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DETROIT, Mich., July 22 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- Mentoring Success Group LLC announces a series of events that will help small business owners build their competitive edge in today's difficult economy. The 'We Mentor Success' small business forums offer seminar-style instruction, in-depth networking opportunities, and hands-on workshops and mentoring with experts in small business disciplines including leadership, marketing, and strategic planning. 'We Mentor Success' small business forums will be held this fall in Las Vegas, Detroit and Austin.

'We Mentor Success' events are the brainchild of Tom Tubergen, a Detroit-area native who has watched a lot of businesses in his area struggle or fail in recent years. Tubergen's firm, Mentoring Success Group LLC, offers a Business Performance Analysis Engine that helps small and medium-sized businesses benchmark themselves against their competition, find areas of competitive strength, and identify areas for improvement.

"As I see it, running a small business is the ultimate competitive sport. But unlike athletes, small business owners are often their own coaches. Top athletes work with coaches, trainers, nutritionists, physical therapists. They have doctors who diagnose their muscle strains and chiropractors who keep their backs aligned," remarks Tom Tubergen, president of Mentoring Success Group LLC. "When you go it alone, it's hard to step back and get an objective view of how you're competing. How do you compare to your competition? What are others out there doing that your customers think you should?"

'We Mentor Success' small business forums are designed to provide small business owners with new ideas, as well as small group interaction and strategic input from expert advisors. The events will be structured to offer business owners networking opportunities to make new and profitable connections important to their individual businesses. Attendees will choose between workshops that include:

Pamela Crosset, MPH - Achieving Your Competitive Edge

Kimberly Friddle - Get Real: Cost-Conscious Marketing for Small Business

Dr. Jed C. Jones, Ph.D. - Optimizing Your Website for More Traffic and Better Conversions

Chris Mentch - Using Technology as a Competitive Weapon

Ken Pasch - Leadership is More than Just Showing Up

Don Reimer - Strategy: How to Get from Here to Wherever You're Going

Kevin Stirtz - Never Lose Another Customer

Marv Weidner - Strategic Business Planning: Staying on Purpose in Everything You Do

All attendees at the seminars will receive a one-month free subscription to the Mentoring Success Group LLC Business Performance Analysis Engine (BPAE), which will help them assess their competitive strengths and weaknesses relative to others in their industries.

Business owners can register for the events at www.wementorsuccess.com.

About Mentoring Success Group LLC
Mentoring Success Group LLC is an innovator in the application of artificial intelligence technology to business. Dedicated to the success of small businesses, their partners, and their stakeholders, Mentoring Success Group offers the Business Performance Analysis Engine (BPAE) for small business competitive analysis, as well as an internet radio show titled 'Your Competitive Advantage' and a small business success seminar series called 'We Mentor Success.'

Copyright © 2008 Send2Press® Newswire, a unit of Neotrope®
TAGS: Send2Press Newswire, Business Performance Analysis Engine, Mentoring Success Group LLC

Final Ninja Classic (fresh epsiodes coming back next week). College Tips!

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Dave Fleet shares some suggestions for online monitoring of your organization's image, or the buzz around it. He says it's important that before you do anything--such as set up a blog, whatever--that you find out how to track what's going on out there. I see his suggestions as part and parcel of establishing your own Global Communications Center for your school or District. Fleet writes:

Before your organization launches a blog, before you start playing with Facebook, before you even think about Twitter, you should be listening to what people are saying about you.

"Google is managing your identity unless you are," as quoted by Dean Shareski in his Going Global, Going Public. "What digital footprints are existing for you right now? It's not an ego search but to find what others are saying about you." This goes for each of us, but also, for organizations like schools. But it's important we go, as Dean and others share, beyond just tracking our digital footprints, but that of others' footprints when they interact with our organizations.

As an edublogger, this is something I learned while setting up my blog and finding ways to connect with others. However, the tools that are available now are much more comprehensive than what were available when I began. A quick look at Dave's suggestions, and I'm astonished that I'm using most of these approaches already. What I doubt is happening, though, is that school districts and schools are doing this...most of our organizations may very well have a less than active interaction with news and other people out there. Simply publishing your own television show isn't enough when most people thrive online, and most content endures online more than in a broadcast.

I love this quote (Christian Grantham as cited in NewAssignment.net) about ending the "passive relationship with local news" in this blog entry. What catches my attention is that the same tribulations and troubles students, teachers and leaders are going through, well, that's what a lot of folks in the news industry are going through. You could tweak this paragraph easily to reflect the angst among educators:

I love working with people who see the importance of the role the net will play in transforming the way the world gets and interacts with information. I also love working with veterans of news, and I will always remember the challenges they face with the changes that are happening. For some, that change is very difficult. But the fact is, we are no more in the television and newspaper business than Wal-Mart is in the trucking business. Our business is no longer the industry that surrounds distribution – the trucks, the printing press, the reams of paper, the broadcast towers, the satellite dishes, the lights, the huge cameras, the buildings, the “live trucks”…

It’s the final product: information. The market in an on-demand world for news and information where people have to wait to receive a highly produced product is steadily shrinking. At the same time, the online audience for news and information is growing significantly. It’s an exciting time to be working in a new medium that is transforming the way we get information.

How has our "business" in education changed? It's no longer about textbooks, that's for sure and canned ideas. It's about creativity, communication, collaboration. Even as the market shrinks in the news world, in the education world, I find this statement to be as true as it's ever been in education (BTW, the link below includes a Clay Shirky moment in video):

If our information was made freely available and became the building blocks through which other work could be done - we would be the foundation upon which the news and information world is built upon.
Source: DigiDave - Journalism is a Process, Not a Product: Changing the Legal Structure for Digital Journalism

That education is still the foundation--albeit being switfly eroding--is because it is firmly entrenched in a "no market" environment.

Dave points to 4 steps and I've included links to some with sample searches for "mguhlin" in each:

1. Define your keywords
2. Create your searches...some of the tools Dave shares include:
   -GoogleNews
   -GoogleBlogSearch
   -Technorati
   -TwitterSearch (Dave mentions Summize, recently acquired by Twitter.com, and TweetScan)
   -Blogpulse.com
3. Plug the results into your RSS reader OR
4. Collapse all the results RSS feeds into a service like AideRSS.com (I've included a list of Tools4RSS here)

One additional type of tool that I'd add to Dave's list includes Social Bookmarking sites. The idea comes to me from a presentation Alan November did in China (Learning2.0 Conference) where an audience member suggested using Del.icio.us as another search tool in lieu or addition to regular search engines. 3 skills November says aren't taught in schools include:

1. Teaching students to deal with massive quantities of information (pattern-making, organizing patterns for information)
2. Global Communication skills/global communication, as well as checking sources with people on the ground
3. Self-directed, lifelong learning

What's neat about becoming your own "global communications center" is that you can teach students these skills as you're setting up your classroom web site. Imagine what would have happened if Bob Sprankle and Darren Kuropatwa had set these tools (if they'd been available) BEFORE they started blogging with their students. Wouldn't it have been awesome to capture the feedback flowing in from all over the world, including traditional and participatory reporting?

WHAT ABOUT SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES?
It would definitely be fun to know how many folks are bookmarking what you're doing, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed of results. To accomplish that, you'll probably need to use Page2Rss.com--a tool someone told me about but a week or two ago (speak up if you're out there!). Neither Diigo or Delicious, as far as I can see, support RSS for search results. So, with that caveat in mind, to the list, I'm adding these two:

• Diigo.com - RSS wasn't available via Page2Rss.com since Diigo timed out.
• Del.icio.us - RSS

OTHER TOOLS
A few other tools worth checking out include these:

• IceRocket.com - RSS
• Teoma.com
• Spy ...lacks an RSS feed but you can get one with Page2RSS (not sure yet how well it works). Lets you know what's going on in Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogs, and Google Reader.

Though I had some of these items setup (Technorati, TwitterSearch) I didn't have all of them setup. As a result, I discovered some new blog entries out there--and new blogs I wasn't reading--writing about what I'd written. Nice to be in touch!

GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
You know, I hadn't ever thought of myself--or the work the Communications Dept in a school district--does as Global Communications. But, that is exactly what we're doing with Read/Write Web tools. And, that is the challenge facing districts as well as journalists. We are caught up in a "citizen" journalism, teacher communicator.

"Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work literacies such as social media and informal learning?" Good question. My answer: yes. Because everyone should be. Tucker writes, "my responsibility is to work on my own sphere of influence, starting with our online course development team leading by example for our facilitators." Christy Tucker, Experiencing E-Learning
Source: As commented on and cited by Stephen Downes

How are YOU setting up your Global Communications Center? How are YOU leading the charge? The answer to this question is a lot easier than taking this position:

Al Gore said: "We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift." He was talking about global climate change but he might as well have been talking about our attempts to transition schools into the 21st century…
Source: Our Policies have to Shift, Dr. Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant

Compare that approach--abandoning the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve the crisis in education, or journalism--to this one from Pete Reilly (EdTech Journeys) with his tale of Gandhi's decision to not offer advice unless he was living by it himself.

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During the course of the average weekday, we record videos here on the live stream. Sometimes, I run out of ideas of what to do. So when I threw it out to the chat room for suggestions, Fireworks came up with a good one. He wanted me to check out AuthorStream. On AuthorStream, you can upload, share and discover PowerPoint presentations. Let’s look at the features available to you with your free registration.

• Send to YouTube If you had set up ‘Rehearsed Timings’ or have recorded audio ‘Narrations’ in your PowerPoint file, they would automatically be available in a video format (MP4 or M4V) which can be shared on YouTube via send to YouTube feature.
• Share on iPod via iTunes Your presentations will also be available to be downloaded in iTunes. Your viewers can then sync their iPods and have your presentations available even when they are not online!
• Download PowerPoint As a viewer, you can now download PowerPoint files if their respective authors have given their permission to do so. This is a great feature for those who like presentations and want to use a slide or two to enrich their own.
• Featured Audio/Animation Presentations Cool presentations get featured and you can view them categorized as Featured Presentations, Featured Audio Presentations and Featured Animated Presentations.
• RSS Feeds Subscribe to the RSS feeds for categorized groups of slideshows as well as customized feeds for users and tags.

So… instead of emailing a Presentation to someone you need to collaborate with, why not use AuthorStream? You could even use Google Docs or MindMeister. Heck, for that matter, why not check out something like Drop.io?

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If you're using an HTC Touch or Mogul from Sprint and the launch of the iPhone 3G has got you thinking you're using yesterday's handset, an announcement today could put a smile on your face. Sprint has announced a free software update for the HTC Touch handset that brings EV-DO Rev. A mobile broadband to the smartphone, along with enhanced GPS capabilities, the mobile version of the Opera Web browser, and an onscreen 40-key QWERTY keyboard that offers an additional op

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  When I heard Michael Wiener Savage was going to appear on “Larry King Live” Monday night (with Glenn Beck guest-hosting) to “defend” his horrific remarks about children with autism— “In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.”— I knew to expect at least two things: (a) he would claim that he was “taken out of context”, and (b) he would attack MediaMatters for bringing it to the public’s attention. What I didn’t expect, however, is that he would attempt the PR equivalent of a quadruple axel.

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Beck: It seems pretty clear that you don’t really believe autism exists.

Savage: No, no, no, no, no. Again, you took what they gave you. But you didn’t take the entire preceding material. […] This was in the broader context of the overmedicalization, the over-diagnosis of disease, using our children as profit centers. I’ve spent all day saying what a shame it is that I — as a man who has spent his entire life defending the defenseless, mainly children — should have to defend myself from charges leveled at me from men who specialize in hating families and children, namely MediaMatters— who probably come after you as well — by ripping things out of context and making me look like the monster that they are.

You see, Michael Savage is a humanitarian who’s always looking out for the kids! When he says children diagnosed with autism are “brats” who just need a father to smack some sense into them, he’s actually defending them. How dare anyone “take him out of context” when all he’s trying to do is speak candidly about the epidemic of over-medicating children?! What do those so-called “experts” know about autism, anyway?

Here are a few other examples of Savage’s humanitarianism and “defense of the defenseless”:

Savage: “We’re getting refugees now who have never used a telephone, a toothbrush, or toilet paper. … [T]hey never assimilate. And then their children become gang-bangers.”

Savage accused former page of “gay-baiting” Foley and added: “Maybe he’s a Democrat.”

Savage advocated “militarization of our children” to respond to terror threat.

You can use MM’s form to find your local Savage station and make your voice heard. AFLAC has already decided to pull their ads.

Inspired by Wes Fryer's experiment with Jumpcut, I took the time to export my Changing Standards presentation that I shared last week with staff (newbies to Read/Write Web tools) to images uploaded to Flickr (using Flickr Uploadr), then import them into JumpCut. You never saw so much frantic writing...all of the ideas and content were brand new to them.

After that, as my son played his game in the background--sound muted--I quickly recorded audio to go with the presentation. Now, this is late at night after a long day's work, after a wonderful dinner, and before going out to the library. Ok, enough disclaimers (well, except for my apologies for picking on Doug "Blue Skunk" Johnson in the middle of the audio <evil smile>). The audio is what it is <grin> and my apologies if I didn't get it just right.

Aside: As I listen (38 minutes!) to this presentation during synching, I realize this presentation is flawed. That's probably because i did throw it together, adapting it from a previous presentation on TEA's Technology Immersion grant project. It's not really about changing standards but the six components of Tech Immersion. Nevertheless, it was worth the time to play and experiment. I offer it here as a flawed work (of course, aren't they all?).

My goal was to record audio and match that to the slides. I was destined to be disappointed since that level of fine-grained control isn't evident in Jumpcut. However, it was fun to experiment with a new technology.

It was at that point I remembered a comment Steve Dembo (Teach42.com) had left, referring me to MyPlick.com. I went over, and uploaded my presentation (PPT or PDF) and my audio (MP3), created my free account, and started syncing it all.

Here's what that looks like:

Image Caption: Picture at the beginning of the audio syncing process

Image Caption: Syncing audio and slides, 3 slides in. Listen to your audio as you click the UP arrow button to move slides up.

Wow, what an easy tool. I may abandon slideshare.net for posting if it's this easy to add the audio. The only issue is sitting through the painful audio recording (unedited, BTW) after recording it.

Wait, one more problem. While working in MyPlick.com at the end, the buttons started to "stick" or not click when I clicked on them. not sure what caused that. I finally had to close the window once I managed to SAVE and PUBLISH.

Here's what it looks and sounds like...be gentle in the comments <smile>:

Changing National Standards