Marketing Articles About Grants Search Results
- Solving the H-1B Visa Issue.
One of the big topics that came up on the panel I was on today at the DNC was the issue surrounding the labor supply in the US in computer science and IT. There is a growing shortage of software engineers in the US that is getting worse as every year passes. I've talked about this in the past as my main motivation for being involved in the National Center for Women & Information Technology as one of the ways to build the long term labor pipeline is to encourage more women and girls to get involved in careers in computer science and IT.
I think the Bush administration has completely missed the boat when it comes to dealing with temporary work visas and permanent residency for high tech software / IT workers. This issue has come up repeatedly over the past few years as large software and technology companies have finally weighed in to try to impact some of our inane policies.
I think the solution to the problem is really simple. The US should grant permanent residency to anyone who graduates from a qualified four year university with a computer science degree. If you are concerned about people gaming the system, you can start out by limiting it to people that receive a post-graduate degree. Of course, you can easily extend this beyond computer science (e.g. physics, chemistry, etc.)
When I was an undergraduate at MIT, a meaningful percentage of the student body was from other countries. It never even occurred to me that these folks were "different" and didn't "belong in our country." Some of my best friends in college weren't US citizens and I was baffled by the hoops they had to jump through even back then to work in the US. In the past eight years, this has gotten dramatically worse and it's time we got in front of this.
Everyone on the panel seemed to agree that this was a huge issue surrounding innovation in the US over the long term. Most people seemed to agree that this was a simple solution that would not require a huge bureaucracy to administer. With your diploma, you get permanent residence status.
I don't understand why there would be any rational resistance to something like this - after all, wasn't the United States built on immigrants?
(08/27/08 09:00 PM)
- Patent Law Changes Could Hurt Small Inventors.
Entrepreneur:
Over the past several months, Congress has been discussing numerous changes to existing patent law.
While certain elements of the legislation will bring the U.S. patent system in line with much of the rest of the world by potentially simplifying the process of filing, granting and disputing patents, my concern is that the direction and [...]
(08/15/08 09:00 AM)
- Dandelion Rubber: From Weeds To Tires.
Invention & Technology News:
Recently, Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and the Ohio BioProducts Innovation Center received a $3 million grant to start turning dandelions into rubber.
Yes, the milky roots of those plentiful flowers that seem to pop up everywhere (whether wanted or unwanted), are capable of producing a natural rubber. [...]
(08/12/08 09:00 PM)
- ???When the government buys up empty homes, it???s only helping lenders and speculators, not the people who need help.???.
President Bush has continually expressed his opposition to a housing bill that proposes to include $4 billion in grants for local governments to buy and refurbish foreclosed properties.
(07/25/08 09:01 PM) - The 3 Cs of Lead Generation. Lead generation is a numbers game and a momentum game.
Generally speaking there is no one magic way to generate a tons of leads. Granted, for some businesses there are more effective ways, but on the whole long-term effective lead generation comes down to a combination of advertising, public relations and a systematic approach to referrals [...]
(05/29/08 09:00 AM)
- Government Grants and Free Money. With the economy in bad shape like it is these days, many people are experiencing financial hardships. As a result, the scammers are out in force, advertising their books and CDs that promise free money from the government for everything from paying your bills to getting out of debt, and more.
I'm getting a boatload of emails from people who want me to help them write a letter to apply for a government free money grant. Many others write to say that they need the right form to apply for a grant or that they have written a proposal but don't know which government agency to send it to.
If you need help, you may be eligible for various types of government benefit programs, which are often called grants. Most of these programs are administered at the state and local levels. You don't need a special book to find them, and you don't need to write a letter or a proposal to apply. But you will probably have to meet certain income or other types of requirements, and you'll need to be realistic -- despite what the scammers and books tell you, the government is not going to give you a handful of free money to pay off your credit card bills.
Below is a list of categories of benefits and assistance offered by the government. You'll find this listing along with links to specific programs in your state as well as federal agency programs and other resources. Just click on the link to go to the website.
(04/14/08 09:00 AM)
clipped from www.govbenefits.gov
Select categories of interest.
Select categories of interest. (Check all that apply)
Career Development Assistance Child care/Child support Counsel/Counseling Disability assistance Disaster relief Education/Training Energy Assistance Food/Nutrition Grants/Scholarships/Fellowships Healthcare Housing Insurance Living Assistance Loan/Loan repayment Medicaid/Medicare Social Security Tax Assistance Veterans-Active Duty Volunteer opportunities
- Government Grants Notification Service.
When I wrote earlier about the FedBizOpps notification service for contracts, I should have mentioned that the Grants.gov website has a similar service for government grants. To sign up, go to the Grants.gov site and click on Grant Email Alerts on the right side of the page. You can then sign up to receive one or more of the following types of emails:
- Updates to the website.
- All grant notices.
- Grant notices that you select based on specific criteria.
- Grant notices by funding opportunity number.
These notifications are great timesavers because you don't have to keep going to the Grants.gov or FedBizOpps website to find or track the bid opportunities you are interested in. Instead, they come right to your mailbox.
(03/31/08 09:00 AM) - Site Update and New Feature. This weekend I spent some time adding some great new resources to my site. Check out my What's New Page to see what I've added.
I've also instituted a new feature for these and subsequent new resources. Recently, I discovered Clipmarks, a tool you can use to clip and stash snippets from Web pages. I've been trying to come up with a way to incorporate Clipmarks on my site and decided to begin using it to highlight the new additions. A possible other use might be to incoporate it in this blog, maybe for a "Site of the Week" or "Site of the Day" feature. I'm still thinking about this, so stay tuned.
Now what you will see when you go to a page on my site where I've added a new resource is something like what is shown at the bottom of this post -- a clip from the Foundation Center website.
To see the clips for the new resources, go to any of these pages:
Business Plans
Grant Writing
Small Business
Grant Subjects
Grant Samples
Legal, Financial & Contracts
What do you think?
(03/24/08 09:01 AM)
clipped from foundationcenter.org
"The subject of this short course is proposal writing. But the proposal does not stand alone. It must be part of a process of planning and of research on, outreach to, and cultivation of potential foundation and corporate donors."
- Mystery Solved!.
The other day, I wrote about some of the top websites that refer people to my site. One of those sites is the US House of Representatives, which has been sending people to my Guestbook page for quite some time. Well, yesterday I decided to try to find out where on the House site the link to my own site is listed.
It took me only a few seconds to find it using Google. I searched for "US House of Representatives government grants" and the first site listed on the search results was this one: Federal Funds Express - a site I'd never seen before. But apparently a lot of other people have.
Federal Funds Express may be a good place to start looking for government grants and other sources of funds, but it's not really an in-depth resource. However, there are some good links on the site (including mine, of course), which in turn can lead to other good resources. Links are listed under the following categories:
- How to get and manage grants
- Federal charitable and corporate sources of grants
- Resources to help small businesses
- State and local government funding, data resources and disaster assistance
- Educational resources for students, schools and colleges
- Property, surplus, donated and unclaimed
- Family issues: health, housing and consumer protection
The website hasn't been updated since October 2007, but you may still find some good sources of information there. I checked a few of the links, but didn't have time to check them all.
I'm thinking about sending an e-mail to the Webmaster asking him or her to direct people to a page on my site other than my guestbook. But maybe it would be best to leave it as is.
(03/20/08 09:01 AM) - Unblievable But True.
A few days ago I received an e-mail from a woman who said she was a professional grant writer. She wrote that she was very upset because the website that she had developed last year was not showing up in Google searches and she wasn't getting any new work. She said a lot of very nice things about my site and asked if I could take a look at her website and give her some feedback about it. She has been paying a monthly fee to an SEO company to submit her site to search engines and increase her ranking, but it wasn't working.
Well, I'm no website development expert, but I've learned a few things along the way in the 10 or so years since I've had my site. I thought maybe I could help. So I went to her website. I'm not sure what I expected, but to my surprise it was nicely done -- well laid-out, attractive and well-written. There were maybe 5-6 pages about her and the various aspects of her grant writing services.
I didn't have a lot of time to spend on this, so I was clicking through her site kind of quickly and scanning what she had written. It looked pretty good to me, although I noticed that there were a few things that were lacking. Then I go to her FAQ page and...BOOM! -- staring me in the face are five of the questions and answers that I have on my own site. She had taken them verbatim and just plopped them into her page along with a bunch of other questions and answers. I just could not believe my eyes.
I sent her an e-mail right then. I told her that I thought it was pretty strange that she would ask advice from someone whose work she had plagiarized, and I asked her to remove the material immediately. A day later I hadn't gotten any response and my questions and answers were still on her site. So I had to send her the nasty threatening letter (sigh). That pretty much did the trick. A few hours later she wrote back and said that she had removed my material. All she said was "it has been removed." No apology, no excuses, nothing.
I had a hunch that maybe I wasn't the only one whose stuff she had stolen. So I put an unusual phrase from her site into Google and sure enough, up popped another grantwriting site. She had taken nearly two whole pages of material from this other site and used them on her site. At first I thought I should maybe contact the other site and tell them. But then I decided not to. I don't want to get in the middle of someone else's plagiarism problems.
I couldn't resist e-mailing her once again to tell her that I knew she had plagiarized extensively from this other site and that eventually they would find out about it. Then, since she had asked for some advice, I gave some to her: don't steal other people's stuff.
Is this unbelievable or what? Either she was playing some kind of sick joke or she had totally forgotten that she had plagiarized my material. My money is on the latter, but I guess I'll never know.
(03/14/08 09:01 AM) - Referrals From Great Sites.
Every once in a while I take a look at the Google Analytics reports for my website. These reports provide detailed statistics about the number and type of visitors to a site, where they came from, what pages they visited, etc. The reports contain a lot of data and take a while to review, which is why I only look at them occasionally.
But one of the reports I do like to look at is the Referring Sites Report, which indicates which sites referred people to my site via a link. And if you are interested in grants (both government and non-government grants), grantwriting, or grant research, you'll want to take a look at some of the websites that send the most visitors to Proposalwriter.com . Among my top 10 referring sites are:
- The Grants Information Collection at the University of Wisconsin. This fabulous site has a wealth of information on grants, funding, and other related topics. I'm delighted to say that they link to my site on four different pages. They have consistently been my #1 referral site.
- My #2 referral site is The Foundation Center, which sends visitors to my site via links on 3 of their many pages. If you want grant-related information from the nation's leading authority on non-profits, The Foundation Center's site is one of the first places you should investigate.
- The third site that sends the most visitors to my site is the US House of Representatives. Somewhere among the its many pages there has been a link to my site for several years. Except I don't know where it is, and oddly enough the link is to my Guestbook. I've never taken the time to try to figure out how people get to my site from this site.
- #9 on the list is the University of Michigan's Proposal Writing Help Page, which of course contains info and links on proposal writing.
In addition to Google Analytics, I use Google Webmaster Tools to find out how many other sites have links to mine. At present, Webmaster Tools shows that there are over 4,100 external links from other sites to the various pages on my site. But this number seems to include quite a few dupicates, so it's hard to tell what the real number is.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty satisfied.
(03/06/08 09:01 AM) - Submitting Questions (Cont'd).
Yesterday I wrote about the importance of submitting questions as part of the proposal development process. One of the things that I mentioned was the need for the Proposal Manager to review the list of compiled questions before they are submitted to the government. This review is critical because you want to make sure that the questions you submit don't hint at or give away any information about the approach you are planning to take in your technical or cost proposal. So, for example, you would not want to say something like: "in our technical approach, we would like to propose an additional task that focuses on blah blah blah. Will this be acceptable to the government?" A question like this will only serve to give other bidders some good ideas that they may not have thought of before they saw your question.
Here are some additional points to be aware of when you submit questions on a government RFP or RFA:
- When responding to the questions, the government does not identify the person or organization that submitted each question.
- All questions and answers will be seen by all bidders, which is why the point I made in the first paragraph is important. The government usually issues an amendment to the RFP/RFA which contains all of the questions and answers. Anyone can read it.
- Some prospective bidders may submit a long list of questions -- many of them unnecessary -- in the hopes that it will take the government a long time to answer them and then extend the due date for the proposal. This strategy can sometimes work, but it can also backfire, meaning that no extension will be granted. Don't count on it.
- Don't put off working on your proposal while you are waiting for your questions to be answered. You can always make changes to your proposal based on the questions and answers, but you can't always catch up because you sat around and waited. Just keep going.
- It's Not About Proposal Writing, But....
a couple of weeks ago I was contacted by CNN Money/Fortune about an article they were preparing for Fortune Small Business on "Funding Sources for Women and Minorities." I gave them some info and resources on government grants and other sources of money and then promptly forgot about it. The author didn't contact me to let me know that the article had been published -- I only found out about it through some referral links from the article to my website.
If you'd like to read it, the article is here.
Oh, and they spelled my name wrong. You'd think that the author or editors would check this sort of thing. But I guess not.
(03/03/08 09:01 AM) - Shill Sites.
I'm not sure if there is another name for the type of websites that I describe here, but my name for them is shill sites.
If you are looking for a grantwriter, then you may have come across these sites. There are at least two of them that I know of, and they purport to rate and rank "the top 10 grant writers." Lucky me -- I'm "fortunate" to have my name listed on both of these sites. Most likely, there are similar sites for other professions.
These sites are fakes. They exist only to promote and get business for the top-ranked site, which is of course their own site and which is given 5 stars. The other 9 sites that are listed have lower rankings and are often described in negative terms, many of which are half-truths or outright lies.
The shill sites claim to back up their listings by describing their methodology for rating and ranking the 10 sites on their lists. They claim to collect and verify information on the success rate of the proposals written by each grant writer or grant writing firm, as well as on customer service/satisfaction, and the value of the grant writer's services in terms of fees. This, too, is hogwash, at least with respect to me and with respect to some of the other grantwriters on the "top 10 list." I know this is the case because I've talked with some of them.
One of the ways that you can identify shill sites like these is to go to the website of the top-ranked #1 grant writer. If you do, you will see that they are selling packages of grantwriting services that are "guaranteed to win." That's a tipoff right there. No legitimate grant writer or grantwriting firm can guarantee that the proposal they prepare for you will result in a win.
So take these sites with a grain of salt. Anyone can set up a website and make outrageous claims. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean that it's true. As always, do your homework.
(03/01/08 09:01 AM) - A Slew of Re-competes.
Does three equal a slew? I don't know, but very soon I will be working on three proposals, all of which are re-competes for my clients. For those of you who don't know, this means that each client currently holds the grant or contract that is being put out for bid -- they are re-competing for it. For two of these re-competes, the clients have been performing the work for the past five years. On the other re-compete, the client has worked on the contract for three years.
Re-competes are usually very important to bidders because they don't want to lose the work. In some cases, they can't financially afford to lose the grant or contract because it is the only one they have, or because it brings in the bulk of their money. So keeping the grant or contract often requires a good amount of work on the proposal -- sometimes more work than if they were bidding on it from scratch.
Fortunately for me, I have worked with each of these three clients before. In fact, I worked on each of the previous proposals for all three of these bids. So I am familiar with both the clients and the type of work that they will be bidding on for the re-competes. This definitely helps with respect to the learning curve.
But for today, I am going to try to finalize the index for the manual (sigh).
(03/01/08 09:01 AM) - Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.
But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:
I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.
What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.
It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(03/01/08 09:01 AM) - Shill Sites.
I'm not sure if there is another name for the type of websites that I describe here, but my name for them is shill sites.
If you are looking for a grantwriter, then you may have come across these sites. There are at least two of them that I know of, and they purport to rate and rank "the top 10 grant writers." Lucky me -- I'm "fortunate" to have my name listed on both of these sites. Most likely, there are similar sites for other professions.
These sites are fakes. They exist only to promote and get business for the top-ranked site, which is of course their own site and which is given 5 stars. The other 9 sites that are listed have lower rankings and are often described in negative terms, many of which are half-truths or outright lies.
The shill sites claim to back up their listings by describing their methodology for rating and ranking the 10 sites on their lists. They claim to collect and verify information on the success rate of the proposals written by each grant writer or grant writing firm, as well as on customer service/satisfaction, and the value of the grant writer's services in terms of fees. This, too, is hogwash, at least with respect to me and with respect to some of the other grantwriters on the "top 10 list." I know this is the case because I've talked with some of them.
One of the ways that you can identify shill sites like these is to go to the website of the top-ranked #1 grant writer. If you do, you will see that they are selling packages of grantwriting services that are "guaranteed to win." That's a tipoff right there. No legitimate grant writer or grantwriting firm can guarantee that the proposal they prepare for you will result in a win.
So take these sites with a grain of salt. Anyone can set up a website and make outrageous claims. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean that it's true. As always, do your homework.
(02/29/08 09:01 AM) - A Slew of Re-competes.
Does three equal a slew? I don't know, but very soon I will be working on three proposals, all of which are re-competes for my clients. For those of you who don't know, this means that each client currently holds the grant or contract that is being put out for bid -- they are re-competing for it. For two of these re-competes, the clients have been performing the work for the past five years. On the other re-compete, the client has worked on the contract for three years.
Re-competes are usually very important to bidders because they don't want to lose the work. In some cases, they can't financially afford to lose the grant or contract because it is the only one they have, or because it brings in the bulk of their money. So keeping the grant or contract often requires a good amount of work on the proposal -- sometimes more work than if they were bidding on it from scratch.
Fortunately for me, I have worked with each of these three clients before. In fact, I worked on each of the previous proposals for all three of these bids. So I am familiar with both the clients and the type of work that they will be bidding on for the re-competes. This definitely helps with respect to the learning curve.
But for today, I am going to try to finalize the index for the manual (sigh).
(02/21/08 09:01 PM) - Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.
But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:
I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.
What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.
It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(02/21/08 09:01 PM) - Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.
But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:
I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.
What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.
It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(02/20/08 09:01 AM) - A Slew of Re-competes.
Does three equal a slew? I don't know, but very soon I will be working on three proposals, all of which are re-competes for my clients. For those of you who don't know, this means that each client currently holds the grant or contract that is being put out for bid -- they are re-competing for it. For two of these re-competes, the clients have been performing the work for the past five years. On the other re-compete, the client has worked on the contract for three years.
Re-competes are usually very important to bidders because they don't want to lose the work. In some cases, they can't financially afford to lose the grant or contract because it is the only one they have, or because it brings in the bulk of their money. So keeping the grant or contract often requires a good amount of work on the proposal -- sometimes more work than if they were bidding on it from scratch.
Fortunately for me, I have worked with each of these three clients before. In fact, I worked on each of the previous proposals for all three of these bids. So I am familiar with both the clients and the type of work that they will be bidding on for the re-competes. This definitely helps with respect to the learning curve.
But for today, I am going to try to finalize the index for the manual (sigh).
(02/19/08 09:01 AM) - Breaking: Facebook's Zuckerberg Announces FB Fund. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just announced on stage at the TechCrunch 40 conference that he is creating a $10 million fund, to be called the FB Fund, to give $25,000 to $250,000 grants to software developers creating applications on Facebook. He is doing this with Peter Thiel of the Founders Fund and Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. These will be no-strings-attached grants. Founders and Accel won't get a stake in the companies, but they will get first rights of refusal to invest later if any of the startups raise a more sizable venture round. The money will be doled out by an advisory board to consist of Thiel, Breyer, Zuckerberg, Josh Koppelman, and Reid Hoffman. Says Zuckerberg:Any developer can submit their app. If we think the project is good we will give a grant.Zuckerberg clearly wants to create as many incentives as he can for developers to create cool apps on Facebook, as do Thiel and Breyer (who are investors in Facebook).
(09/17/07 09:00 PM)
- Disruptors Video: One Laptop Per Child. In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I visit One Laptop Per Child, the non-profit building $176 laptops for children in the developing world. I think they are disruptive for many reasons, but foremost is that by trying to design a laptop that initially was supposed to be under $100 they had to rethink many things about computers that most of us take for granted, like the display, the networking, the power consumption, and the durability. (There's no hard drive in this thing). It's also one of the greenest computers on the planet. CTO Mary Lou Jepsen explains to me in the video how getting the power consumption down to a fraction of what a normal laptop needs was one of the main challenges. (It turns out they do this by turning things off when they are not in use to a greater degree than conventional computers do). Don't be surprised if you start seeing many of these features copied in regular laptops soon. Watch the video.
(09/14/07 09:00 PM)
- Avoid wasting your Pay-Per-Click lead generation budget. Thanks to Jim Berkowitz and his CRM Mastery E-Journal for pointing me to the MarketingProfs article, Five Proven Ways to Waste Money With Pay-per-Click Advertising by John Grant. I think this article does a nice job pointing out some of...
(02/28/07 09:00 AM)
- Career Tip #15: Never Eat Alone. Stealing the Keith Ferazzi's book title and principle by the same name, Never Eat Alone is a great principle for career growth (in addition to personal growth). Early in my career I took inter-office relationships for granted, eating lunch at my desk during those busy dot com days in South-of-Market San Francisco. However, one of my peers always ate lunch with others, and was inviting groups of people to lunch. I had two or three key relationships and she had 20. The relationships she built mattered made a difference in her ability to get things done with others. The better relationships you have inside your organization, the more you can get done…and the more people will talk about you (see Sound bytes tip) or defend you. In addition to inter-office relationships, consider eating with people outside your work. Get new perspectives. Network with people in your industry, and in your city. Your career, whether inside your company or out, is highly dependent on who you know and who you GET to know. Lunch, even if you pay, is worth the investment. I’ve had lunches with former colleagues who wanted to network outside their company. However, very few of them take action on this idea. They get stuck networking within their own company. Yet when they’re ready to move to the next game, they realize they don’t know anyone. Experts believe only 10-20% of jobs filled are ever publicized. Most jobs are placed from relationships. Over half the people hired into...
(01/27/07 09:00 PM)
