Jen Little, JCI Cambridge President, looks back on the year so far and the Chamber's future plans.

JCI Cambridge has had an amazing year so far! Having only been re-established for a year we have gone from strength to strength;  having new members join each month, a strong committee of enthusiastic and very capable young professionals, a vibrant business and networking programme of events each month coupled with the opportunities of the wider JCI UK programme.

It is difficult to pinpoint one experience of life within JCI Cambridge this year. In our first training session of 2011 business guru Philip Morley explained ""Why it pays to be clear - communication with clarity". Philips' session covered the commercial advantage of clarity and how dangerous it is when clients, customers, colleagues and investors get the wrong end of the stick. 

February saw the amazing Marcus Orlovsky give a talk on "Packed up...how to be in the right place, at the right time" - a truly inspirational speaker! I was amazed at the power and strength of conviction of the conversations in the pub after this event!  We have also covered topics such as "Massively Improve Your Results : The Secret of Success",  "Time Management", "Personality Profiling in the Workplace", "Emotional Intelligence" and "Negotiation Skills". 

We also hold our social networking events once a month and have had a full house on most months - so much so we have had to find a new venue!

We held our inaugural Business Skills day in April and were the hosts of the President and Deputies day. We had a great night out with both JCI UK members and visitors where we were able to showcase our beautiful city.

We also had a very enjoyable JCI Cambridge summer party which included punting, cocktail making and dancing.

In August we held a Wine Tasting in Conjunction with Cambridge Wine which was very successful with over 30 people attending. 

We also hold special interest groups to give  LinkedIn training and shortly will be including Twitter to this highly informative scheme.

I have thoroughly enjoyed attending both the JCI Presenter and Trainer courses - a must for anyone and being a trainer at the JCI UK Marketing Academy was great fun. We are also extremely proud that one of our committee members attended the European academy.

We have built some strong business relationships and have corporate partners in place who sponsor our events - a big thank you to Eversheds, Emerald Frog Marketing, WKH, Pure Resourcing Solutions, Works In Print, Cambridge Wine and Oxbridge Tours.