FESPA Financial
Entrepreneur Commons - January 26 recap
Entrepreneur Commons held its first meeting of the year on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 in offices of Incubate Miami. The start of the meeting schedule was moved up to 6:30 pm to allow participants more time to fight the traffic and arrive on time. We want to thank Ms. Dunia Miranda, the Trade Representative of Guatemala, for bring refreshments for the group. She brought imported beer, black bean dip that she had personally made and chips. The imported beer uses the brand name Famosa in the USA, but in Guatemala this beer is the famous Gallo brand. Unfortunately for the Guatemalan brewery this brand name belongs to another company is the USA. Additionally, we want to thank Nicolas Novakovic for bringing Life Premium organic fruit juices, these are imported from Serbia and are available in Whole Foods as well as other fine stores.
Nineteen entrepreneurs were present and there were lively discussions during our introductions roundtable. Most of these discussions focused on marketing issues from: Mobile Marketing to Location Based Marketing to History Marketing and even Real Life Interactive Cooking Marketing.
After the introductions we had the fortune of having Mr. Oliver Ruiz, a patent/trademark/copyright attorney with Malloy & Malloy, address the group on trademark, patent and copyright issues. Given the issues that Cerveza Gallo faced in the USA, Mr. Ruiz’s presentation was most appropriate for our meeting. Since I cannot offer legal advice I will not try to summarize his comments, but his participation was very valuable and he answered a series of questions. Thank you, Oliver for your valuable comments. If any Entrepreneur Commons participants wish to contact Mr. Ruiz his office phone number is: 305-858-8000.
We then proceeded to address other topics that were brought up by the group. One that was actively discussed dealt with Customer Relationship Management. One participant was concerned on how to deal with all of his customers. He “loves” all of his customers, but the small ones are just as time consuming as his larger customers. The group feedback was basically to prioritize his customer base, to consider target marketing and focus, and even to drop his smaller time and resource consuming customers so that he can concentrate on building his building with his larger customers.
Our next meeting will be at the end of February or the beginning of March. A follow-up e-mail will be sent out to determine the most appropriate dates for all concerned.
Entrepreneur Commons - Recap
Entrepreneur Commons held its year-end meeting on Wednesday, December 7th in the offices of Incubate Miami. Wine, cheese and crackers were available for the participants. Fifteen entrepreneurs were present and after introductions there were lively discussions and conversations.
Patrick Kedziora sent his regards from Chile where he is working on his eLearning project. He wanted the group to know the he will be in Chile for about six months as he continues to develop his project. Chile is offering considerable assistance to entrepreneurs; he suggested that we visit http://www.startupchile.org to investigate the opportunities that are available there.
Additionally the Trade Representative of the Government of Guatemala, Dunia Miranda, visited our meeting and informed us that a considerable amount of programming is developed in that Central American country and she will assist those that may be interested in finding out more.
Many other topics were discussed but one that created a lot of discussion was the interest/need for trademark, patent, copyright protection. We plan to have a trademark/patent lawyer present at our next meeting, which is scheduled for January 26th. Interested parties may contact Robert Bull at fespa@hotmail.com.
Robert Bull
Chair - Miami Chapter - Entrepreneur Commons
Helping the homeless in Miami
Working at the Homeless shelter was just a small way of giving back. All of the homeless people seemed to truly appreciate everything that they received. I kept on hearing them say: "Thank you -- God bless you". To me the most difficult part was seeing small children and infants with their mothers. No one deserves to be homeless, but especially the children don't deserve that fate.