Upcoming activities in the next month

I was supposed to be at the Greater Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce today but had to cancel last minute. Second month in a row I had to for ego this event but this August is a must attend on my calendar. The Let's Talk forum is in August and this is where the Caribbean community in South Florida come together and have a discussion about the progress we are making as a community. All the media houses will be present including the Caribbean print and radio and television media as well as some of the larger newspapers: the Miami Herald and Sun Sentinel. Well, these organizations were represented last time round and I believe they will be again this year. I attended last year and will be curious to see what they dialogue will be like this time round. More and that in the coming weeks.

Before that event will be a litany of activities marking Jamaica' independence. There is already a schedule out with all the activities that I will post here at a later date. I believe T&T also has independence celebrations this year all well. August will be busy and significant. I am looking forward to it.

GCACC monthly business meeting update

The Greater Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce (GCACC) had back to back events this week but I could only attend one. I had to skip the annual job fair due to a very important meeting that was arranged prior to learning of the job fair. But I made the monthly business meeting where the Florida Memorial University Mobile Economic Unit was visiting. The FMU Unit is a mobile office that caters to business owners and potential entrepreneurs. Basically they converted a 18 wheeler in to an office and drive to prearranged locations and encourage people to come in for help with business advice, planning and consultation. That is a wonderful program that will serve to help dozens of small businesses who can't go to the offices due to having to run their businesses. I am considering including them in a future issue.

The most promising aspect though was learning that the GCACC wants to incorporate in its program a newsletter that will feature one member each month. The current president has asked if we could sit down and hammer out an agreement that would see me produce the newsletter. That would be awesome as it would lend some credibility to the CBD and exposure as well. I have no problems writing the content (or farming it out) despite the added work load but it would be worth it. I am therefore putting together a proposal for this well in advance of us meeting to iron this out. I hope that the Board will approve this and hopefully the first issue of the newsletter will be in May. That would be ideal as it would precede the June CBD issue. This could be the biggest thing yet. Wish me luck!

Week in Review

This past week has seen a flurry of activity. It started with an announcement at a local event that was totally off script even after I took the time to painstakingly write the copy of the announcement. The speaker in his infinite wisdom decided to improvise and left out some rather important information. Well, the old adage that no publicity is bad publicity may be true.......... I did get a few responses for subscription which is good. That will result in some additional revenue.

My follow up call with the law firm manager referred to in a prior post declined to advertise in the upcoming issue but was very positive in his assessment. He did however point out that he would like to consider future advertising but would like to see the product improve a little bit more. He did point to areas for improvement and that was well taken. Among the things to work on is the layout and sharpness of the pictures and the type of paper used. He thought the publication would have more of a magazine feel if the paper was a little less heavy.

The rest of the week saw a promise for advertising to be finalised in the upcoming week and ended with a meeting of my favorite networking group the Greater Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce. That meeting will be addressed in next blog entry.