On the 3rd October we gave students from our membership institutions the opportunity to attend the IoD’s (Institute of Director’s) Annual Convention. As a part of our ‘Members Visit’ series 3 students tell us - in their own words -  how their day to a NACUE membership event went for them! Francesco D’Alessio from University of Portsmouth tells us how the day went for him. 

An email opportunity whizzed into Plymouth Entrepreneur's Society's inbox, it was NACUE.

NACUE managed to secure tickets to one of the largest business events in the UK, The Institution of Directors, The IoD. It looked like a great opportunity so we leapt at it.

We began our travelling on the Thursday (the day before) and headed towards London. We arrived at the hotel in the evening, studied the speakers and then discovered Boris bikes - awesome!

We woke up bright and early at 8AM and headed over to the meet NACUE and the other entrepreneur societies at South Kensington station. The IoD was being hosted in the Royal Albert Hall, an impressive building with lots of history. We all headed towards the Hall and signed in. There was a strong buzz in the air, and the event was about to start.

To start we had George Osbourne talk about the economy and current affairs related to business, it was very interesting and fantastic to see a political presence at the event. The next speaker, Susan Sobbott, President of Global Payments at American Express blew us away with her speech about small businesses and purpose for the business. It was inspiring and very informative, with the ability to take these away and apply them to our own businesses.

A few speakers in we reached our first panel, Will Hayward, VP of Advertising at Buzzfeed kicked off the panel with a short hilarious speech about the modern digital age of marketing, this was very informative and made everyone laugh. Decoded Co-Founder, Kathryn Parsons had a great speech on her business and how they are developing a community of coders that inspire females and also young people across the world. The panel was very interesting and developed our knowledge on digital marketing, even some actionable tips for our businesses.

We then broke off for lunch, the lunch boxes were fantastic! They were the size of pizza boxes and filled full of spectacular foods. When we got back we heard from Andy Bird, Head of International for Walt Disney Company, whom talked about Walt Disney's innovative work with the digital market. It was great! Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia was on our list to see next and someone we highlighted as a speaker we'd love to hear from.

Travis Kalanick, Founder of Uber Technologies was awesome. His work with Uber to take on the congestion issue in London and other cities is amazing! I would recommend searching and finding this information out for yourself. Truly inspirational.

The CEO panel nearer the end was very interesting. We were very impressed at the CEO of Talk Talk who raised some fantastic points.

The experience of IoD was very powerful and forward thinking, we can now happily go back and take some advice and shower knowledge onto our members as well as feel inspired to move forward with our business ideas.

Francesco was one of many students from our membership institutions who were invited out to experience the conference. This just highlights one of the many benefits of being a part of NACUE’s membership network.

For more information about our membership services please visit here.

Check out another member, Kristian Ross’, experience of the day here.