Its first ‘IPIA Big Breakfast’ session will take place tomorrow (11 March), from 8.30am and runs for an hour. 

IPIA marketing and events manager Sharron Mahony said the association wanted to do something to counter “digital fatigue” with so many meetings currently taking place over Zoom or Teams.

“Whatever we did, it should not take up hours of a person’s day, talk ‘at’ people for more than 30 minutes tops, and it needed to be fun,” she explained.

The networking event will be set in the ‘Big Breakfast Diner’, and is hosted on the Remo platform, which allows attendees to sit at tables and move around the room to mingle with other online attendees.

“You can also use the Diner floor plan to see who is in the room and head on over to their table to have a chat. This creates a more ‘real world’ atmosphere and the conversations are more natural – no static Zoom sessions for us,” Mahony added.

The sessions are described as “a thick slice of informal chat on toast” and include a ten minute segment called ‘Freshly Juiced’ featuring a guest speaker. 

The first will be Grafenia chief executive Peter Gunning, whose topic is ‘WTF Just Happened’, reflecting on the learnings and opportunities that have emerged from the seismic events of the past year and will share insights on possible ways to adapt to these changes.

Grafenia’s brands include Nettl, trade printer Marqetspace and Printing.com.

The Big Breakfast sessions will take place fortnightly and are open to members and non-members. 

Branding is by Nutshell Creative Marketing. Attendees can also download a digital pin badge, while IPIA members have been provided with branded yellow mugs courtesy of Compass Business Finance.

For more details and to register, visit ipia.org.uk/bb.

After tomorrow's launch, subsequent events will take place every other Wednesday with the next taking place on 24 March.