The Jamaica Business Development Centre is putting on the Small Business Expo 2008. See flyer below for details.

On the rare occassions (and by that I mean never) that I think about the recent Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed between the European Community and the CARIFORUM countries, I think about big industries and businesses trying to gain access to the EU market and vice versa. I do not think about small businesses like mine. So, recently when I got an invitation to a seminar to clarify the opportunities and challenges for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), presented by the recent EPA, I was less than enthusiastic.

To make things worse, the invitation then goes on to say:

At this seminar, MSMEs will have an opportunity to meet and interact with representatives from
the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), the Delegation of the European
Commission to Jamaica, European diplomats and members of the Consular Corps representing
European countries.

I almost fell asleep just thinking about it. I thought the idea of an invitation was to make people want to go.

Anyway, I wish I could ignore this invitation, but it is obvious that this EPA is going to be very important, and unfortunately nobody seems to be in a hurry to explain to the public what was signed on our behalf. So how can I turn down an invitation to find out more? By the way, that’s a real question, please someone, tell me how I can get out of this?

Even the text of the EPA seems to be a secret (or at least well hidden). How hard can it be to put the document on a website and link to it?

I got an invitation a few days ago to a Speaker Forum at the Technology Innovation Centre (TIC), where the guest speaker is supposed to be the Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce. The invitation says to come & hear about:

• The Minister’s plans for the MSME sector.
• Policies that will address major challenges affecting business growth.
• Business incubation as a developmental tool.
• And much more.

I will admit that my first reaction to this invitation was “yawn, not another speech”. After all, why would the Minister say anything new about these important topics to such a small audience? But the more I think about it, the more curious I get. I have not heard the Minister say anything about these topics before, so anything he says will be probably be important (and some of it may even be interesting). I am also kind of curious to find out, exactly what is meant by a Speaker Forum. It sounds like a speech followed by a Q&A session, but maybe it will turn out to be something else.

The danger of course, is that I will go and get trapped at some kind of press conference that I would be better off watching on TV from the comfort of my favourite chair. Still, even that might be interesting (certainly it would be new for me). So on Monday I will see if I am not too late to accept the inivitation.

I just came across this article, Facebook Now In German - Thanks To 2,000 Generous Users on TechCrunch and I liked the idea so much I had to share it. Apparently Facebook has managed to get its users to translate their site into different languages. I don’t think this idea will work for me, but maybe it will work for your site or your product (I will let the idea roll around in my head for a while, who knows maybe a way will occur to me).

The great thing about selling software on the web is the fact that your market is virtually the entire planet. Your customer can come from anywhere and speak any language. For example, the top languages of visitors to Irie Tools over the last 30 days were:

1. US English
2. British English
3. Polish
4. German
5. French
6. Romanian
7. Italian
8. Hungarian
9. Dutch

That’s a pretty intimidating list for a small company like mine (and it changes all the time). I would love to be able to offer Irie Pascal to more people in their native language. One of these days, maybe I will.

Did you know that there was an organization made up of business associations in Jamaica, called the MSME Alliance? I had never heard of them until a week or so ago when I got an invitation to their member’s social. Anyway, I turned up at the social (which was today at the Scotiabank Sports Club) curious to find out what they were all about. I picked up a very informative brochure about the organzation and while reading this brochure I was reminded of how much goes on in Jamaica that you never hear about.

The following facts are borrowed from the MSME Alliance brochure.

• In 2003, several business associations representing the MSME (Micro Small and Medium-sized Enterprise) sector were invited to participate in the ongoing dialogue about trade negotiations through the Jamaica Trade and Adjustment Team (JTAT).
• In January 2007, the MSME Alliance was formally registered as a company by representatives from the following associations: Hardware Merchants Association, Jamaica Wood Products & Furniture Association, Jamaica Gasoline Retailers Association, National Association of Hairdressers & Cosmetologists, National Council of Taxi Associations.
• On October 25, 2007, a transition team of officers and directors were chosen to lead the MSME Alliance to its annual general meeting (AGM) in early 2008.

The main activity of the MSME Alliance is listed as:

Participate in the development of an Enterprise-Wide Risk Management & Financing Programme (ERMFP) in partnership with the Technology Innovation Centre (TIC), UTech, and the Institute of Law and Economics (ILE) that seeks to:

1. Minimize and manage credit default and other risks and to facilitate the expanded use of credit (especially for working capital and fixed assets) to accelerate growth of MSMEs and
2. Minimize the risk of business failure through a range of strategic interventions, in particular training, that will enhance the capacity of MSMEs to compete and to achieve profitability and sustainable growth.

I will admit that I don’t really understand exactly what the ERMFP is all about, but it sounds interesting.

The contact information for the MSME Alliance is:

Secretariat:
Suite 55, Princeville Plaza,
95-97 Constant Spring Road,
Kingston 10, Jamaica
Tel: (876) 925-5276/(876)924-0715
Email: msmealliance@yahoo.com, msmealliance@gmail.com

I have just come across a very useful blog that I just had to share with you. The blog is called SmallFuel Marketing and is about marketing your small business. What makes this blog so remarkable and useful is that it is filled with short, easily understood articles on a wide range of marketing related topics. For example, here is a list of some of the articles:

• 5 Things People Want to See Before the Sale
• What Apple Can Teach You About Marketing
• Not Just Different: How to Be Outstanding in Business
• How To Distinguish Yourself from the Crowd
• 15 Effective Sales Letter Ideas That Just Work
• How To Write a Compelling Small Business Email

By the way, I am not connected to this blog in any way, and I do not receive anything for recommending them.

OK, now its your turn. Do you know of any other blogs or websites with useful information that you want to share?

Well, I finally got around to testing Irie Pascal on Windows Vista and in general I was pleasantly surprised. Not only does Vista look great (by the way, be sure to check out the stunning screen backgrounds if you have not done so already), but Irie Pascal looks great on Vista as well.

As far as functionality goes, Irie Pascal ran almost perfectly on Vista, the only issue was the one I was expecting, Irie Pascal uses WinHelp for it’s online help but Vista does not include the WinHelp engine. As an experiment I downloaded the WinHelp engine from the Microsoft web site and installed it, but I ran into some weird problems. I can probably fix these problems but I think I am going to switch to the newer (and better) HTML Help engine instead. Actually, I am planning to update Irie Pascal so that it will support both WinHelp and HTML Help. Irie Pascal will use WinHelp on Windows 95 and Windows NT, and use HTML Help on the later versions of Windows.

I have spent the last couple of days experimenting with the Microsoft HTML Help Workshop, which I found to be (hmm what’s a nice way to put this) unsophisticated. Anyway, after some trial and error, I have learned enough to add support for HTML help to Irie Pascal.

After Irie Pascal is updated to support Windows Vista, I am planning to make some other changes before releasing the update (these other changes will mostly be about making it easier to write web applications).

I am trying a few things to increase the number of visitors to this blog. I just joined the Webloogle Blog Directory. It should be interesting to see whether this makes any difference (I don’t know yet, how I will know if it does make a difference).

My first impressions of Technorati are not that great, ok but not great. I have been hearing about Technorati for some time now, so I guess I had high expectations.

The site is a little slow some times (for example, it takes around 5 seconds for me to to get a response when I click on “sign in”). My guess is that they are going through some growing pains, no big deal, we should all have that problem.

What I did find a little surprising was after I added my first two favourites, Silicon Caribe and Jamaipanese, I got the following error message:

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My Favorites

We know you have a lot of favorites, we apologize that we aren’t able to show them.

There is a known bug where the favorites feature is disabled for accounts with a large number of favorites. We are currently working on this and hope to have this resolved within the next few weeks. In the meantime, you should still be able to view your tagged favorites. Please note that your favorites are not lost. They just cannot be displayed. Thus, when the fix is in place, you should be able to access your favorites again. Thanks for your patience!

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I find this error surprising because I only have two favourites and both of them are tagged. Anyway, I am still impressed with the idea and the implementation, I can only imagine how much effort it took to create this site. I am hoping for good things from Technorati in the future.

I want to attract more more readers to this blog, so I joined Technorati. Joining was quick and relatively easy. Now, I suppose, comes the hard work of actually getting the Technorati to visit. Speaking of which, if you are a member of Technorati and you want to add this blog as one of your favorites then why not click on the link below.

Add to Technorati Favorites