Obviously, there aren’t enough Women Grow Business Events to fill up this calendar on its own.

And no, this has absolutely nothing to do with our successful Women’s Leadership Soirée. It’s just that this post is about events and I love that picture of  Nicolette Pizzitola and Jill Foster.

And yeah, what you’ll see below isn’t Actually a calendar, it’s a list of events – a summary even.

I tried the calendar route when this plan was first annnounced … and let’s just say it was a contributing factor to how long it took to put this together. But… the upside of this format is that it allows for a fluidity not otherwise possible.

Therefore, at least twice a month on Mondays, I’ll publish a new or updated installment of this events summary, with events of interest to Women Business Leaders and the community that supports us.

The goal?

To publicize events held for, attended by, or with panelists of, the Global Business Women’s community. If you know of an event geared towards women in business, and would like to listed here, send an email to tinuwgb@asktinu.com, with a link to a page about the event.

Or to greatly shorten response time, send a tweet about your event using the #wgbiz hashtag.  If it’s appropriate, we’ll list it here.

Turnaround time for email listings is two weeks to a month. Turnaround for a tweet is three days at the most. I’m really not kidding about tweets expediting your listing. And don’t forget the hashtag – that’ll often get you a retweet too.

Click here to see the Women Business Events Summary for March on the Storify website if you’re having trouble viewing this on a mobile device.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Calendar of Upcoming Events for Women in Business

The professional photo set from the Women’s Leadership Soirée is now available.

Joy, Tinu, Ify and Ashley

Nakeva Photography was on site to capture the evening for us and the pictures came out beautifully.

They’ll also be uploaded to our Facebook page after we gather as much information as possible about those pictured. For the time being, you can view them on Flickr or in the slideshow below.

Want to help us get these up in Facebook faster? If you see a picture of yourself, please respond in the comments with your full name, Twitter handle and website.

In the meantime, we’ll tag as many people as we can and make an announcement on Facebook when the set is available over there. You can read a full recap of our Women’s Leadership Soirée in DC here, where an update with a few of these shots is now in progress.

(And of course, if you want your comments/photos included, send a tweet with the hashtag #wgbiz or leave a comment on our Facebook page. )

Click on the show to view the full set on Flickr.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Sightings from the Women’s Leadership Soirée – Are You In These Photos? #wgbiz #smwwdc

How do you describe magic?

I used to think it was so silly when someone would describe an evening as magical.

Did rabbits pop out of someone’s hat? Was David Copperfield there?

Yet now that words escape me, I understand. They must mean that an event they nurtured to maturity   met the needs of the people it was created for in ways that exceeded what they would have imagined.

Our Women Grow Business community members showed up in force to our Women’s Leadership Soiree. They networked with each other as usual – many of us had our various glasses of wine, exchanged business cards, made small talk, hugged people we hadn’t seen in a while. That much was thrilling but expected.

Of course, sharing appointment book time with two other Social Media Week events (that I hear were simply fantastic), the idea crept in that perhaps we were in for a more, shall we say, intimate gathering.

A Bit of the Unexpected

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Not only was the room filled to capacity,  we got a healthy mixture of rarely-seen veterans and fresh faces among the trusted pillars of our community. This is important: you want the same core group to keep coming to events – that’s what community is.

But communities don’t expand and grow if new faces aren’t introduced, nor if the folks who are normally forced to support only in spirit due to other commitments can’t make it.

And we were lucky enough to have all the bases covered. We had everyone from young female college students to local lady entrepreneur legends in our midst. That was a bit out of the ordinary – and that wasn’t all.

The evening quickly and smoothly advanced from small talk to networking, and not just of the garden variety card-swap. Resources were exchanged and shared, opportunities offered, collaborations started.

And a of start-up may have born from scribbles on napkins – that last part I’m not at liberty to divulge at this time. (wink)

All this was thanks to supportive community members like yourself. And it could not have been such a success without the backing of our premium sponsor, The Matrix Group, and its CEO Joanna Pineda.

Huge thanks to another one of our great sponsors, Compass Point Associates, and CEO Nicolette Pizzitola, also a leadership education advocate, whose George Washington University students also provided our registration support.

And special thanks to Nakeva Photography for capturing our memories throughout the evening.

What Did The Attendees Have to Say?

You just can’t take my words for it that this was an amazing event – with our Women Grow Business founder Jill Foster, now the owner of Live Your Talk, I was a co-host. So I may be ever so slightly biased. Why not let the community speak for itself?

We shall momentarily, in pictures and commentary, below.

(This is an on-going update – if you want your comments/photos included, send a tweet with the hashtag #wgbiz or leave a comment on our Facebook page. After the official photos debut, we’ll be announcing the updated version.)

Thank you so much to everyone attended. If you couldn’t make it or live too far away, we hope to see you at another event soon, online or off.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Recollections and Community Comments about the Women’s Leadership Soiree #wgbiz #smwwdc

Time to mark your calendar again!

Women Grow Business is absolutely delighted to be joining Live Your Talk to co-host an elegant evening of celebrating women entrepreneurship, stimulating conversation, and of course, wine!

Come mingle with DC’s best and brightest entrepreneurial minds, be in featured in our photos by Nakeva Photography, and maybe even win a Kindle!

We’ll be converging on the 5th & K St location of Busboys and Poets at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

Go by our Eventbrite page to add it to your calendar now – if you won’t be in DC to attend, please share the link with your crowd.

There are NO tickets available at the door, and we’re only allowed to admit a certain number of people to our cozy loft space. Something about fire hazards…

Anyway, men are welcome to mingle with us, as always. So bring all your friends, and come celebrate Social Media Week with us in style!

Special thanks to our premium sponsor, The Matrix Group. And the utmost gratitude to Compass Point Associates and Live Your Talk who are also sponsoring the event.

Register today – this event will fill up fast (as will your two free glasses of wine)!

Image courtesy of Jawcey.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Join us for a Women’s Leadership Soiree During Social Media Week DC (#smwwdc)

Today at noon, we’re privileged to have Allen Mireles lending us her wisdom on the topic of LinkedIn, during our monthly Twitter chat, which happens at Noon Eastern/New York time on the second Monday of each month.

In today’s chat we’ll be zeroing in on How to Effectively Use LinkedIn for Business.  More about our guest expert in a moment.

First, a few details about our chat.

How do you follow Our Monthly Tweetchats?

1. Log into Twitter, Tweetchat, Tweetgrid, or any other Twitter tool that lets you isolate a hashtag.
2. Follow our Twitter hashtag #wgbiz. (In Twitter you can use the search at the top of the screen, in Tweetchat or Tweetgrid, once you’re logged in, you’ll see an area for you to enter the hashtag at the top of the screen.)
3. Arrive as early as 11:45 a.m. to introduce yourself, send us a link to your site, and share what your company does, as well as to meet the other chatters.
4. Make sure you’re following the host, in this case me (@wbgiz is the official channel, @Tinu is my personal handle), and featured guest(s) if any, in this case Allen Mireles (@AllenMireles), so you can send questions or follow up with them later.
5. Have fun. Twitter chats are meant to be informative, sure, but also lighter than a teleconference or webinar.

More About Allen

Why did we go out of our way to ask (okay, beg!) Allen to join us?

Because she knows her stuff.

We make a point not to go down the social media street too often, because there are so many other blogs out there doing it. But when you get the chance to bring your audience specialized knowledge on a social network with such a business-specific use like LinkedIn, well, who could pass that up?

Called one of the “25 Very Smart Business Women to Follow on Twitter” and one of the “20 Social Media Divas You Should Be Following”,

Allen Mireles is a social media marketing and public relations strategist, trainer and public speaker. She combines more than 20 years of experience in traditional marketing and public relations with social media expertise, practicality, and humor to help her clients understand how to use social media tools and marketing and public relations strategy to meet business objectives.

Mireles is principal of Allen Mireles Social Media Marketing and Public Relations, a consultancy based outside of Toledo, Ohio, and founded in 1993 as Allen Mireles Marketing Communications. The firm has a diverse international client base in healthcare IT, manufacturing, and education.

See you at the chat!  (As always feel free to leave a comment to leave a question for Allen, or if you’d like a 15 minute warning for the chat.)
 

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: December #WGBIZ Tweetchat with @AllenMireles Today at Noon Eastern

I’m very excited to announce the Northern Virginia Women’s Business conference ticket giveaway, brought to you by our favorite (and only) sponsor of Women Grow Business, Network Solutions, who is also one of the sponsors of this event.

If you don’t know about the Northern Virginia Women’s Business conference, here’s a quick description from their site:

 

JP Events & Consulting and Reston Limousine are proud to present the third annual Northern Virginia Women’s Business Conference. THE one day event for visionary women who want to discover the tools for success, make strategic business connections and leave feeling empowered and inspired to take action.

Throughout the day hear from women leaders in business and technology about:

• Branding
• Power Networking
• Sales Strategies
• Empowering Women in Finances
• Marketing and Social Media
• Maximizing Your Worth
• Work and Life Balance

The event takes place all day this Friday in Landsdowne, Virginia. I was convinced that it would be a great event to attend just from the agenda, but you should also take a look at the list of speakers, which includes a member of our Women Grow Business community, Tara Rethore, president of M. Beacon Enterprises.

Lisa Byrne and I are going to be live blogging this event, and we’re looking forward to meeting the lucky winner.

So what do you have to do in order to win this one and only free ticket, a $235USD value (not to mention a priceless fountain of knowledge)?

• Be available on Friday morning to pick up the ticket from us
• Leave a comment below sharing with us why you would value the experience and what you hope to gain by attending
• Make sure you’re connected to the community somehow (Facebook, Twitter, link to your website) so we can follow up with you via email to confirm your ticket.

Neither Lisa nor myself are allowed to pick the winner, so any brownies or bottles of wine sent to us will sway the results in any way. (Not that this should stop you from sending us anything.)

We’ll be contacting the winner via email so again, make sure there’s some way for us to get your email address after the contest is over (other than leaving it in your comment. Not secure!) The contest ends at noon tomorrow – don’t wait and forget about it, enter NOW.

Can’t attend yourself but want to help us find a winner? Tweet this post out to your circles. We only have about a day to get this coordinated, so we could use your help too.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Northern Virginia Women’s Business Conference Ticket Giveaway

We’ve got two events coming up this November for Women Grow Business, one live, and one virtual.

It also occurred to me when observing shares in Facebook and on Twitter that many community members have their own events to share, so I’ve decided to try a little experiment, which we’ll discuss momentarily.

First, let me update you on our latest news.

The Next Live Women Grow Business Event is Almost Here

By the time you read this, there may be only one or two seats left to our 3-in-1 strategy workshop for building your business.

Just in case there are – or if you’ve signed up and wanted more concrete ideas of what will happen that day – here are some reasons why you should attend.

A common complaint of entrepreneurs is that it’s difficult to both market your business and actually run your business at the same time. To complicate matters in this day and age, there are constantly new tools debuting, and even those are in an ongoing state of flux. Staying on top of all the new information, or even choosing what you’d do best to focus on is a constant struggle.

And yet you can’t just stop getting new customers, or using new tools to keep your current customers from going to your competition, or pretty soon you won’t have a business any more.

In our Rotating Digital Strategy Workshop, we’ll help you come up with a strategy that hits all the high points of the marketing you need to do for your business, and suggest ways to keep on top of all the daily tasks you need to attend to in order to execute it successfully.

This live workshop takes place this coming Tuesday, November 8th – you can sign up here.

UPDATE: Our wonderful Lisa Byrne has been able to secure extra seating. So if you hurry, new seats have been added. But you MUST sign up in order to get a guaranteed seat. This is a workshop, so you’ll need it.

Next Tweetchat Features Community Member Thursday Bram

The following Monday, we’re going to have an online chat with Women Grow Business Contributor, Thursday Bram of Hyper Modern Consulting. She recently launched a resource for Freelancers as well.

What is freelancing?

The common definition is working in a career that isn’t tied to one company, an independent worker. Freelancing is closely tied to entrepreneurialism, but the two aren’t necessarily one and the same.

You can’t help but think about how closely the two are linked, however. And freelancers often have amazing insights that many different types of people in business can learn from, whether they are top level corporate executives or small business owners.

So set aside your lunch hour from noon to 1 pm on Monday, November 14th for our online chat with Thursday. (Our chats will always be held the 2nd Monday of the month if you want to mark your calendar from here forward. Hint, hint.)

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, don’t worry, you can still follow the chat, even without being logged in, although I recommend signing up for an account now in order to be able to send in questions, and save your favorite insights.

How do you follow Tweetchats?

1. Log into Twitter, Tweetchat, Tweetgrid, or any other Twitter tool that lets you isolate a hashtag.
2. Follow our Twitter hashtag #wgbiz.(In Twitter you can use the search at the top of the screen, in Tweetchat or Tweetgrid, once you’re logged in, you’ll see a space asking for you to enter the hashtag at the top of the screen.)
3. Arrive as early as 11:45 a.m. to introduce yourself and share what your company does, as well as to meet the other chatters.
4. Make sure you’re following the host, in this case me (@wbgiz is the official channel), and featured guest(s) if any, in this case Thursday Bram (@ThursdayB), so you can send questions or follow up with them later.
5. Have fun. Twitter chats are meant to be informative, sure, but also lighter than a teleconference or webinar.

Need Help Promoting Your Women in Business Event?

I hope to see you in attendance at as many events as you can make it to- the Women Grow Business community appreciates all your support. And so do I.

This column won’t just be for Women Grow Business events in the future. If you have an event you’d like to see included, email the address on the Be Featured page with the word “event” in the subject line.  Please include the details of the event – what it’s called, a brief description, who is holding it, whether it’s free or paid, time, date, and location. Please be explicit even if the location is online – is it a webinar, online conference, Twitter chat?

A link directly to a page that has more details or a public page where attendees can sign up would be also appreciated, but is not required in the case of offline events.

We can’t include all the ones we get, but if we believe they could be of interest to our audience, we’ll do our best.

Image courtesy of Handycons2

Don’t have a website yet?

Our blog’s sponsor, Network Solutions, is offering a coupon code for a discounted domain name registration. Click here to order your domain and use the coupon code PCMKT00424 when you get to the checkout page.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Upcoming Women Grow Business Events (And How to Submit Yours)

Ye faithful WGB readers, thank you for sticking with us the last couple of weeks! I know some of you have been scratching your heads, wondering where, oh where, did your content go?

We didn’t fall into a black hole, exactly, but as we were undergoing the editorial transition, we… ok, we fell into a black hole.

I’m sorry! We’ll try to do better the next time!

But we’re back now and I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to tell you that effective immediately, Tinu Abayomi-Paul is the new editor of Women Grow Business.

Tinu really needs no introduction. She’s been a stalwart of the WGB community from Day 1, not just with her terrific blog contributions, but has brought tremendous value to our community via last year’s Women Grow Business bootcamp, her regular participation in our monthly Twitter chats as well as other social properties, and, all in all, is just the bee’s knees.

(Do bees have knees? If they did, and assuming they were fantabulous, them’s Tinu for you.)

Here’s her official bio:

Tinu rescues web sites from obscurity and shows business people how to generate leads and traffic from the web. Founder of Free Traffic Tips and Ask Tinu, she is widely published online as an ever effective, end-to-end website promotion specialist — on Web Pro News, Search Engine Guide, and more. Ready to engage on Twitter as @tinu, she’s known to say: “You can’t knock my hustle.”

But really, Tinu is so much more than that, and I can’t wait to see the new heights she will take Women Grow Business to.

Please do join me in congratulating and welcoming your new editor – Tinu Abayomi-Paul!

Former Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Ms. Tinu Takes Over as WGB Editor

Are you suffering from a nasty case of “the shoulds?”

Symptoms include: Habitual doing of what you think you SHOULD do versus what you WANT to do, feeling detached from your job, wondering what happened to that life or career dream, a general angst for doing the dishes…

Sound familiar?

Several, major bodies of research actually focus on the cause and impact of that nasty case of “the shoulds”: Confidence.

Well, “should” no more, because the Hot Mommas Project has a treat in store for you!

The Hot Mommas Project has cracked the code on women’s confidence, and has packaged it up in a half-day seminar. Until now, these teachings were only available inside the classroom of an exclusive, nationally ranked Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership course.

Today, The Hot Mommas Project brings you groundbreaking research and the best practices in leadership education. The result:  To help YOU solve, improve, and reach higher; a real world toolkit with the guidance to use it. In the Sis U Bootcamp coming up, you’ll:

• Understand the hard-hitting facts behind the value of women and girls in society. We raise GDPs and company profitability. There’s a reason. Learn what we can do to bring it to the forefront.
• Learn about the “confidence crisis” and how to neutralize it. It’s rampant among women and girls, but we’re so well educated and awesome, we’ve been excelling in spite of it.
• Master the Sisterhood of Success Equation: GRIP, GOAL, GET and see how you can replicate this in your career in any situation ranging from work life balance to salary negotiation to running for office.
• Experience one of the most addictive mentorship exercises ever, and walk out with “Your 5″ – what their research shows is the make-or-break between mediocrity or pursuing your true potential.
• End strong with a pay it forward plan – because that’s how the Sisterhood of Success rolls.

Here are the deets:

When: Saturday, October 15th, 2011, 10 am to 1 pm

Where: The George Washington University School of Business, CFEE

How much: $99 with our special discount code until October 7^th (30% off original ticket price)

How to get the discount: Register here and enter the code wgbiz

With whom: Kathy Korman Frey, The Hot Mommas® Project Founder, Harvard MBA, Entrepreneur in Residence and Professor of the award-winning Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership class at The George Washington University School of Business, Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence.

Having heard from Kathy during last year’s #wgbiz bootcamp, I can tell you she is a terrific speaker, energizing, and knows how to put you to work. So I strongly suggest you sign up soon. It’ll probably be the best $99 you’ve spent in a while. Remember, the special discounted WGB rate is good through Oct. 7, so don’t delay!

Image: snigl3t via Flickr, Creative Commons

Outgoing Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Sis U Bootcamp Aims to Turn Shoulds Into Coulds

From our friends at  American Express OPEN and WIPP:

Small businesses received $98 billion in government contracting opportunities in 2010. Despite this enticing number, many small businesses are staying on the sidelines and missing their fair share. The federal government has a benchmark goal of awarding 23 percent of spending to small businesses and an additional 5 percent to women-owned small businesses.

To help business owners claim their full share, American Express OPEN and Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) are offering a free, one hour tutorial on Wednesday, August 17^th. This session will provide top level guidance on what business owners should be doing after they complete their registration on the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) – the primary vendor database for the federal government.

Topics discussed in this webinar include:

• A review of the CCR record
• SBA profile
• The Small Business Dynamic Search Process
• An overview of how the federal government buys products and services.

This educational webinar is part of the Give Me 5 program, a national program created by American Express OPEN and WIPP to help women business owners get a leg up on selling to the world’s largest customer; the U.S. government. The Give Me 5 program has educated more than 400,000 business owners and helped more than 28,000 register on the CCR.

The 4-1-1:

Date: Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Time: 3-4pm ET / 12-1pm PT

Where: Virtual

To register and for more info, click here.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Event Alert: Free Webinar Tomorrow on Winning Government Contracts