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Ironic - Chamber of Commerce

Written lovingly by Jake Stride

I got a phone call yesterday from our local chamber of commerce asking why I had canceled our membership - basically because they don’t offer any useful services that I can’t find for free elsewhere in this day and age of the Internet, and it seems like a waste of money.

My decision seems to have been a good one too - they have had a new website launched this week. Here are my grips with it:

  • The design is not great, it is no improvement over the old one and looks fairly date in comparison to what can be achieved these days on the web
  • They didn’t bother getting a local company to do it! It is the Coventry and Warwickshire chamber and they got a company from Leicestershire to build it. Seems a bit silly to me when there are plenty of local companies that could have done a much better job.
  • It is not valid HTML! There is absolutely NO excuse for this.
  • Its a waste of money - the new site doesn’t appear to offer any new functionality or improvements over the last one - did they just have a chunk of money they needed to get rid of?

Just my thoughts!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 3:48 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Ironic - Chamber of Commerce”

  1. David Goodwin said the following at August 2nd, 2007 at 7:02 am :

    So what are your thoughts on e.g. UKITA or FSB?

  2. Jake Stride said the following at August 2nd, 2007 at 7:48 am :

    We are currently members of UKITA, but not the FSB, so can’t comment on that.

    My thoughts on UKITA are similar - a bit cynical - the BCS already exists to certify IT professionals and it seems that UKITA is superflous. I think it is one of those things that may work for small 1 or 2 person companies as it is just something they can bung on stationary etc. to make them more attractive to their customers but offers no real benefits.

  3. Adrian Steele said the following at August 3rd, 2007 at 9:35 pm :

    Jake

    maybe you should move on - FSB members move to chamber members who move to IoD members as their needs develop.

    I dont think its true to say that you can get all the benefits of chamber membership FOC on the web. The advice lines, particularly the legal compliance and employment lae ones are very good value if you dont ever want to end up the wrong side of a no win no fee ambulance chasing lawyer. In my experience as an ex chamber mebers is that its too local - if you have custoemrs that are regional or national, the chamber is not as well suited to your needs.

  4. Annmarie Hanlon said the following at September 4th, 2007 at 11:22 am :

    Jake
    We’re members of the IoD which is useful for
    * research queries
    * use of airport lounges - I go to Dublin a lot :-)
    * interesting meetings

    Also a CIM member and
    * we get access to published reports which is great for us
    * online access to other publications

    Also a member of the South Staffs Professional Services group SucceSS
    * Good for networking
    * Good for PR

    So many clubs to join - so little time…

    Annmarie
    http://business2businessmarketing.blogspot.com/

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