Stary is one of over 40 million self-employed in the U.S.—31 percent of the labor force—who form an increasingly important part of the economy. The Great Recession accelerated the trend. In December, an American Staffing …

Publish Date: 08/08/2011 17:43

http://www.recruitersnation.org/to-boost-the-economy-help-the-self-employed

And here’s another:
Bloomberg View: Turning the Jobless into Entrepreneurs; Letting Talent Cross the Border
Public support for entrepreneur programs can help cut joblessness; the best talent for the job should be allowed across international lines

Publish Date: 08/25/2011 16:45

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/bloomberg-view-turning-the-jobless-into-entrepreneurs-letting-talent-cross-the-border-08252011.html?chan=magazine+channel_opening+remarks

Campaign Launch! Support YWI! | Young World Inventors

Today YWI launches a Kickstarter campaign to build our community of innovators and raise funds to shoot and edit ten “insider” web videos — for an interactive site by year’s end 2011. Diane is following teams with her …

http://youngworldinventors.com/campaign/647

Here’s why I really like this:

What’s innovative about YWI?

Existing sites tend to provide simple summaries of inventions or entrepreneurs, without explaining how an invention moved from conceptualization to implementation in the field. We plan to trigger more inventions by tracking teams and vision, errors and lessons. To educate and inspire young inventors, our website will feature engaging stories that trace the odysseys of Gen Y teams; we follow along as they identify problems, refine prototype solutions, fund launches, forge sales networks, and fabricate and sell inventions that serve needs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

We intend to build open source teams and communities, how-to tips that lead young inventors out of the garage or incubator and into the world, where they must independently test and fail, explore options, seek resources, mentors, and access videos here to inspire them to resolve their own problems.

Some features make our website unique, including step by step invention and business tips, video shooting guidelines for storytelling, databases for competitions, funders and teams. Visitor blogs and chats with innovators, mentors and funders can catalyze ideas.

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If you’re interested, click here.  Although our names are similar, Kickstart Growth and Kickstarter have nothing to do with one another, other than I think its a very cool site.

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Here’s more about the Young World Inventors:

Interview with Will Mworia of Afrinnovator.com at iHub in Kenya – YoungWorldInventors.com

www.YoungWorldInventors.com – Will Mworia of Afrinnovator.com sat down with Diane Hendrix of Hendrix Productions to discuss his opinions on the impact of technology in Kenya and the rest of the African continent. “Afrinnovator’s whole mission is putt…

MAKE | Support the Young World Inventors web series, get a bike …

Diane Hendrix, creator of the Young World Inventors web video series, has launched a Kickstarter page to raise funds for this project: Thereâ ™s a quiet revolution going on in Africa, and it’s a br. … http://tinyurl.com/4skyaqr. Make: Online has a “be nice” commenting policy. Don’t say anything here you wouldn’t say to a person’s face. We will use our discretion in removing comments we find offensive, spammy, self-promotional, or mean-spirited. …

Publish Date: 08/06/2011 16:30

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/08/support-the-young-world-inventors-web-series-get-a-bike-powered-cell-phone-charger.html

If you like this, be sure to share it:    

Many thanks to my friend “Moo” who makes these and other interesting messages for folks. She sells her services way too cheap, so take advantage of her before she comes to her senses! Here’s her link.

Here’s the gallery of images, which works as a standalone piece as well:

Please enjoy this animated gallery of photos I took, mostly of clouds and sky. Most of these photos are sunrise or early afternoon from my deck overlooking Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland, CA. A few are sunsets taken on Nevis Island in the Caribbean, and one was taken mid-day in Yosemite National Park, in California.

FAPP, or the Federal Aids Policy Partnership, is a national coalition of local, regional, and national organizations advocating for progressive federal HIV/AIDS legislation and policy consisting of 126 partnership organizations. They wanted a “file box in the sky” — a place where they could publish documents and have them available by the members at any time, wherever they were, whether they were having a local meeting with advocates or a meeting with Congress up on the hill. They wanted to be able to post policy documents and sometimes advocacy documents where people could sign on to the letter and send it to Congress or Government agencies.

But they also wanted a collaborative space, where ideas and thoughts could be discussed before they were ready to be published. And since this is a low-budget coalition of non-profits, the tools and platforms needed to be low cost as well. And they needed it to be easy to maintain themselves, so WordPress is the perfect solution, since it enables anyone to write easily — even from a mobile phone! — and post articles, make comments, and join in the discussion. So how about free? Such a deal.

Click image to view live site

I built the site using WordPress and the BuddyPress feature to set up the online working groups. Buddy Press allowed me to set up private working groups administered by the individual group chairs. BuddyPress is a fabulous (free) tool and it just keeps getting better. Click on the link to check it out.

Since this is a how-to article, I’ll add that part of the “how-to” is being proactive and following up regularly. Since the organizations that make up FAPP are all busy with their main mission, it’s been hard at times to get focus on this project. In the end, I think we built a gorgeous site that should be easy to maintain for many years. I only have so mch time for pro-bono projects, but this one was a real pleasure.

But better to find that out with a limited test before you spend your entire marketing budget going forward. There are some great services out there where you can build landing pages and set up split tests to determine what messages work best to drive traffic to the page; and what messages and elements work best to convert that traffic into action — like registrations, donations, downloads, purchases and revenues.

I’ve tested videos against no videos, no testimonial quotes against 2 to 5 testimonial quotes. “Buy now” vs “Add to cart.” Green vs Blue.  All of these things make a difference, but it’s important to only change one element at a time.

I’m really pleased with the response, and I hope you got value out of it, (or will if you haven’t downloaded it yet). If you used it to create your investor presentation, I would apreciate it if you could send it to me, or drop me a line and let me know how your fundraising efforts are going.

The more things change sometimes, the more things stay the same. I put my first investor presentation together back in the 1980′s — back then it was all about the first wave of tech bubble, with dozens of firms looking to get into the PC manufacturing business, all of whom were going to get 10% of the PC market, and none of whom are around today.  I really went into gear as an entrepreneur and consultant in the mid-90s when I helped put together business plans and presentations in the next wave of tech bubble, when scores of companies were looking to stake a claim in the internet gold rush.  Some of those folks succeeded but many more failed. Here we are in this latest wave, the social / mobile / web 2.0 wave, and while many of the names have changed, the game is still the same.

If you want to get funded, solve a real problem, and do so in a unique way. Have a real business model, show how and when you’re going to make money, and have a strong team to implement your plan. Simple.

If you need help putting a summary or presenation together, give me a call. I love this work.

They needed speed, and we delivered. We got this project completed and the site up in 2 weeks, and that included a new logo design.

Platform : WordPress

Logo design: idesignyourlogo.com (great guys).