Organizing a Worthwhile Networking Event

Organizing a Worthwhile Networking Event

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Networking is a crucial part of business. Whether you started your company a long time ago, or you are just starting out, networking can be a powerful tool when it comes to learning, growing and setting up plans for the future. It’s a great way to meet new clients and suppliers, as well as people that could become a support network and boost your business in other ways. It’s a great chance to learn more about emerging and existing methods and tools and to learn from other people in your industry. If nothing else, it’s an excellent chance to make new friends and to speak to people who truly understand what you do.

Planned networking events are the ideal places to make these connections. But, they aren’t all equal. Sometimes, we come home from supposed networking events feeling as though we’ve wasted a day, we’ve lost money, we’ve learned nothing and met no-one that will have any impact on our businesses or our lives. These events can make you wonder if it’s worth attending in the future. Sometimes, the best way to ensure an event is worthwhile is to organize it yourself. Here are some tips to help you to make sure any event that you plan is worthwhile and helpful to everyone that attends.

Find the Right Venue

The venue can make or break an event. Do you want dinner? Drinks? A conference type feel? Will it be a formal sit down event, or do you want people to mingle as much as possible? The venue needs to be right to meet your requirements. But, it also needs to be in an easy to access location, and have parking and facilities. When you’ve found your venue, register for online event registration to make everything easier for you and your guests.

Invite the Right People

Remember, the whole purpose of a networking event is meeting new people. So, don’t make the mistake of only inviting people that you know, or that you have worked with in the past. LinkedIn connections are a great way to move outside of your direct circle. Or, ask your invitees to bring someone that will be interested along with them.

State the Events Purpose

The very best networking events, the ones that you come out of with new connections, new knowledge and new ideas, that leave you feeling excited and eager to get back to work, are the ones with purpose. They aren’t just general business dinners or meetings. They are events with a focus, where the guests share what they want to get out of the experience. Or, they fit a tight niche. Everyone attending is involved in a specific field or area. Think about what you want from the event, and make sure you advertise the purpose when you invite people.

Get Introducing

There’s nothing worse than an event where no one talks. Where everyone sits or stands nursing a drink, making small talk with people that they already know. As the host, it’s your job to introduce people. Even those you don’t know. You invited them. You need to make the first move and facilitate introductions between guests.

Taking Charge When The Police Won’t Take Action

Taking Charge When The Police Won’t Take Action

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Throughout a large portion of the world, crime rates have stayed largely the same over the last couple of decades. While the types of offences people commit will evolve and adapt over time, there will always be those who want to go down this path, even if they have to give up an awful lot along the way. When you’re a victim of a crime, taking action can often be a challenge, especially if you can’t get the police to listen to you. To help you through a struggle like this, this post will be exploring the action which you can take when the police won’t take it for you.

Collecting Some Evidence

The very first stage in this journey will involve collecting some evidence of the crime which has been committed against you. What you’re able to get for this will vary depending on the crime in question, with something like an assault being much easier to prove than a robbery during the night. CCTV footage, photographs, and eye witnesses are some of the best evidence you can have, and most courts will accept these resource when you present them. It’s important to do this nice and quickly, as evidence could easily disappear if you leave it for too long.

Along with collecting some evidence for the crime which has been committed, it could also be worth collecting some to highlight the lack of support you’ve had from your local law enforcement. While they may simply not have time to help you, this is never fair, and it shows that there is an issue with the force as a group, not just amongst individuals. Having a way to prove that this has happened will go along way to giving you the chance to get something back for all of the effort you’ll have to put in.

Meet Some Professionals

Once you have some evidence in your hands, you will be ready to talk to some professionals about it, and this will mean booking some meetings. You should never choose a lawyer without trying them and their competitors, first. This sort of service is very expensive, and you’ll want to make the most of it, while the quality of the support you receive will strictly depend on the skills of the people to go with. You’ll find it hard to find a professional like this who won’t be happy to give you a consultation for free.

When you meet with a lawyer for the first time, it will be important to establish whether or not they are confident in your case. With their experience, they should be able to give you an idea of how likely you are to come out on top, and this can save a lot of money. Along with this, you also need to make sure that they have the right kind of skills to handle the case you have on your plate. For example, if you are making a wrongful death claim, you will need a team which has enough experience working with accidental death cases to easily overcome the other side.

Finding Some Suspects

With a legal professional behind you, it will be time to start finding some suspects. Of course, you can’t arrest people or lock them up, instead simply collecting their names and passing your lawyer’s details onto them. This works best if you already have a good idea of who may have committed the crime. If you don’t know who did it, though, you will have to rely on some other tools to help you to find them. Having CCTV where the incident took place can be very helpful, as this can offer videos of people’s faces. With this in your hands, Google’s image recognition should be able to match up with faces on Facebook.

Taking Legal Action

Having evidence, a lawyer, and a suspect or two is all you need to be able to start court proceedings. Taking legal action for yourself will always cost some money in the beginning, eventually being paid off by the compensation you receive, but this will all be worth it. The police often won’t handle cases because they simply don’t have the resources to do it. In this case, criminals can get away with committing crimes, and this isn’t fair. Instead, by taking this into your own hands, you will be helping to do your part to take someone bad from the streets, ensuring that they don’t commit another crime for a long time.

Winning something like this will take more than simply having all of the right elements, though. Along with this, you also need to be able to fight your corner, working hard to tell the truth at each stage, and avoiding the trap of getting emotional. A lot of people struggle to go through something liKe this without getting angry. Outbursts in court will always hurt a case, though, the way that you represent yourself will determine how the jury make their decision in the end. When your case is a fair one, you should win if you’re on the right side.

Why Bother?

When you’re looking at all of the work which has to go into something like this, it can be easy to find yourself asking why you’d want to bother with it. In reality, though, this sort of action will always be worth it, even if you don’t win. Having a crime committed against you will almost always leave some bitterness behind, and this can play on your mind for many years to come. Along with this, the person who you are getting in trouble could be in line to do something a lot worse. This means that you would be saving others from their work, all while maintaining safety in your community.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of handling a crime which has been committed against you. It’s shame when the police can’t help someone, especially when something very bad has happened. While this is often as the result of poor resourcing, it is always worth complaining in the hopes that it might make a difference.

The Pen The Sword And Responsibility

The Pen The Sword And Responsibility

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Publicity is a double-edged sword. The notoriety and recognition can be leveraged to improve credibility and marketability from the smallest fish in the sea to A-list celebrities. However, that same fame can bring shame, make people targets of smears and cause people to live without privacy.

Take for example Alex Shivraj. His name has appeared in divergent reporting over the last decade. In 2010, Alex was credited with assisting s man in becoming a successful entrepreneur even before either student had graduated. This publicity came as he, Alex Shivraj, was thanked within the body of an article by at The Medium. His reputation seemed to be on the rise and the notoriety was welcome.

Fast forward five years, however, and the same individual, Alex Shivraj of Mississauga, was the target of a prank that brought him shame and a false reputation. The Toronto Star published a false report by an intern that suggested that Alex was involved in a car-sex scandal.  This was not true and the paper later retracted the story and apologized.

“A Sept. 19 article about using social media to find locations for car sex in Toronto attributed statements about finding places for car sex and other activities during his high school years to a source who identified himself to the Star through email as Alex Shivraj, 28, a Mississauga resident.
“This was a mistake. None of the statements attributed to Alex Shivraj were made by Alex Shivraj and should not have been attributed to him. Alex Shivraj did not communicate with the Star. Furthermore, at no time did the Star reach out to Alex Shivraj for comment on the article in question.
“The Star apologizes to Alex Shivraj for these errors.”

This story was poorly sourced and usual journalistic methods were ignored. The intern suggested that she learned from her mistakes, but that’s little consolation when a person’s reputation has been dragged through the mud. It is hard to get the genie back in the bottle, which tells us all how important it is to get our facts right when we are pursuing stories in the media.

The pen is mightier than that sword, but just like the sword, the pen can be useful or destructive. When we use the pen, we must use it responsibly, otherwise, the might that comes with the pen can cause unwarranted damage and cost us our credibility.

Look For The Helpers

Look For The Helpers

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We live in stressful times. Many people are emotionally exhausted by the political stories that flood our headlines. We wake up every day to news that seems abnormal and scary. From the Trump administration to the rise of nationalism worldwide, there are daily news stories that make it hard to keep ourselves sane let alone happy. In times like these, it helpful to remember the words of Fred Rodgers: Look for the helpers. This is a great way to remember that humanity is still good even if the news tells us otherwise. In this spirit, we should remember that there are important programs, services and people working constantly to improve the quality of life for those they encounter.

Sometimes we take things like healthcare for granted or we view healthcare as only critical services: what we need to survive. But in order to really enjoy a healthy lifestyle, our health needs go beyond mere survival. This includes quality vision and auditory health, fitness, and nutrition. It’s heartening to know that there are professionals who are dedicated to these fields and we can all benefit from their help. Companies like The Hearing Room have a mission to improve their patient’s quality of life through better hearing. Little things like this are easy to forget when we are inundated with negative stories in the news.

Another great organization to look to for proof that humans are good is Habitat for Humanity Canada. This organization invites people to volunteer labor, furniture, and supplies in order to provide safe, quality housing for the underprivileged. They have an organization that maximizes the contributions so that they can change the lives of low-income families. They have built a network of stores, Re-store, where people can donate supplies and buy discounted materials which all help the organization as well as those who benefit from the low-cost, donated materials.

It’s so easy to be seduced by the negativity that is broadcast throughout our world. We may not want to completely ignore the news and the negativity, it is important to realize that these stories are not the only ones. People everywhere are doing good work. People are volunteering, creating networks of help and providing valuable services to improve the quality of life of their fellow humans. That knowledge can help us pivot emotionally to a more optimistic attitude. And with that attitude, we can help produce more good stories in our world. So, look for the helpers and you will see that there is more good in the world than the stories of devastation would have you believe.

The Benefits Of Humanizing A Politician

The Benefits Of Humanizing A Politician

Most successful politicians aren’t particularly extreme in their beliefs, and nor are they those who think too far outside the box. Instead, for your average elected official, the biggest draw they have to this field is their passion for helping their local community and country as a whole. Of course, though, it can often be hard to look at people like this in a good light. A lot of people find it hard to see the human side of people in government, especially when they have harsh beliefs and policies. This is a shame, though, as it doesn’t have to be this way, and you have loads of ways to humanize the people looking after your home.

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This process starts with a little bit of learning. A lot of politicians are also proud parents and wives or husbands, and understanding this side of their life can make them feel a lot more grounded, while also explaining some of the beliefs they have. You can find this information on sites like Wikipedia, but this can still go further. There are loads of sites around the web which have articles surrounding people like Mike Crapo which can give you an insight into their normal life. Everyone has things going on which can be hard to handle, and knowing this about the politicians you like will bring them right down to earth.

Of course, while the options above will give you the chance to start in the right direction, it could also be worth looking into the idea of actually talking to the politicians which you like. Social media is a great place for this. Quite a few officials have accounts on sites like these, and will use them to get the word out about their work and personal lives. Along with this, though, they will also talk to their voters on a platform like this, but you will have to get it started. Even if you only get a comment responded to, it could still help you to feel a connection. Alternatively, you could also seek them out at a local rally or event.

A lot of people will wonder why they would want to put this sort of work when it comes to the politicians they follow. In reality, though, it isn’t too hard to see why this is important if it’s always on your mind. Of course, when you look at someone as a human, it will be easier to understand the way that they think, giving you the chance to rationalize the thoughts which they have. Along with that, it can also be a powerful resource when it comes to helping you to form your own political beliefs. There are few things better for broadening your views than reading about other people’s.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to change the way you look at your elected officials. When they are doing things you don’t like, it can be easy to get a negative view of someone like this, and this makes it hard to see them as a person. In reality, though, the probably have their own challenges to contend with.

A Sustainable Start To Your Agriculture Career

A Sustainable Start To Your Agriculture Career

Anyone considering a career in agriculture needs to learn about potential problems. With climate issues and green living on all our minds, many are fighting for change here. And, if you don’t do your research, you could struggle to make a go of things. People just aren’t willing to pay for unsustainable practices anymore, and rightly so.

The sad fact is, farming is one of the most harmful environmental practices out there. Over 37% of the world’s methane emissions come from farmed animals. Agriculture also uses 70% of the world’s freshwater resources. Add to that the fact farming in America alone has led to 260 million acres of deforestation, and you should start to see a theme. Often, agriculture just isn’t sustainable.

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And, consumers are realizing this reality. Diets like veganism have increased by 600% in the last three years. It should come as no surprise, then, that many farmers are feeling the pressure to keep up with the changing tastes of a nation. Add these issues together, and it seems there’s one obvious solution – sustainable farming. It is what it says on the tin, but how exactly can you achieve it?



Stick to crops



While small-scale animal farms cause less environmental damage than factories, all herds contribute to methane emissions. Just one cow will produce 100 kg of methane in a year. Instead of opting for animals, then, you might be best sticking with crop production. This suits the veganism trend we spoke about, while also going some way towards reducing any damage. In fact, many argue that crop production is good for soil. So, this alone could see you getting customer onside from the off.

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Improve your processes



Of course, even crops can do environmental damage. Most of the water waste we spoke about goes towards this cause. And, most deforestation happens for this cause, too. But, there are some ways to reduce that damage. Proper water irrigation systems can ensure you minimize the amount of water you use. It’s also worth ensuring you get the most out of every acre of land you have to hand. That way, there won’t be any need for further deforestation or destruction. If you aren’t sure how to maximize land potential, companies like River Country Cooperative offer agronomy programs to help you. If that appeals, don’t hesitate to visit them and get started. If not, take these matters into your own hands. Do your research, and take time planning systems with the least environmental impact.



Find new uses for spare land



The chances are that you’re going to have additional land on your hands. This is especially true if you aren’t farming animals. Admittedly, there’s a temptation to turn those free fields into crops, too. But, in keeping with sustainability, it’s worth keeping at least a little land aside for conservation. By planting trees and encouraging wildlife here, you can make sure that you’re giving a little back. And, that can go a considerable way towards getting the public onside.

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