
We are announcing program for the second "Investor Day CEE" that will be held in Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine on October 28-29, 2009.

As I do networking professionally and attend dozens of industrial events every year, I experience the same problems that everyone else does. For example, I'm not 100 per cent sure who's business card it is after the event (I don't remember people's faces and what they spoke about). The smart guys know how to use a pen or a pencil and are lucky if the business card is "classic style" and has a lot of white spaces that fill the blanks with tags and tasks. Unfortunately, it doesn't help to remember your new friend's face if you don't have enough time and talent to draw a sketch of one's portrait.
Sometimes you will find a photo of a person on a business card. A bit odd, you wonder if he or she's an artist or whatever... For example everyone at the "Kodak company" has their photo on a business card and the business card itself is printed on the photo-paper. Well, you know - it's Kodak!
So, bridging the business card with tags and tasks and remembering a persons face is a challenge. The other problem every professional suffers from is how to get rid of all of these papers and transfer the contact info into digital.
Like others, I use an "Address book" -type program to work with my network contacts and details. My choice is "Contactizer Pro" (Mac) btw. Every time I come back from a conference it takes me about a week or two to get back in touch with all of the people I've met there.
Because I'm a friendly guy I get lots of business cards and experience all of the previously mentioned problems. Additionally, I need to re-enter the information into my Address Book, describe the person, create tasks to follow this new relationship, and so on... It takes a lot of time and I need to use my eyes and fingers to get the info from a card and enter it into the program. I know that some windows-users are happy enough to have special devices that scan the cards and forward the data directly to Outlook, but this expensive device looks awful and not geeky at all.
Being a LinkedIn user helps me to get my connection's contacts info using VCF files so that I don't actually need to re-enter them with my hands. If everyone from your actual network used LinkedIn you wouldn't need an ordinary Address Book. Therefore, you're luckier than I am, cause only 1/2 of my network uses LinkedIn. Let's just say it would be great that everyone would use LinkedIn and Facebook in the near future and we will forget such an artifact as a business card.
So when your new friend is a proud user of LinkedIn or Facebook there is a mobile solution and a free applications that helps you to "get connected".
I love to use "LinkedIn App", it is pretty quick and helpful to find people on-the-go. I can read their bio and professional experience details before actually meeting them. The one thing I actually hate in both "big" LinkedIn and iPhone App is that they don't give an option to bookmark the profiles and do private comment's on them before you add that person to your network. It's probably "ok" when I use browser version - I can just copy the address of the profile somewhere and remember it...
The first method of on-the-go networking is to use LinkedIn App and search for a person you were just talking with. You need to enter his email together with a short comment on what you've just talked about (it could be useful for yourself as well, believe me :-) and send him a connection request.
The disappointment of LinkedIn is that if a person will not answer this request - you probably will forget them even faster. At the same time it could be recognized as an advantage if someone unknown just wants to spam you.
The second method is to use a "Facebook App" that is more friendly and you don't need an email address to add somebody to your "friends list". You just need to search and click "add". You can send a Facebook message right away also, with the same comments on what you were talking about. Facebook App actually gives you even more friendly possibility to take a group picture of you and your friend at the event venue and to send it. Maybe he or she will like this... Maybe not!
But my favorite way of doing networking on-the-go is by using Evernote App. This gives you a great opportunity to solve the problem of remembering the person and to get rid of the need to save his business card.
As you may well know "Evernote" is a great Application that helps to organize your handwritten notes and texts in the single app available for different platforms. I have Evernote on my home Mac, on my MacBook, and on the iPhone. All of the data is synced over the network so I don't care where from it was originally posted. The additional solution is the "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR) that Evernote does on the server-side when you upload a photo (a picture), doing it so that you can search the text inside the taken picture.
So how will Evernote help with on-the-go networking? I create a "Snapshot Note" with "Evernote App", take a picture of a business card or a badge of a person I'm speaking with, and add his name, tags, and all of the additional info I want to. I could also add his photo, but unfortunately that would be another note, cause Evernote allows you to take only one pic per note.
Then when I'm updating my contacts from the event, I just need to search for specific info I've entered before or to check all the entries. As Evernote lets you create multiple notebooks you can just add the new notebook for the current event and then go through all your notes for this event.
Off-course "OCR" accuracy depends on the quality of the photo, and all experienced iPhone users know that iPhone cameras suck :-), especially when taking a pictures of small things like a business card. The pics usually turn out blurry. Evernote promotes "Clarifi case" for iPhone 3G that makes close-up photos incredibly crisp. I'll buy one as soon as I become rich enough to buy an "iPhone 3G". Until that wonderful time I'll be a happy user of a good-old "iPhone 1".

Another instant internet celebrity named Janis Krums recently appeared while twittering the "Hudson US Airways plane crash".
jkrums: There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.
This message appeared at twitter, together with a picture taken by the iPhone even before the news companies even located the plane in the river.
Via @Scobleizer: RT: @MacSmiley BBC just reported how Krums photo zipped around the Web to millions before news orgs could even find the plane in the water!!
According to the NyDailyNews.com Krums had managed to snap the shot and post it on the TwitPic.com while being on the nearby ferry.
Can you say "revolution?"
BTW apparently the same story "before iPhones" happened in my hometown of beautiful St. Petersburg in the year 1963. You can take a look at the picture. The same like in "Hudson story" everyone survived.
Upon toasting the incoming "New Year '08", I was confident and sure it would be a great year. Everything was looking up, I had just collected the funds for one of my projects and planned several trips for each of the 12 following months worldwide to represent my company at professional events.
The trips stopped in the summer, because we experienced insufficient funds and growth stopped. Later I discovered that these were good times, because the need to cut loses appeared. Being behind on the bills became the norm. Personal income decreased and because of the dollar/rubble exchange rate, I started to pay exorbitant interest for my loans based in USD.
I don't want to sound desperate and miserable. Not more than others, anyway. This post is not going be another "Merry Crisis" holiday post, but I would like to say a few words to share my projections for the year 2009.
Recently I read the interview with Richard Branson in the russian business daily newspaper "Kommersant". In the year 2008, Branson launched "Virgin Connect" in Russia (Wi-MAX network), and started selling space trips from "Virgin Galactic" in Moscow.
He, as many other successful entrepreneurs is very optimistic about future revenues in Russia, even though there is a crisis he thinks that "Russia will not be as badly damaged as western states". From the other side, Branson thinks that "it's very bad that for the past two years Russia and the West haven't become closer, but have become even more distanced from each other...". I fully agree with both statements and with his major quote that "Wealth is gained during good times, and the empires are built in hard".
That's exactly the point. So, I'm quite optimistic about this year and lay great expectations for it. To speak from my experience it's easier to be more productive and creative when times are hard and you are starving. So the big time is coming.
Are you ready?
P.S.
Little Red Riding Hood was walking in the forest and chanced upon a wolf.
The wolf said: "You now have only two choices: merger or acquisition".
Two entrepreneurs who were friends, met for lunch
- "How has the crisis affected your business, buddy?"
- "I've terminated all of my employees to cut expenses, but they still go to work..."
- "That's ridiculous, but I have a business idea for you - just charge them an entrance fee to come to work!"
Two weeks passed and they met once again
- "So, how is your business? Was my proposal effective?"
- "Yes!"
- "Did they stop going to work?"
- "No!"
- "Did they pay you at the entrance???"
- "Yes, but they are cheating me!!! They come on Monday morning and leave on Friday evening!!!"