The Best Laid Plans -- How Will They Fare in Revolutionary Eras

 Business   Thu, August 25, 2016 12:14 PM

Dialogue on Diversity’s Entrepreneurship/IT Conference, the twenty third in the series, gets underway September 13th in downtown Washington.  An all-day agenda is designed to call up the essentials in the work of American entrepreneurs.  The twin themes of technology, its boons and its perils, and of the entrepreneurial calling, art and science intertwined, recur throughout the six panels of the day’s agenda.

 

Announcing the Conference, Ma. Cristina Caballero, the Dialogue’s President/CEO, noted “The creativity and the sheer energy of the small, diverse business sector is what prods the mega firms and at once propels the advances of technology and strategic investment.  It is these small enterprises that our conferences are calculated to energize.”  The succession of panels touch on a range of essential questions:  

 

  • Has IT changed the basics of everyday life?  And will it fare successfully as the country enters what economists are calling an era of “secular stagnation”?  Will it continue to simplify and speed your own business?   
  • How will you use the magic of IT to send your enterprise onward and upward?   How will you safeguard your own privacy, and that of employees and customers, against the clever hackers who dog your steps on the internet?  
  • Second, a walk through the sometimes intricate formalities of choosing an organizational form – Should you form a partnership, corporation, an LLC, etc? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each business form?    
  • Prospecting for capital – friends and family, banks, crowd-funding, micro-finance, SBA-backed loan?    
  • Venture Capital – Will you find an investor to become part of your business – funder, critic, challenger, and sharer in the profits?   Where and how do you find the one who will power your young business?     
  • Finding smart, experienced colleagues to fill out the “knowledge gap” the beginning entrepreneur is faced with   – you are a wizard on the technical side, but a novice on the business side:  Or vice versa.  How will you bring the other wizards into the camp,  pay them, and – the key to it – listen to them.   
  • But before any of this, how do you gauge whether your great idea will work? … and, even if it works, will it make the money needed to sustain a business?   Step No. 1 in the Business Plan.     
  • Entrepreneurs are not alone.  How do you zero in on the countless public and private-sector agencies offering tips, factual data, background intelligence on the industry you intend to plunge into?  Should you begin your search at this year’s Conference?

 

A few highlights — Randall Reade leads Washington D.C. ArchAngels, a network of business-savvy judges of new entrepreneurial talent, choosing the best prospects and linking them with a stable of eager investors . . .  Aldo Elguera,  small business development officer at BB&T bank,  outlines lending processes: banks as a source of capital.  Wendy Rivera-Aguilar recounts a successful dual career as urban lawyer and non-profit executive, while Nicole Eickhoff,  long time director of Washington area Women’s Business Centers, sums up the services these SBA or university adjuncts stand ready to offer. Jovita Carranza, former Deputy Administrator in the federal Small Business Administration, now owner of a management consulting firm in the Chicago area, lays out her formula for successful management. Sagrario Ortiz musters her corps of women entrepreneurs under the intriguing formula: El Poder de Ser Mujer – the mission statement nicely condensed.   Deniz Karatas, tells the story of youth in her native small town on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, of ventures in the business cosmos, ending in Washington’s economic-political whirl.  Richard Ginsburg, formerly top SBA International Trade expert, ticks off the advantages to domestic enterprises of the Latin American and other cross-border markets.

 

All Attendees will receive a Certificate of Attendance

It is followed by a Reception, 5:00 – 7:00 pm.  Translation English-Spanish.

The Conference is offered free of charge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dialogue on Diversity:  Founded in 1991, Dialogue on Diversity, a §501(c)3 non-profit, is a national network of women entrepreneurs and professionals, actively promoting constructive dialogue among Latino and other ethnic and cultural communities, on social and civic empowerment, with especial emphasis on their economic viability through entrepreneurship.

 

CONTACT:
Claire Moreno
Phone: 703 631 0650
 
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