Why a coloured dot is the key to network success

Everything you need to know about Hub Dot, the all-female working community
Henry Williams31 January 2018

There's a cult-like feel to Hub Dot. A friend you respect will slip you an invitation to a store in Chelsea or a town hall in Walthamstow and say, “You will love it — it is amazing.”

Hub Dot, an all-female networking community, is the brainchild of Simona Barbieri, an effervescent Chelsea resident with a thick Italian accent, who spent years working at a big City bank before leaving to have a baby and return to jazz singing.

The group bills itself as a storytelling movement: a place where women can share stories of successes and setbacks, and learn lessons from others. There are Hub Dot groups in cities including Madrid and Washington DC, and the organisation will celebrate its fifth anniversary on February 8. Neatly, the day before, it will be on hand to inspire the next generation at the Evening Standard’s Young Progress Makers event at Camden’s Roundhouse.

Barbieri started Hub Dot because she was feeling adrift. “I had my child friends, pushing prams and learning about children. I had my musician gang. I felt all of a sudden that the connections and the platforms which were available to me were not the places where I could connect in a meaningful way with what was my story at the time,” she says.

She imagined something with the powerful kinship of an Italian community, but where your history didn’t matter.

“Where do I go where I am not pushed into a category? Where I am not the tech start-up, where I am not the artist, the lawyer, the mother? I always felt constrained by these categories. CVs and job titles are limiting.”

Which is where the idea for Hub Dot’s signature sticker system came from (pictured above). When you arrive at an event you are offered a choice of coloured dot to append to your lapel. You choose based on your mindset that evening: red means an established person looking to share knowledge; yellow means “I have an idea”, an entrepreneur category; green means you’re looking to be inspired by others; blue indicates you want to make new connections; and purple is for the heartstring of Hub Dot — “I want to tell my story.”

Over the course of a usual evening a dozen women wearing purple dots will tell something about themselves: anything from a pitch for their new business idea to a tale about how their grandmother influenced their life.

“Storytelling is a very ancient language,” she says. “Hub Dot has re-created something natural. We have women who come to our events who share their stories around grief, children, politics, reinvention, and it’s all mixed up — the professional and the personal.”

Banks, schools, local government and universities have asked Barbieri and her team — Lesley McBride, Duygu Ergin, Sophie Castel — to bring their Hub Dot evenings to them. Hub Dot now has a network of 35,000 people.

Next stop: the Young Progress Makers Hustle! event on February 7. Hundreds of ambitious youngsters will crowd the Roundhouse in Camden to learn the tips and tricks of the entrepreneurial trade. Networking is a huge part.

However, Barbieri’s golden rule is that success isn’t measured straightforwardly. “Start not judging people by their title,” she says. “Go beyond their title and judge them on their individual story.”

Book now: Tickets cost £10. To buy them, visit Eventbrite.co.uk and search Young Progress Makers 2018

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