I was invited to the launch of the Heritage Chapter of BNI this morning.

It is always great to have the opportunity to meet a few new faces and it is equally important to have a chance to catch up with existing clients.

I was a member of BNI last year but now only my fellow director John is a member at the Bute Chapter in Cardiff. In truth I quite miss BNI and I am tempted to re-join the Enterprise Chapter again next year. I will have to decide between Heritage and Enterprise as unfortunately I am committed to 4Networkjing in Cardiff every other Wednesday at the moment so a Tuesday meeting is attractive....anyway...I will delay that decision until next year.

Two of the clients I bumped into were Gareth Morgan of Liberty Marketing and Craig Howarth of Two Cool Photo . meeting Gareth was great as I had a chance to discuss a potential client for him in a little detail.

It is also great always to meet Craig as he has such an interesting life as a photographer and he is certainly is a busy boy these days.

The other passion that drives Craig is downhill biking. Which at speeds in excess of 30mph seems to be a mad extreme sport to me! He is returning to ride down the Alps again next year and we discussed his Winter training. Not for the faint hearted.

The sad news he gave me was that someone had nicked his precious specialist bike a few weeks ago and that the insurance would not pay out. This is a real blow as at £5K a pop it is not an extra expense that can be aborbed lightly.

If you have a spare downhill bike tucked away in the garage let me know...

It sounds likely that someone specifically followed Craig in order to steal his bike to order - that's even worse as there was no negligence on his side and you feel duped by someone who shares your passion. Still sometimes you just have to get back on your (new) bike and get on with it! Good luck Craig raising the funds for next season.

Anyway, as you can see there is always more to networking that you might expect! Highly recommended - why not come to our next one with the best of Cardiff in January!