.

Corporate curation tools help create a competitive advantage. In addition to public social curation platforms, brands should use scoop.it or corporate collaborative content curation tools like Curata, CurationSoft or Zemanta to listen to their market, optimize their content and collaborate on their content strategy.

But content curation is no panacea for failing content creation. Curated content supplements original brand content, it cannot replace it. If a brand has no story to tell, no original content, no topics to share with its audience and no Social Media strategy, content curation will only increase the overall online noise level.

Do read the full article, on the link above. It is full of useful information!

What’s your view? Is contents curation useful or not?