There are many reasons to join the IoD. Everyone has their own interests but the full list of benefits is worth a regular mention, as there are so many.

This month – the Directors’ Hub in the heart of the City, New Broad Street.

The Directors’ Hub is ideal for informal meetings, private work or time out from a busy schedule.

Coffee, tea and water are available all day, in addition to high speed wifi connectivity. The room is available for IoD members and up to three guests, providing a first-class professional networking environment.

Once you find handy locations like these, it is incredibly useful to be able to pop in to a place you know, reassured of the facilities, working environment and wifi passwords.

That is, you don’t have to queue at a desk to ask for a password where they always look like they’ve never been asked before, wait while they go off to find it, write it on a scrap of paper and you go off to log on, it doesn’t work and then you have to go back to the queue to ask which are capitals and which are lower case.

I find I am using the Mercure Great Danes Hotel IoD Hub more and more for just that reason and watch this space for announcement of another Hub in east Kent soon.

So what have we been up to since the Kent County Show? We are looking at our attendance to work out preferred event times. It seems to be breakfast meetings which get the best turnout, before the events of the day take over.

We have also had a fantastic meeting with Visit Kent and we are looking forward to working with them and their members on a number of events – the first being our Black Tie Dinner in November.

We have booked the fabulous all-new and improved Hythe Imperial Hotel, which is being refurbished and will be a sight to behold – the ball room is already looking spectacular and they haven’t even put the sea facing windows in yet.

For those of you worried about travel, they have given us a room rate so inviting that even I am going to stay – and it includes free golf the next day.

There are new spa and leisure facilities for the less active among us (me). I would suggest booking your tables early as we will marketing this soon and it will be a night to remember.

Coming up we will see you at the Roc Doc Safari which was so popular last year, we have decided to run it again, and then a very unusual company visit to a Kent Gin Distillery, which our branch manager Lee, is studiously focusing on.