Fancy yourself as a market researcher? Then read on in So You Wanna Be A Research Star? below. Then we look at what training courses the NZ Institute of Management is putting on in Nelson this coming year in NZIM 2004 Training in Nelson.
So You Wanna Be A Research Star?
There are a load of companies around the world who need your input; market research companies, surveyors and then there are a weird bunch who look for business trends, such as springwise.com.
The Amsterdam-based ecompany, Springwise, is a 'new business' intelligence firm, publishing reports and newsletters dedicated to new business ideas and business opportunities on a global scale. To ensure true 'glocal' coverage, the central office in Amsterdam liaises with partners in New York and London, and stays in close contact with the Springspotter Network - 1000+ idea spotters in more than 50 countries worldwide, from China to Canada, South Korea to South Africa, and from Belgium to Brazil.
While Springwise scans every major international and US business publication looking for new 'business to consumer' (B2C) trends and marketing ideas, the Springspotter Network seeks B2C ideas and concepts that are already up and running in smaller national or local areas, which haven't expanded to the rest of the world as yet.
Members of the Springspotter Network are paid a small amount for submitting research items. The key requirement to being a Springspotter is a healthy dose of curiosity and business nous, and best of all, they get compensated for their curiosity.
You too can contribute to Springwise's content services, simply by emailing them on springspotters@springwise.com whenever you spot an interesting new business idea. If you are interested in finding out more about becoming part of the Springspotter network, check out the Springwise website at http://www.springwise.com/springspotters.html and mention my name in the ‘how did you find out about Springspotters’ section of the sign-up form.
The New Zealand Institute of Management (NZIM) will be bringing a number of one-day training programmes to Nelson during 2004 that may be of interest and great value to yourself, your team or one of your colleagues.
For more information or registration details, please contact Angeline White at NZIM Central Division on 0800 373 700 or fax 04 495 8301.
If you plan on attending a couple of NZIM courses, for those of you who are not Chamber members already, pull your finger out and add your business voice to the wealth of members in the area. The Nelson-Tasman Chamber of Commerce - or Commerce Nelson - leads business best practice in the region, advocates on your behalf, recognises and celebrates business success, provides excellent networking opportunities, international certifications and contacts, and give you all the local business news through Commerce Comment. All for a very minimal fee.
Contact Sarah-Jane on Sarah-Jane@commerce.org.nz or phone on 03 548 1363.
Hiding your mailing list - using the bcc field - when emailing jokes or whatever is a great idea. It protects the privacy of those to whom you are emailing, and also makes the email header much shorter on the messages when they are received (and the text header when the email is replied to or forwarded!).
But. Anti-spam filters are now programmed to assume that emails addressed in the "To" field as "Undisclosed recipients", "valued customers" or "Recipient List Suppressed", are spam. They also look for emails having the sender's (your own) email address or a spurious email address and assume that they are spam as well.
So. To avoid activating these over-sensitive spam triggers, the easiest thing to do is to change your suppressed list title, and actually use one person's (who doesn't mind their actual email address being used) real email address.
Send the email out to that person directly, or you can set up a "dummy" contact by putting in their email address with an innocuous changed name like "Sent mail". Avoid phrases that anti-spam filters may look for and use an name that you will remember easily for your list! Some examples; "Distribution List", "My joke buddies", "Friends, Romans & Countrymen", "Circulated" or "John Doe".
Then your emails won't get filtered out and your friends will actually receive that great cartoon!
And if you can't remember how to set up Outlook for bcc, refer to issue #69 or issue #50.
B2C, Business to Consumer. This is usually a marketing term, but can equally mean information flows or value chain.