Friday, April 15, 2011

Eat, Pray, Love: the Formula for Women-Owned Business Success

On March 31, 2011, GABA Women in Business held another event with the topic “Eat, Pray, Love: the Formula for Women-Owned Business Success” at the headquarters of MindJet Corp. in San Francisco.
Featuring stories from entrepreneurial backgrounds, Britt Huber (HR consultant, Global Human Resources) lead an inspiring panel discussion together with Esther Nio (Founder of Esther’s German Bakery), Taryn Voget (CEO & Co-Founder of the Everyday Genius Institute), Marita Roebkes (Social Media Manager and Co-Founder of Xeesm Corp) and Toby  Beth Freedman (President of Synapsis Search), who each shared their experiences, tips and insights on how to run a successful business. The participants presented examples from their personal and professional lives, illustrating the specific challenges women deal with in running a business, and how to achieve a successful outcome.   
 Some of the key highlights:
·         Be passionate about your product or service: You should do what you love!
·         Do your homework: Running a successful business includes a detailed business plan, research your competitors, customers and how to make money.
·         Prioritize your work and be intensively focused
·         Build your own professional network: Being successful is not just about working hard, but about building a strong community that helps grow your business and connect with potential partners or vendors.
·         Ask for advise: Setting up Master-Mind groups and joining personal development workshops and women-in-business organizations serve as a source of information, networking and advice on issues related to your business. Available resources include Astra Women’s Business Alliance, ASTIA, Hatch Network, Biztech and SCORE.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Vision of 100% Renewable Energy (2)

This is the 2nd blog following up on Gaba’s event "The Vision of 100% Renewable Energy - commemorating Hermann Scheer" summarizing thoughts from Hermann’s last book. And, with Fukushima as a catalyst for the transformation of Germany’s energy system, his thoughts have gained even more actuality.

The big 4 German utilities are on defense, but will keep their general strategy: slowing down change forever. Together with their political supporters they will advocate gigantic projects like big offshore windparks in the Baltic Sea and huge transmission lines to southern Germany.

If they are successful, they will keep the central energy generation model and maintain control over energy generation and distribution. They also will be in charge of running those projects and make sure that they will be delayed. And, not a single kWh of renewable power will come from those projects until they are 100% completed.

But, we do not need those projects. Lifting the ban on wind energy in southern Germany and repowering old turbines alone would lead to 50% of all electricity in Germany coming from decentral wind alone (for calculation, see Scheer’s book).

PV, biomass and small hydro can supply another 10%, and 10% can be saved by increased efficiencies. 70% renewable until 2020.

Will the revolution happen at that pace? The policy decisions of the coming weeks are likely to have a huge impact. We can evaluate them by the number of players that they enable:

  • The big 4 only, in offshore parks and transmission lines, which will not happen in this decade?
  • Hundreds of small wind power developers, in areas opened up in southern Germany that so far blocked wind?

As Hermann Scheer pointed out: There is no win-win in moving to Renewable Energy. It can only be achieved if we face the conflict. Now is the time.