Blackonomics: 'Putting Our Dollars Under Arrest'

by Jim Clingman
cross-posted from Blackonomics

Here’s an intriguing concept: Arrest the Black dollar. Say what, Jim? You read it correctly. We should arrest our dollars and charge them with neglect. Put them on trial, call the witnesses to testify against them, and convict them of crimes against Black people. Sentence them to a minimum of five years hard labor with no possibility of parole. That’s right, lock them up and make them work for their keep by producing distribution companies, supermarkets, financial institutions, and entrepreneurs.

Since our dollars are not making sense, we should discipline and punish them by keeping them locked up and making them work until they do start making more sense. Right now our dollars are “wilding out” in the marketplace, making everyone happy and secure except us. They are “raining down” at strip clubs; they are beating a path to jewelry stores and exchanging themselves for gaudy trinkets and ornaments; they are hangin’ out at “da club” to pay for expensive vodka, champagne, and other top-shelf liquors. They definitely need to be disciplined.

Our dollars are filling the coffers of profiteers who know that all they have to do is make the most ridiculous item in return for them. Black dollars are strewn at the feet of shyster preachers who “anoint” them by running back and forth on top of them, as they shout, “Money cometh to me!” At least they are telling the truth about that part.

Black dollars are running wild, out of control, in our neighborhoods. They run as fast as they can to the businesses of everyone other than Black people. They are jealous as well and are always trying to outspend one another by purchasing a bigger car, a bigger house, the latest gym shoes, clothing, and all the accoutrements of what they believe to be the “good life.”

More than one trillion Black dollars are acting inappropriately, committing economic crimes against Black people. They really need to be controlled and contained before they destroy us. Our dollars are weak, and are vulnerable to the constant lure of trivial things and dishonest people who are waiting to trap them with their platitudes and false doctrines. If we put our dollars in labor camps where they could work for us all day long, imagine how quickly we could revive our economic power.

Read the rest of this Blackonomics article.

Blackonomics: 'No Justice, No Profit!'

Jim Clingman

by Jim Clingman
Cross-posted from Blackonomics

In a previous article, “The Profit of Protest,” I noted the ridiculous scenario of Black people protesting while others profited, how we travel across the nation to march and never march into a Black hotel, a Black restaurant, or to a Black owned bus company to get to the march, or fill up at a Black owned gas station. I ended that column by noting that we count people “at” our protests while others count profits “from” our protests. Through the years I have wondered when we would “get it.” It took a group of young people who went to Ferguson, Missouri over the Labor Day weekend to encourage me in that regard.

They get it. The Howard University Student Association, led by its incoming President, Mr. Leighton Watson, organized a 13-hour bus trip from Washington, D.C. to protest alongside other students from Washington University and other colleges. They went to stand with the residents of Ferguson to seek real solutions to the issues that plague that city.

An interesting thing happened on their way to the march. Those young people marched to a Black company to charter their bus. When they got there they marched to a Black restaurant to eat. They made every effort to find a Black owned hotel, but the Roberts Hotel in St. Louis is closed. They did, however, manage to get accommodations at a black owned franchised hotel. They let their money speak as they protested; I even saw a sign that said, “No Justice, No Profit.”

Click here to read the rest of this Blackonomics article.

Are Black People Becoming 21st Century Digital Slaves?

by Phillip Jackson
The Black Star Project

If you are not able to code and if you are not computer literate, you are pretty much a 21st century digital slave. If you don't have access to and are using the internet for personal growth and development, you are pretty much a 21st century digital slave. If you are not encouraging your schools to teach coding and computer literacy to your children, and if you are not allowing your children to learn, read and write code, you are promising your children 21st century digital slavery.

Phillip Jackson

If your children are playing video games, rather than creating video games, they too, will be consigned to 21st century digital slavery. If you are not learning coding yourself, you have relegated yourself to the old way of being educated and the old way of existing. You have made yourself obsolete. You have volunteered to be a 21st century digital slave!

It is time for all people, but especially Black people, to run away from digital slavery to digital freedom and digital excellence! The most widely spoken language in world in the near future is not going to be English, Chinese, Hindi, Swahili or Spanish-it is going to be a language of computer coding. People in every country will speak this language. 90% of all new jobs in the world will require employees to speak this language. You will not be able to live (well) anywhere in the world without this language.

The Black Star Project will offer introductory classes to coding and computer literacy during the holidays. Effective education can no longer occur just between 8:30 am and 2:30 pm, Monday through Friday, for 200 school days a year. Learning has become too important to leave to schools! Learning must be driven by parents, families and communities, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year!

Learning is no longer a local activity, but a global imperative. Just as some slaves became accustomed to chattel slavery, some people are becoming accustomed to the new 21st century digital slavery. The only way to break these bonds that rob people of dignity and freedom are with "new learning".

Is Black History Month Still Relevant?

Pablo More is a friend of the Electronic Village and currently serves as the BDPA Orlando chapter president. He shared his thoughts on a controversial issue related to Black History Month. Read and feel free to share your thoughts.

Is Black History Month Still Relevant Feb 2013 by Pablo More

Do you agree with Pablo's conclusion? Do you have Black history institutions or museums or events in your geographic area that make you proud?

The Education Startup Revolution

Young entrepreneurs take note: as the next post describes, jumping into the education space may be one of the smartest decisions in today’s market. Guest blogger Emma Collins builds on prior posts about IT business opportunities by walking through some of the most important features of the so-called “edupreneurial” landscape and highlighting a couple of new ventures worth paying attention to. Ms. Collins is on staff with MBAOnline, a web magazine for students considering Internet-based education. More information about the MBAOnline's 2012 ranking report, which was just recently published, is available from Emma’s main site.

The Rise of Edupreneurs and the MBA’s 

Infiltration of the Education Market

There was a time not so long ago when education was pretty straightforward. States regulated schools, and students learned according to set curricula; in college, the lecture-lab-exam format was all but universal. The advent of the Internet really has done a lot to shake that up. So-called “disruptive” education technology, whether promoted by large corporations or small businesses and innovators known as “edupreneurs,” has radically changed the landscape for better or worse. Classes are offered online. Apps make it easier than ever before to take notes, manage student debt, and communicate with teachers and professors. Elementary and high school classrooms are increasingly relying on digital technology. That infiltration is on the horizon is not disputed; the lingering question, though, is to what end.

Bringing Education to the Digital Space

Many of the earliest education technology entrepreneurs were corporations. Their main goal was to find ways of using the Internet to turn the hunger for knowledge into palpable profits. Early pioneers in this space—University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Capella University among them—received a lot of praise for making higher ed more approachable, not to mention cheaper, than it had ever been before.

As so often happens with such things, though, the market was soon flooded with imitators. The rise of “diploma mills” and illegitimate institutions tarnished the reputation of online schools in a hurry. “There is nothing wrong with schools providing a service and making money from it. And there are a number of for-profit colleges that provide a valuable education and much-needed opportunity to their students. But there are too many for-profit colleges that pressure students to enroll and make promises they cannot keep,” the Chicago Tribune said after evaluating some of the problems of modern online learning.

New Ventures and Market Need for Fresh Ideas

Online universities are still thriving, but are usually only appropriate for a limited sector of society. As technology has improved, however, so has innovators’ creativity and interest in finding new “ins” to the education space. Though it may seem somewhat contradictory, the education market is actually a big one for growth right now. On the surface, there remains a lot of suffering when it comes to budget constraints and international assessment ratings. In many respects, though, these flaws work as a sort of “bait” for crafty innovators.

Unlike for-profit corporations, many rising ventures have been created with the primary goal of actually improving things. “Many of these business owners pair a desire to prosper financially with a genuine sense of mission,” TIME magazine reported in a 2012 survey of new edtech ventures. “They aim to ‘disrupt’ education in productive ways, to introduce tools that will transform the way we learn just as other technologies have transformed the way we work, the way we communicate and the way we entertain ourselves.”

Looking Forward: Promising Ideas for the Future

Some of the newest start-ups aim to remedy defined gaps or existing problems in education. Tioki is one of these. This company uses an online platform to give schoolteachers a uniform and highly visible platform through which they can market themselves and look for competitive work. The site is free for credentialed educators to join, and offers not only an interactive jobs board but also a real-time network of other educators that can be mined for advice, coaching tips, and job leads. Tioki was founded by tech entrepreneurs Brian Martinez and Mandela Schumacher-Hodge, both of whom hold advanced degrees in business and management.

There is also a lot of promise in ventures that look to do something entirely new, like Codeacademy. The academy is free to any interested Internet user, and essentially promises to teach the basics of computer coding and network management through a series of self-paced video lectures and tutorials. It was founded in New York by Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, self-described hackers looking for a way of turning their passion into a useful skill for others.

The entrepreneurial side of education seems to be growing every day. While there remains some skepticism when it comes to the longevity or overall value of many of the newest services out there, there is little doubt that changes are coming. According to most reports, we are now only at the beginning of the wave—which sets things up for an interesting future indeed.

Is Your Digital Tattoo Attracting or Repulsing Customers?

Tonya R. Taylor

It’s a fact, love them or hate them tattoos are popular and (almost) permanent. The tattoo design choice, or body art, says something about you; well actually a lot about you. It may convey your mood at a particular moment in time, it may have a deep personal meaning, you may like the artwork or some may think they're just stylish.

Even though tattoos have become incredibly mainstream the kind I am talking about has nothing to do with body art. This type of tattoo is about your business or career; yes even if you have a small business, be a college student or work in corporate America. Let me ask you a simple question, what does your digital tattoo say about your business?

Before you can answer that, I need to explain exactly what a Digital Tattoo is.

Just like a regular tattoo, your digital reputation is an expression of yourself and your business. Over time it is shaped by you and added to by others which include friends, family and your business visibility online and in the media.

Your digital tattoo is what a potential customer, recruiter, corporate executive, or anybody else finds online about your business. It’s the information people see when they search the internet for your name or your business name.

What images will they find of you? – an old photo from college or high school, your company logo, a cartoon character where your picture should be or your favorite sports team instead of a current photo?

What information will they find on your website or blog? – a new video, static information that has never been changed or updated since December or your latest blog post?

What images will they find on social media? - are you presenting at a conference, you with your family, you participating at a networking event or hanging out with friends?  (Are you even using social media to help shape your digital tattoo?)

What information will they find in the media? – your published article(s), a press release, a story written about you or your business, or nothing at all?

Why is your digital tattoo important? - Ask any successful salesperson or flourishing marketer, they will tell you this...“People buy from people they know, they like and they trust”.

Your digital tattoo will help create the magic to make this happen.

Copyright © 2011 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business so you can spend more and make less. Her clients learn savvy ways to use their website to take their online presence to the next level fast. To get your FREE Savvy Online Business Building Starter Kit and receive weekly online marketing tips, tools and resources visit www.SavvyBizBuilder.com.

The Great Debate: High Tech vs. High Touch

April Gillespie

by April Gillespie, Catalyst for Everlasting Change

and Founder/CEO of Starseed Consulting

In the 21st century, this age of information technology, we are surrounded by gadgets that allow us to stay connected. The question is how much connecting are we really doing?

With 2,000 friends on Facebook, 800 connections on LinkedIn and 4,000 followers on Twitter, how well are we really connecting with our fellow man?

The Great Debate has begun. How is technology affecting our relationships in our family life, businesses and with friends?

About a year ago, a mentor of mine by the name of Jeff Olson spoke on this topic – High Tech vs. High Touch - at a large self improvement conference in Chicago. Jeff Olson is world renown for his best-selling personal development book, The Slight Edge, but he is also a leadership expert, business philosopher, motivational speaker, billionaire entrepreneur and personal development coach to those like Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump and more. As a student of the personal development industry I quickly became fascinated by the struggle human beings are enduring today to balance technology and personal relationships.

Do you remember the days when the only way you could get in touch with a friend was when they were at home and you had to leave a message on their….answering machine?

Or when a guy was late picking up a girl for a date and all she could do was wait – there was no Facebook messaging, texting or instant messaging to find out his ETA.

As we work to manage all of these fabulous resources that are creating billion dollar business deals, helping no-name artists get record deals through YouTube, and bringing people together virtually to create life-long matrimony, let’s not forget that although we live in an information age, information is useless unless we are creating “high touch” relationships in the process.

Here are a few tips to help us accomplish this:

1. Say Thank you! - Our mothers worked to instill this sense of gratitude in us at a young age but ask yourself, how many times do you say thank you when someone approves your friend request on Facebook or LinkedIn? A simple acknowledgement through a quick thank you goes a VERY long way when it comes to building connections vs. just communicating. This simple gesture in gratitude shows the other person that you aren’t taking their relationship for granted but you genuinely care to get to know them.
2. Be Different. - If there is one thing that irks my nerves more than anything is when people request to connect with me on LinkedIn, which is supposedly a more professional environment than many other social networks, but all I get is this generic “I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” My question is WHY DO YOU WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME?? We must remember that our presence and communication on the social networks are an extension of who we are in real life! If you don’t think you’re generic then don’t use a generic introduction. You wouldn’t do that in person would you? Let’s be different, ingenious, helpful and inspiring! I do some advertising work for human resources professionals; so if I’m connecting with someone in HR I might say something like, “As a fellow HR professional in greater Cincinnati, I would be honored with your connection. Please let me know how I can be of service to you personally or professionally.” Adapt this to your industry and what you seek to accomplish of course, but remember that if social media is going to be your first impression to a key decision maker, it better be an authentic one.
3. Request a real life interaction. - Here is where the “high touch” comes into play. Remember that just because a small head-shot and bunch of text is on a page does not mean that person is a robot. They have feelings, emotions, hopes and maybe even some dreams that you might be able to help them accomplish. This high touch interaction could be coffee before work, a quick telephone conversation or inviting them to accompany you to a networking event that you feel they could benefit from based on what you learn from the content on their page. I’ve even created connections with people on LinkedIn in other states where I travel, then when I’m in planning to be in their area I send them a quick note requesting a time for lunch, dinner or coffee and every time they are excited to meet with me, collaborate and see how we can help each other. It’s a beautiful experience to see how technology can bring us all together but let’s not forget about how to translate that into an authentic personal connection.

Regardless of where you work or what business you are in, we are all working with these weird units called HUMAN BEINGS. We no longer live in an environment where we can hide behind our desks and block out the rest of the world – the world, and all these weird units in it will find you. Human beings long for high touch interactions and we can never underestimate this fact regardless of how advanced technology becomes. Your customers still want to hear your voice, shake your hand, and even play a round of golf with you from time to time. Leverage technology – high tech – to start initial communication but be sure to truly connect with others live via phone and in person – high touch – to fully maximize the power of technology.

6 Resume Builders for Recent Law School Grads

This post was written by guest blogger John Steamost who also writes for onlineclasses.net, a great place to find free online courses

It seems as if many law school graduates are playing a losing game. When you started law school you began with dreams of a prestigious job, financial security and maybe a nice retirement years down the road. Now you're tens of thousands of dollars in debt and that degree is starting to feel like it's not worth the piece of paper that it's printed on.

Though it's hard right now in the legal job market, there are ways to get an edge. That law degree may not be able to open as many doors for you as it once might have, but that doesn't mean that you should start trying to hand it back to the university.

Here are six ways that you can get an edge in this legal job market and finally find yourself employed.

1. Attend bar association events in your area. Get out there and meet people who are in your situation or get to know the big wigs who are still seeking associates. A law degree on your resume is not the automatic in it used to be and so the only way to get noticed is to make sure that the people doing the hiring know your face. Local bar association functions are a great way to meet other lawyers so that when it comes time to hire a new associate, they remember your stellar smile.
2. Work for a non-profit. This may not be why you went to law school, but non-profits are still hiring with much more frequency than the big law firms. One of the reasons is that non-profits pay much less than a big firm, but a paycheck is better than no paycheck and it's a way to get your foot in the door and pay off those student loans while you look for something else.
3. Work at a university. My mother-in-law runs a legal foundation through New York University's Law School and she has recent law students clamoring to work for her. That's because she is one of the only people in the legal world hiring. She doesn't pay as well as the big firms, but she knows all the men and women at the big firms, and she also knows members of the media and people in government and working for her means having a chance at some face time with them.
4. Start a blog. It seems to be the go-to for any person struggling with their career, look to the internet, start a blog, but if you are dedicated to your blog, if you make it interesting enough, a blog will help you market yourself for a job. A blog like Gen Y J.D. might get you noticed in this market and it's a great way to connect with others in similar situations.
5. Help a professional with their pro bono work. While you can't help a big time lawyer with his or her job at the firm, you can help them with their pro bono work. Contact an established lawyer you know is working on a welfare or custody case pro bono and ask to unofficially help with that. There are limits to what you're legally allowed to do, but you can file papers and do some research, or get them coffee. If you do a good job, they'll be sure to remember your work and your initiative come hiring time.
6. Start a practice. It seems like quite a leap, especially in this market, to go out on your own, but there are ways to start a practice that are not all out career suicide. Get together with some of your unemployed law school grad friends and start up a niche practice. If you fill a need that hasn't been fulfilled, like perhaps dealing with online contracts or copyright issues, your practice might thrive. 

Thinking outside the box and by visiting sites like Guide to Career Education  can also help you in your search.

Good News Tuesday: NASA's Donya Douglas

Jeff Norman is a writer for the Guide to Online Schools.

Attracting quite a bit of much deserved attention these days is Donya Douglas, who is serving NASA to the best of her ability at the Goddard Flight Space Center as a thermal engineer. Working as an associate Branch Head in Instrument Systems, not necessarily a top-flight position, has not at all clouded the respect and pride she has engendered throughout the African American community. Technology is a field that continues to suffer a dearth in the presence of noteworthy Black individuals who are truly making a difference. All the more credit, then, is delivered to Ms. Douglas, whose work for NASA represents a quiet yet authoritative vanguard for both women and African Americans doing excellently in the realm of science.

Douglas' penchant for the sciences was rooted in her childhood. She has said that both science and math impassioned her during her beginning years of schooling, and that her knowledge that she would be an engineer was something she had at the age of ten. NASA was her number-one dream upon graduating from high school, and she took full advantage of an internship from NASA that was offered to her. That experience let her know that she was not alone in her zeal for technology; there was a visible presence of both women and minorities at NASA, and the sight of them let her know that she had a place there.


Douglas has been acclaimed seemingly to no end for her contribution to the technology community. Tennessee State University requested her permission to cite her example in a forthcoming textbook for elementary schools; she was also blessed with the Richard H. Goddard Award for Engineering and has found her career celebrated in "Space Place," an animated, science-based program for kids produced by NASA.

Her achievements have lent her a great deal of understanding as to the matter of the lack of African Americans in her field. She reasons the issue stems from insufficient preparation of young Black students, early in their education careers, on the joy and possibility of science and math. Frequently, those subjects in particular can be improperly framed as difficult, a challenge for students to surmount, instead of as a field of open knowledge and progress that is open to all who are willing to learn their rhyme and reason. Douglas has successfully insured that her own three children greet the sciences and technology with open arms -- one of them is already on the path to securing a degree in electrical engineering.

Douglas also cites the positive influence of teachers in launching her passion. For her, science and math were never subjects merely relegated to an hour-long, daily class. She participated in myriad after-school activities that showed the amusement possible in the fields.

Douglas commends her company, NASA, for their historically energetic endeavors to rouse an appreciation for the sciences in the Black community. NASA has been known to collaborate with several institutions that host a primarily African American community of students, and Douglas has done her own part to raise science's profile in the community with numerous public speaking ventures and offering mentorship to students seeking it.

On Douglas' mind at the moment is an urge to increase the visibility of NASA's efforts in robotic missions. The moon, Mars, and more are all locations that are prime for serious scientific inquiry. She's been in the field for nearly two decades now, and has a body of published work to rival those of even the most seasoned academics.

A big thank you goes out to Ms. Douglas; she's proven that African Americans in science can take flight today better than ever before.

NOTE: Information derived from interviews given by Ms. Douglas to Sister Mentors and Black Enterprise.

Black Bloggers Get Played by White House

One of my AfroSpear colleagues is Bruce Dixon. I'm re-posting one of his recent Black Agenda Radio commentaries.

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When the White House wanted to get its latest message out to Black communities, it didn't call a press conference. Its spokespeople didn't turn to BET or Black radio. They called in Black bloggers, most of them not even remotely political, and few if any working journalists. What the White House hoped to accomplish was crystal clear --- to use them the manner corrupt and lazy reporters are used, to seduce them with the illusion of “privileged access” in return for the ability to plant anonymous stories and gossip as “news” items.

“Real journalists would have laughed those anonymous spokesperson and “off the record” requirements right out of the room. Ethical journalists only grant anonymity to sources like whistle blowers with well-founded fears of retaliation.”

In the words of I.F. Stone, one of the 20th century's great investigative journalists, “Governments lie. All governments lie.” Stone's words are as true now as they were when he uttered them more than half a century ago.

When the White House invited black bloggers in for a Columbus Day meeting, they were told they could print anything they heard in the first half of the meeting, but that they could attribute none of it to any White House spokesperson by name, while the second half of their meeting would be completely “off the record.” Fortunately, or perhaps by design, none of the invited bloggers were actually journalists. They hailed mostly from celebrity gossip sites like ConcreteLoop, and Young, Black and Fabulous, from BET, Essence magazine, from BlackSingles.Com.

Real journalists would have laughed those anonymous spokesperson and “off the record” requirements right out of the room. Ethical journalists only grant anonymity to sources like whistle blowers with well-founded fears of retaliation, not to police to mayors or to prosecutors, not to military or civilian government officials. The only reason for representatives of these powerful institutions to speak to reporters, or bloggers “off the record” is to lie to them with the expectation that they will pass untraceable falsehoods on to the public as news, or in the case of Young, Black and Fabulous, celebrity gossip.

Sure enough, cell phone video of the president dropping in to briefly address the bloggers hit the internet the very next day, prompting the Atlantic's token Black commentator Ta Nehisi Coates to grouse about colored folks who didn't understand what “off the record” meant, as if being the covert mouthpieces of the powerful were something they really should strive to be.

“Black Agenda Report was not invited to the White House briefing, and that's perfectly OK with us.“

One of the invitees was a friend and colleague of ours, Ms. Leutisha Stills, now at Jack and Jill Politics. Observing that the White House hadn't called Black bloggers in since the 2008 presidential campaign, she opined that the bloggers were being, as she put it, “pimped.” We think Ms. Stills was correct, but for the wrong reasons. To be “pimped” is to be manipulated for some underhanded and shameful purpose. Whether bloggers, or journalists are shamefully used once every couple years, or three times every week is a difference only in the frequency of the act, not in the roles of the players or of the played.

Thus when Keli Goff, a Huffington Post and theLoop21.com blogger, called the White House briefing “a good first date,” she was publicly signaling her willingness to be used any way, any time by the powerful. There's a word for people who play that role, and that word is not “journalist.”

In his long career, the great investigative reporter I.F. Stone broke scores of original stories about war, peace and corruption. He never asked for, and he never got the privileged and “off the record” access to the powerful, which Ta Nehisi Coates imagines Black reporters should aspire to, the private interviews with mayors, admirals and presidents, who would have been much too afraid of his direct and probing questions anyway. Stone got his stories the old fashioned way, with diligent research.

Black Agenda Report was not invited to the White House briefing, and that's perfectly OK with us. We understand that reporters and bloggers too, who subsist on privileged access to the powerful in return for passing their anonymous tidbits to the public as news, that such people are being pimped. Which makes them.... well.... you know....

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web every Wednesday at www.blackagendareport.com.

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Bruce makes some great points in his commentary. There are just two points that I'd like to make.

1. First, the White House wanted to get their message out to a wide audience in the Black community. As we know from the Villager's Black Blog Rankings that I maintained for a couple of years ... gossip blogs have remarkably large audiences. That factoid seems to be the most important metric in the equation for the White House peeps.
2. Second, bloggers are (for the most part) not journalists. We don't have journalistic training ... we don't have the budgets that many journalists have to travel ... we are simply bloggers. As such, to hold bloggers (for the most part) to the same standards as journalists isn't realistic.

On the whole, I think that it is a good thing that Black bloggers are being included in more of the political discussions. Perhaps more of us need to get some journalistic training or learn what the standards are for things like "off-the-record" discussions. But, until then, I think that the African American online community needs to continue to seek out and accept these opportunities when they are available to us.

What say u?

Our Focus is Out of Balance: And the Result is Weighing Us Down

by Melvin J. Gravely, Ph.D.
The Diverse Business Dialogue

On the scale of what we have and what we don't have, what we don't have seems to weigh more heavily. Whether it's money or time to go to college or number of bedrooms in the house or opportunities to do business or financing to get a business going, the list of those things lacking just seems longer.

OK, I realize it's human nature but it is so unproductive and I'm hearing it more as it relates to minortity business development. There are not enough educational opportunities, access to decision makers, nor enough "qualified" minority firms.


My new favorite questions are how many should there be and how many do you need? No one can answer the questions with anything other than, more! These two questions expose the reality, there is likely enough for you to succeed. There are enough qualified minority firms for you to increase your spending. There are enough entrepreneurial training programs for you to develop your skills. There is enough access to decision makers for you to grow your business. Shouldn't we lean more toward how we can and less on why we can't?

Read the rest of Dr. Gravely's article.

5 Myths About Social Networking

by Jim Neusom
Founder, BDPA Nevada Chapter

Owner, City Lights Software

As and online professional I maintain a major presence on most social networking sites such as Myspace, FaceBook and BlackPlanet. Through these online communities, I've found thousands and thousands of "Friends".

Now don't get it twisted. I do not collect friends like baseball cards. I have read each, and every persons profile, in my Friend list. I personally approved their Friend request because, I believe they have something special to offer the Black online Diaspora.

If you search my Friend list, you will find everything you need to create, market, and sell, Rich Media and digital content in the new millennium; writers, Directors, Producers, Actors, Photographers, Models, Dancers, Musicians, Promoters, Distributors, Web Masters, Software Developers, Marketeers, etc...Yes, even Lawyers, Doctors, and Indian Chiefs (think CEO) .

If you're a regular reader of my online journal/Blog, then you know I joined these networks with a purpose. I hope all my new friends, are enjoying this online publication.

I post articles, and stories such as this one, in order, to educate, empower, and stimulate discussions, on issues of importance to our culture.

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Five Myths About Social Networking

Myth #1: It's All About You.

Successful networking is a two-way street. It's NOT all about you. In order to build a friendship/relationship there must be common ground. Most online profiles reveal the basics about a person (who, what and where)

One of your first messages to a new friend should reflect what you've read about them online. Let them know you're interested in them, their field of endeavor, or lifestyle (music, books, sports, etc)

Myth #2: It's A Popularity Contest.

Quality trumps quantity in human relationships, every time. You don't want a hundred messages a day about things you don't care about. You want to receive info on things that interest you. If you're meeting people for business or social reasons, your friend list should reflect your interests.

I can generally judge what a person is into, by the type of friends they have. So if you're into music, your friends should reflect this. Relatively, if you're about business, one would expect your friend list to be full of entrepreneurs....birds of a feather, flock together

Myth #3: It's A Quick Hit.

Friends call friends...friends visit friends. If you're not receiving an email or comment from a friend at least once a month, then they're just a name in cyberspace...not a real friend

The most you can hope for at an initial online meeting is to make a contact that (with care and time) could blossom into a fruitful relationship. Be diligent about following up and staying in contact with your online friends.

Myth #4: It's hard work.

It may be that you're working too hard. Friendships happen naturally. If you introduce yourself to people, stay in touch with people you've met, and think, in every interaction, "How could I help this person?"...you'll have an enjoyable and productive online relationship.

You're surfing the Internet anyway...why not pass along information or events that you think your friends might be interested in; for example there's a sale on at Target, I read about a job opening on Monster, have you seen the latest Obama ad....

Myth #5: It's A Waste Of Time.

Your time will surely be wasted if you approach each interaction as an opportunity hawk your wares, push your cause, or sign someone up. Conversely if every time you read a message it's about information you can use...your time will be well spent.

Knowledge is power. If you pick your friends with commonality and good sense, your online experience will be invaluable. Like in the real world, they will be there for you through the good times and the bad.

Always remember that the same rules apply in the virtual world that applies to the real world. If you want friends...then you must show yourself to be friendly!

I have found social networks to be an ideal platform to network and make new relationships. In that regards, below is some good advice on social networking

Remember, We Must Share The Knowledge (Network)... To Share The Dollars!!!

Peace and Gods Blessings,
Jim Neusom