Networking is so last year. Especially without my glasses

Have you built a regenerative community? We are told that women are not very good at networking, but now I learn that it is not a network that we should be building in any case. It is a regenerative community.

I made this discovery at the 10th Women in Business conference organised by London Business School. The speaker before me, Professor Lynda Gratton, talked about the future of work and was adamant that those of us who wanted to get to the top needed to build regenerative communities for ourselves. I was hooked. Networking is such a tired term and smacks of drinks parties. I am often accused (not unfairly) of being prepared to attend the opening of an envelope. But now I know why I show my face at so many events; I am out there building a regenerative community.

March 8 was International Women's Day and to celebrate I accepted another invitation to build a regenerative community, this time at 10 Downing Street. Here we spent rather too long for my liking debating the dearth of women on public company boards. The government has asked the Financial Reporting Council to introduce a comply-or-explain rule, an excellent idea that would increase female representation in no time at all, and is infinitely preferable to more legislation. But is this really what we should be focusing on? There are nearly five million businesses in Britain and only about 3,500 of them are quoted. I would like to know how many women run the rest and what is being done to make it easier for them to do so.

My final regenerative community activity of the week was the Passion and Performance dinner at the Mansion House, which set out to raise money for the Lord Mayor's appeal (in support of music and cricket, and cunningly entitled Pitch Perfect) and to honour women's achievements. In the five spare minutes I had before setting off for the dinner, I transferred what I regarded as the essentials to my evening bag - keys, phone, credit card for auction bidding, cash for a taxi, Oyster card for the tube, lipstick and business cards. What I forgot, critically, was my glasses. On arrival I realised this and considered how difficult it was going to be to build a regenerative community when I couldn't read the guest list. (Every previous dinner I have been to at the Mansion House has always had a guest list.)

But this was a Mansion House dinner like no other I have attended, or am likely to attend - and not just because I couldn't see properly. For a start, there was no guest list. Then the catering seemed to be in a different league to the usual Mansion House fare, and indeed it was; the chairwoman of the organising committee, Gay Huey Evans, had somehow managed to bring in her own caterers.

The silent auction used one of those devices where you insert a card (which identifies you) and key in your bid, and then it tells you who has bid most recently and for what. At last, a way of finding out who else was in the room! At one stage, I found I was being outbid by the Swedish heiress Cristina Stenbeck - at least, I think it was her, but the screen was a little fuzzy. I couldn't go and find Cristina, either to add to my regenerative community or to check it was her, because there was no guest list. But on the off chance that it was indeed her, I concluded it would be unwise to embark upon a bidding war.

But the most regenerative person of the evening was Huey Evans herself, who turned up in contact lenses and a red Valentino gown (you really couldn't call it a dress). Even when she used to work as a top regulator at the Financial Services Authority she was hardly dowdy, but the vision in Valentino offered a totally new perspective. But only after I borrowed someone's glasses so I could take a proper look.

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