Black In Business

I attended my first blogging conference this past weekend and I am happy I did. You may have heard, SOBCon was a hit! This conference is the brain child of Liz Strauss. Liz is a visionary woman, leader,and compassionate thinker. She is model thin and looks me at 6ft 2in in the eye. All the bloggers in for the conference had this in common, great respect for Liz.
I missed the Friday night concert by Christine Kane and the Saturday morning sessions. I did meet Christine and she was very nice. I heard Friday night was great and a lot of information was shared.I showed up at the hotel around noon on Saturday, in time for lunch. The first person I met was Lisa Cree wife of blogger Chris Cree.Lisa was very warm, had a nice smile and it was easy to understand why Chris refers to her as gorgeous. Attendees were given a nice blue logo bag filled with great business books.
I entered the room and was surrounded by bloggers for the first time in my life. There was an energy and excitement that is not often felt in hotel ballrooms set up like a corporate meeting. I have been to decades of conferences and meetings like this but the difference was,every one wanted to be there, there was no ass kissing going on. Well, not much. The bloggers were every day people, there to learn about a hobby that is a money maker for some but an enjoyable experience for all.
Speaking of learning, the presentations were first rate, the MC, Terry Starbucker’s, glass stayed half full, and he kept it real. Terry exhibited energy and fun.
As a blackinbusiness, I counted the other blacks in the room, 1,Marcus Riley, a web developer, 2, Sharon, worked for a web design company, and 3,J. D., the author of blackinbusiness and only blackblogger in the room. As will note from my site symbol of the AfroSpear, there are many black bloggers that could have particapated not only as attendees but as presenters. My hope is to highlight black and white bloggers throughout the year so we can be friends and benefit each other. Visit some of the Afro Spear sites and I hope my brothers and sisters visit the Politcal Grind as well as other sites on my blog roll. We have an opportunity to make diversity work through blogging. It would be a wonderful thing to have bloggers embrace inclusion. It is a goal of mine to bring more color to next years event. I may be over stepping my bounds because I am not a leader in either group, AfroSpear or SOBCon, Let me know your thoughts.

I have joined a tremendous community of black bloggers that inspire me to keep hope alive. Please visit some of the fascinating blogs listed under the symbol of the Spear. I am excited to see the number of black bloggers with diverse backgrounds and opinions but with a love of black people. In the blogging community we have opportunity to learn from and about each other in a nonthreating way.
I will post later this week on an incredible conference I attended this weekend in Chicago. SOBCON 07 was a tremendous success. It would be wonderful to bring these 2 communities together, the potential for compelling dynamics will be unlimited. Since I author a business blog, I am going to make it my business to make both groups aware of excellence in both communities. I am pasting the about page for the founders of Afro Spear for your insight to this great collection of black bloggers.

AFROSPEAR

The origins of “AfroSpear” started from a discussion a group of us had in regards to developing a community of African/Black progressive minded bloggers. From further discussions it developed into an idea to create a diasporic-wide think tank type blog comprising of 6 bloggers: 3 women and 3 men. The vision was that it would focus on discussing issues, exchanging ideas and creating strategies, with the objective of developing concrete and viable solutions to tackle the concerns relating to those of African descent worldwide.

The 5 of us, who are a part of the AfroSpear Circle so far, have developed over time a relationship by exchanging ideas and having discussions and respectful debates on each others blogs. We don’t always agree, but what we have in common is our love for our community and a commitment to the progress of those of African descent, both near and far. We are made up from a variety of voices with a variety of perspectives. Lubangakene, Sylvia and Field Negro reside in the United States. Asabagna is of Caribbean heritage residing in Canada. Aulelia is a Tanzanian woman living in France. Our goal for a 6th participant, is to add the experience, perspective and voice of an African woman, born and residing somewhere in the Motherland, to join us in our collective.

So we are currently a work in progress with the objective of opening up alternative spaces for dynamic discussions, discourses and debates. We want to be a part of, connected to and add our collective voice to the variety of other Afrocentric/Black individuals, cells, conglomerations and collectives out in the AfroSphere. To share our diverse ideas and experiences, to encourage the assortment of thoughts, opinions, beliefs and visions, so that the best and brightest of us can connect and be engaged, for the progress of our people.

We have been inspired by the overwhelming support we received for this vision. The suggestions, offers of assistance and sincere declarations of solidarity for our idea, certainly motivated us to make this project a reality. Amazingly, we also saw two positive developments get initiated from this process. One, was an awakening consciousness for those bloggers of African descent, of the idea of an “AfroSphere” - which lead to the formation of the AfroSpear Nation. The second was a desire for the organizing and convening of a bloggers convention for the AfroSpere Nation. If we can dream it, we can all work to make it happen.

It amazes me when I come across poor customer service. I am convinced that many businesses look at black people like me as dumb nwords. Often times I will accept poor service because I just want to move on. When you have lived in this country as long as I have and experienced condescending whites all your life it is easy to tell when you are being treated different because of color.
I went shopping in an affluent neighborhood, River Forest, Il at the Jewel Grocery store. It was Mother’s Day and i picked out a card for my wife.Standing in line, I noticed some gift cards from American Express, they were gold cards and came with 50 dollars worth of credit. I thought my gift selection skills have not been satisfactory so I would get 4 gift cards and my wife could select as she wished.
As the amount was being rang up, I noticed a 4.95 cent charge per gift card. I asked the young man cashier, were they charging 4.95 per card. He replied no but upon inspecting the reciept, he ackndwledged the almost 20 dollars charged was a handling fee. I did not want to hold up the line so I said I would go to the customer service desk.
I explained to the desk my situation and that the service fee was extravagant and I wish to have my money back. I was willing to pay one service fee but not four. Their response was incongruous. It was unfathomable how they could utter, you have to call the 800 number to speak to American Express. There is nothing we can do.
I became unglued, who is the highest ranking manager here, I was told they are on break, I said get him off his break, I am an unhappy and important customer. The first manager came over with his white supremacy attitude and explained the same bs, I became more upset. Before he could use the ultimate way to handle an upset black customer and threaten to call the racist police, I mentioned, I would contact the State’s Attorney office.
Another level of management and common sense came to the rescue. I went over my story, including the 300 dollars a week I spend in his store, and how I could not believe they would want a good customer to leave the store angry. Other shoppers had come around and asked me what was going on, I gladly shared my story, a customer said they have a clerk mentality.
The end result was, the head man refunded all of my service charges and my wife received a wonderful card with 200 dollars of America Express Gift cards and I left feeling like my voice was heard.
Have you experienced poor service, Is it me or are black service complaints not as important as white complaints. It seem simple, provide good service, make your customers feel important, and continue to grow your business. Score one for the little guy!

I came across a[ new to me] blog called BuzzFeed.. I was lead to this site via some style buzz. The buzz in style was Prince’s new perfume 3121. that caught my attention.
BuzzFeed used the 11 best links for Prince’s Perfume announce. Blackinbusiness.org is honored to have 2 of the 11 post deemed as best on 3121, number 1 and number 4. Prince is a black businessman’s role model and I am proud to be included in the hype.
BuzzFeed distinguishes what is actually interesting from what is merely hype. They only feature movies,music, fashion,ideas,techonology and a culture that is on the rise and worth your time.
I have pasted their about page for your futher insight toward this trend setting blog. See below!

BuzzFeedFind Your New Favorite ThingBuzz Archive About BuzzFeed distinguishes what is actually interesting from what is merely hyped. We only feature movies, music, fashion, ideas, technology, and culture that are on the rise and worth your time.How it works
1. Buzz Detection
We automatically detect new buzz by crawling 50,000 of the very best web sites, blogs, and news sources. Then our technology crunches the raw data from these sites to identify new buzz that’s just starting to spread. We developed the technology to find new things just as they start accelerating in popularity and provoking interesting conversations. Our technology is also supplemented by a network of human taste-makers and tips submitted by BuzzFeed readers. These savvy humans can spot subtle trends our robots might miss.

2. Editorial Commentary
The moment we detect new buzz, it appears in a special terminal interface used by our editors. The terminal is a sophisticated interface that shows trend data from multiple sources. Our editors are experts at using the terminal to publish a quick summary that highlights the newest and most interesting buzz on the front page of BuzzFeed.com. The editorial process transforms a messy jumble of buzz data and submissions into a quick, fun summary of the hottest new buzz.

3. Buzz Tracking
Finally we track the buzz as it spreads through word-of-mouth and blogs. Our trend pages link to the most interesting commentary, videos, news articles, and debate — so you can track a movie, band, person, or idea as it grows in popularity. For each item on BuzzFeed, you can watch the number of links grow as we link to more people fueling the buzz on their own sites and blogs. When something we are tracking gets especially popular, we bring it back to the front page of the site to show how far it has spread since it was first detected.
Editorial Policy
We feature buzz that is detected by our technology and selected by our editors. The majority of the content on the site is purely editorial, however we also periodically track a product on behalf of a client. This content is always marked with the tag, so you can tell it apart from purely editorial headlines.

In either case, we refuse to link to any blog or news source that takes money in exchange for writing positive commentary. Our aim is to aggregate authentic excitement that captures what real people are saying about the things they find most interesting.
BuzzFeed Partners
We make good things popular. Find out how.

I have written about Prince as a talent in music and business. Prince is not standing still, check out his new business plans and read some of the best blog post about Prince. Check out number 4! Keep Hope Alive! I just noticed my post moved up to the number 3 of the top ten post. Have a look, see, it is a post about Inside Prince’s night club!

Read about Prince, look at number 4