Robert Merry, an independent stone consultant and project manager who ran his own company for 17 years and now also runs training courses on project management, gives his personal slant on the stone industry this month.

What do you get if you mix nine Portuguese, eight French, a couple of Germans, a Romanian, a Lebanese, several Indians, some Spanish and Chinese, sprinkle in some Irish, a Greek, a Lebanese and a Turk and mix liberally with local British talent, then dress with Italians? The Natural Stone Show 2013 of course.

A truly international dish served with a Stone Federation cocktail in the Stone Village. Perhaps a pomegranate sparkle or a whisky stone sour on the rocks. We live in hope.

This is a chance to network with friends and colleagues, set up meetings, chat, gossip, keep in contact and do some business.

Communicating effectively with this broad church can be a challenge. Indeed, communication in general is a minefield and all modern day methods have their shortcomings.

Email is dangerous – uncontrollable, usually without nuance, and can be copied anywhere to anyone.

Text messages can be equally as exposing, though given the format we usually keep the message to a minimum and the content is therefore fairly innocuous, although being caught out by predictive text can be a shocker.

Most people who know me call me Rob. My mum hates it. Robert I was named and Robert I will be to the end of her days. But Rob is easier to say and fits with our need for the abbreviated. If you type in Rob to a phone (or my phone, anyway) predictive text comes up with Ron.

Now, all those under a certain age will be asking why I am even bothering to sign my name to a text. Listen: I only recently changed my voice mail to exclude repeating my mobile number twice so you could have time to write it down.

I come from the age of the first mobile phones, nicknamed ‘the brick’, spawned from a military version the size of… well, a brick. About as heavy, too. I suppose if you ran out of ammunition and the enemy where still advancing you could stun them with a carefully aimed mobile phone between the eyes.

Signing my messages is born of habit. To compound the ‘Ron’ error I then send another text to apologise and sign it Rob. I might as well say: “Please send bigger shovel, can’t seem to dig embarrassing communication knowledge deficit hole deep enough.”

Voice mails are better, but be careful what you say. A supplier left a message last week about meeting at the Stone Show. “I can’t get hold of you.”

He sounded slightly defeated and desperate. I didn’t pick up the message from my mobile until 10.30 that evening – I don’t know why, I had been using my phone all day. Maybe there was a delay on receiving the message.

Anyway, I replied by text that evening. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, as it was so late on a Friday. But my overwhelming need was to respond. I called him Monday morning. He couldn’t remember why he’d called.

A conversation over the airwaves would have been better. These can still prove inconclusive and sometimes frustrating, but they are probably better than a voice mail or text.

The Ofcom Communications Market report 2012 has some absorbing statistics on our preferred communication methods. While 67% of those surveyed expressed a preference to meet face to face (only 10% preferring texts), in practice a whopping 80% of us use text messaging at least once a week to communicate with friends and family.

In the business sector, communication varies considerably from the friends and family statistics, as you would expect.

In business, the most widely used form of communication is meeting face to face (28%), followed by emails (24%) and phone calls (landlines 20% and mobiles 21%). The post comes in at 13%. The use of post is predicted to decline by a further 22% in the years ahead. Not a good time to be a postman.

Reassuringly, the overwhelming statistic is that 88% of us would prefer to communicate face to face – across business, friends and family. This is as it should be.

Which brings me to the point: The Natural Stone Show is a perfect place to practice this ancient art. So meet, greet and enjoy. See you on the Stone Federation stand for a cocktail?

Regards, Ron… sorry, I mean Rob.

Robert Merry, MCIOB, ran his own stone company for 17 years and is now an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager. He also delivers training programmes on all aspects of Estimating and Project Management – details and dates are on his website. Tel: 0207 502 6353 / 07771 997621