Networkplace


		NETWORK NEWS

27 May 2011

Optimum Interventions are Networkplace.eu Silver Sponsors. Steve Loraine explains why.

Optimum Interventions has been sponsors of Networkplace.eu and the Begeistring Community since the sponsor programme was introduced.

Steve Loraine is the owner and Managing Director of the company.

Oi provide interim executives and consulting services to the public sector in the UK. I have over 30 years experience in local government, most of which has been in senior roles creating and leading high performing teams, working in permanent or interim capacity for district, unitary, metropolitan, County and London councils.

We are particularly experienced in leading change and coaching for improvement and have introduced Appreciative Inquiry and strengths-based coaching to a growing number of clients in the public sector in the UK.

What do you want to contribute by sponsoring the network?

As well as being a little piece of financial resource to help sustain the technicalities of the Networkplace.eu web site, and also provide something for the founder of the site to sustain himself (!), sponsorship offers our company a visible way of confirming our support for the European network.

This commitment goes far beyond the web-site and finance, and more deeply into an appreciation of the wide variety of individuals, companies and national networks alive and well in Europe.

To sponsor the site moves our small enterprise, Optimum Interventions Ltd, a little closer to the heart of appreciative and strengths-focused change in Europe. As we have discussed with Leif before, this is actually about co-creation, and that comes in many forms, at different intensities through time, and develops as our practice develops.

What are your expectations and hopes (for the network)?

Hope is an integral part of appreciative and strengths-focused change, and so it is for the network and its home web-site. Our hopes revolve around the continued growth of the network, in membership numbers, its influence and scope of operation.

As to expectations, I have an expectation that members of the network, and those in national networks, work with integrity, honesty and high ethical standards, whatever the challenges. These attributes, and others, are essential to our continued relevance to clients and communities, particularly for the many who face severe financial and structural challenges to their very existence.

How could we engage more in co-creation?

This is always a conundrum - I do not use air travel and my physical input to European meetings is therefore particularly constrained. On the other hand, our technologies provide immense opportunities to co-create, perhaps remotely yet still and ever-more, in connected way.

So, we can engage in more co-creation through the formal mechanisms of meetings, seminars, networks and conferences, and through more informal networking, skype-calls, the sharing of ideas and experiences and finding ways to make technology work for us when developing the networkplace.eu web-site and other media.

What could we do around the website to make it more attractive to you?

Web-sites invariably highlight our individual preferences, and often differences of opinion, about design, scale, colour, technicality and so on. An effective web-site for us is one that offers abroad range of information and resources, clear sign-posting of important features and events, a professional style, clarity of navigation and a sense of the 'personal' rather than the 'corporate'.

I believe the networkplace.eu site has served us very well over the past five years and has increased its functionality to try and keep pace with the developments in our national networks and our personal professional practice. The opportunity for sponsors to co-create the site, i.e. in practical terms carry out technical input to the site and, from now, have a specific page for our companies, is great.

Other colleagues will have more technical views on the site, but,as they say, 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and we are quite satisfied with the way the site has been developing. Resources, time and commitment make all the difference.

Other comments?

Now is the time for Europe!!