STOP SOPA!

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/29177/uncensor

STOP ████!

top 10 fund raising tips

an hour long discussion of best fund raising practice by a panel of experienced fund raisers listen here

The Jump Start Incubator

The Jump Start Incubator

Rodriguez, James jrodr282@live.kutztown.edu

Good afternoon,

It was a pleasure speaking with all of you at lunch this afternoon. I wanted to share with you some information about the Jump Start Incubator. Attached is a document that gives a brief history of the project, our mission and an explanation of the five categories of services that we provide.

We would love for all of you to attend our information sessions. Peter mentioned that you have a list of some local entrepreneurs. Please make them aware of the Jump Start Incubator. Cooperation amongst all of the economic development agencies in the city is beneficial to our organizations, to the entrepreneurs and to the local economy.

The information sessions will be held on Monday, December 12, 6-8 p.m. and Tuesday, December 13, 9-11 a.m. in the Berks County Community Foundation Building, 237 Court Street, Reading, PA 19601. Please email us to reserve or for any questions.

We look forward to seeing you there,

James Rodriguez

James Wesley Rodriguez

Graduate Assistant

Kutztown University

Small Business Development Center

Office Phone: 484 646 4003

Cell Phone: 610 507 2141

You Are Not So Smart

You Are Not So Smart is a book about all the wonderful ways you delude yourself everyday.

fascinating! must read!

presentation zen

Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the net -- presentationzen.com -- shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations

watch the video

bikram yoga

here's a new business in reading that i really really like!

www.bikramyogawestreading.com

WordPress for self administered web content

Recently I joind the board of directors for the Berks County Association for the Blind. This is a great organization and I'm still learning about all the great services they offer the blind, visually impared and other challenged people in Berks County. More about the BCAB later.

I wanted to talk today about my experience with WordPress during my effort to help the Blind association with their web presence. I had experimented with WordPress a couple years ago and I was impressed with it's potential but never implemented anything live. For the BCAB I wanted to keep cost down (WordPress is open source and cost nothing beyond normal web hosting costs) and I wanted to be able to hand all the administration of content over to the organization.

To make a short story long we bought a Domain and web hosting from Go Daddy. I installed WordPress right through the Go Daddy's interface, choose a basic theme (WordPress lingo for template), spent some time teaching myself how to use the many plugins available (open source for free) and was able to hand them a web site that they have total control over through a GUI dashboard (no coding needed). They can add pages, change content, add pictures etc... very cool. All in about 8 hours of my time including and mostly learning curve.

To see the sight click here:
www.berksblind.org

To learn more about WordPress click here:
http://wordpress.org/about/

Gary Brown

Partner / Business Development

Berks Digital Inc.

www.berksdigital.com

Google will tell you if you have a certain malware

Scroll to the bottom to see the message you will see on google search results if you are infected. Very cool that they can do this.

Can you use your reticular activator as a powerful force for good in your life?

Content from the website - http://www.youmeworks.com/what-is-the-reticular-activator.html

THE RETICULAR ACTIVATOR is a part of the brain the stays on alert. It's job is to make you notice some things and ignore other things (if you noticed everything, you'd be too distracted to function). When you buy a new VW, it seems like the whole world has bought VWs, because you notice them everywhere. That's the reticular activator at work.

Motivational speakers, business consultants, and authors of "success books" always stress the importance of having a clear goal. One of the reasons goals are so important is because they activate your reticular activator.

If you have the goal of writing and publishing a bestselling book, for example, you will start noticing things you've never noticed before. It seems the world is conspiring to help you out. You'll meet just the right people. You'll run into the perfect designer for your cover by an amazing coincidence. You'll happen to stumble across a magazine article that tells you about a software program that will really speed up your writing. And so on.

All these things are happening because your clear goal has set up the conditions for your reticular activator to work well. That's how it works. When you know exactly what you want, your reticular activator goes to work automatically to help you get it.

To read more - click here

Direct Marketing Web tools still free if you know where to look.

While as a provider of print services we know that quality printed materials are an important part of any companies marketing. I’m writing today to tell you about some web services that are not only effective ways to communicate your message but with the exception of your time investment are FREE.

First is email marketing, while there is a plethora of service companies out there, most will charge after a short trial period or limit you to a very short list of contacts and limit features so you need to upgrade to the pay version for any real useful functionality.

I have found that for full services and a subscriber list of up to 1,000 subscribers, that MailChimp.com offers a great service for FREE to businesses of all sizes. They offer simple templates to create, sent and track email communications that can easily include photos, dynamic links or video. For you skeptics, below is a link to an explanation of how their free business model works.

http://blog.mailchimp.com/going-freemium-one-year-later/

My next communication will discuss Survey tools, so stay tuned.

Gary Brown

Partner / Business Development

Berks Digital Inc.

www.berksdigital.com

Should we approach sales differently in PA?

PA consumers and business people have a different outlook, possibly more skeptical and "stubborn" or a more "closed community." Is this because of our mostly German heritage? PA is top on the list of residence who don't move out of state which makes our communities more closed-knit.

How do you break into old-established networks? It takes 3-5 years for anybody to gain a solid presence in a network. How do we get connected sooner?

record meetings so you don't forget anything

if you want to record meetings or events so you don't forget anything, this $10 iPhone app is an excellent choice. it picks up voices from across the room 20 feet away. i use to record music rehearsals so i can hear what we sound like. highly recommended!

Learn to Build Your Brand; Free; Three Part Wkshp

first friday networking

"Merge" First Friday Business Mixer

March 4th, 2011

This email is to invite you to our Business Mixer taking place this week at the Abraham Lincoln. Merge is a new networking opportunity that will coincide with our Arts & Entertainment Festival. In addition to providing a positive and inclusive community event we also like to engage Reading's business community.

Young Business Professionals are the future of our city.

Our goal (or one of them) is to provide networking opportunities that may not other wise be available. W e'd also like to increase “traffic” in downtown Reading, and stimulate economic growth within the city. We believe that this renaissance starts with young business professionals. Please reply to rsvp. Thanks!

color blind?

i'm looking at the post i just did about how seo and gambling in las vegas are similar, and i noticed that the links are invisible to me... i think they are supposed to be a different color than the text, but all the text looks black. is it my colorblindness? do the links stand out to anyone? feedback appreciated. thanks.

seo

perhaps you are wondering [but probably you are not] why 533chestnut.com focuses on 'almost everything internet' but not search engine optimization. here's one of the reasons. big players [j.c.penney, huffington post and others] with millions of dollars to spend have been gaming google, twisting the seo results leaving smaller players [me] in the dust. seo reminds me of stock market day traders glued to their computers watching every little bump in the activity, putting stock trading in the same category as slot machines in las vegas. that said, if you follow the google recomendations for spreading your presence on the web, can have very nice results thank you.

manure for your mind

today, the ecreferral group decided to refocus our marketing efforts on mastermind. but we could not think of a more common word. brainstorming. sparking your creativity. manure for your mind. to highlight our strength, which is to focus the groupthink on a business problem. and btw, the current focus is how do we market our group :) more later....

the web presence of ecreferral.com

the web presence[seo] of ecreferral has everything to do with how many places on the internet point to us as an interesting place.

here's the outline of our web presence.

•	our website is for stuff that does not change frequently it has our group's focus, it's members, meeting times and places... in january 2011, our website had 644 visitors.
•	greater reading entrepreneurs' meetup group is how we cast a wide net for people who are activist enough to search meetup.com. you can "follow us on facebook" from our meetup page, altho i do not think any one of us has actually done that.
•	our blog is for saying stuff that is interesting today... any member can post their thoughts to the blog. in january 2011, our blog had 73 visitors.
•	linkedin has it's own agenda, and ecreferral has it's own interest group which has been inactive lately
•	we do not have a facebook presence altho some of us have tagged us on their personal pages.
•	we have a few youtube videos. here's an example
•	our yet-to-be-published newsletter should likely be posted to our blog
•	some of our individual blogs link back to our website

our wonderfulness and our ability to attract new members is directly linked to our interestingness. that is to say our ability to say something interesting every day.

our google presence has everything to do with backlinks. that is to say how many other places on the web [think "my blog" or "my website"] mention our link on their webspace.

Jeffery Bingham

Jeffery Bingham has a very balanced financial view.. Read his latest newsletter here.