The launch event for the East Midlands network was held on Tuesday 3 February 2009 at the Midland Hotel in Derby.

Tenant Involvement Officers were invited along to the event, opened by Councillor Sara Bolton, a key figure in the Derby's long history of tenant involvement. Deborah Illot from the Tenant Services Authority then gave a presentation on the progress of the TSA.

Mark Crown, Tenant Involvement Manager at Derby Homes then explained to delegates why Derby Homes were chosen as Resident Involvement Champions for the East Midlands and gave an update on what the purpose of the network was for.

Just before lunch delegates had the opportunity to use electronic voting buttons to decide on what topics they were most interested in. This created a programme of the most popular topics for the network to work to over the year.

After lunch, delegates were split into groups and asked to look at questions such as how the network should be ran and how the learning exchanges would work. From this, it was decided that the majority of learning exchanges would be based on open discussions as delegates found this way of learning very useful.