project

After the session, there was a meet and greet allowance for the attendees and above all, a few guests like myself were granted the privilege of interacting with the speaker. I got the chance to ask a few questions and he gave me very valuable insight especially on areas to visit when in need of information relating to the SEC. There were also a few representatives from renowned companies that were in attendance and I got to interact with a few. Despite some turning down my requests to contact them and referring me to their business emails, I was lucky enough to get some business cards that would allow me to contact some of the individuals that I got to network with at the event. The education background I had was especially important in attempting to relate the message given by the speaker to the theory that we have been studying in class. The material was simplified without too much jargon and that was really helpful in allowing me to understand and appreciate the content offered by the speaker. This professional experience will be very helpful in the future since it has acted as a great eye-opener and a major element in the shaping of my future career. All of a sudden, I am very interested in the dynamics that surround security exchange markets.

Sessions Summary

Name:

Student Number:

Date of the Session: Friday 29th June 2018

Time: 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM

Name of Presenter: Mike Piwowar

Preparation hours: 10 hours

Activity hours: 2 hours

Reflection/ Summary hours: 7 hours

Total Time Spent on Activity: 19 hours

2018 Small Business Series - Twin Cities

I chose to attend the Twin Cities event planned by the US chamber of commerce, due to the educational benefits that I have derived previously from the small business series that is always arranged on an annual basis. This year they decided to tour around some few cities with key areas such as Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix and above all the Twin Cities in Minnesota. This event was arranged by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce with the support of MetLife company, to bring together small business CEOs from the local environs within and around the chosen cities. The event was primarily meant to bring together the CEOs and other chief stakeholders to ensure that ample sharing of success stories and expert training on items such as the creation of a brand, building a stable and reliable workforce and the latest issues that touch on cybersecurity. The event was also highly involved with a major emphasis on networking and a chance to share success stories from the meet and greet sessions allocated by the organizers. The event ensured that students and other participants with aspirations in business and other corporate related ambitions, got to share helpful engagements with established business owners and developing entrepreneurs in an attempt to gain strategies, tools,and practices that help companies compete in the dynamically and constant shifting of the economy(Commerce U. C., 2018).

The event acted as a very helpful professional development tool for any student who attended the event and especially one that is pursuing a career in a business or entrepreneurial field. Given the background of my studies, I gained a diverse perspective on the matters that relate to the requirements of a successful business. Business startups are a complicated process that requires aggressive and smart strategies that enable the business totopenetrate a market or create a market of its own. All these matters fell within the scope of my expectations, whereby everything that I learned transcended my wildest imaginations of the issues that I expected to learn from the experience. In class, we have learned the essential tools necessary to run a successful business. From the event, most of the things ranged from ‘tips that an aspiring entrepreneur can be offered to the dos and don’ts of any thriving company. The session welcomed speakers from the national chamber of commerce to educate on topics such as planning of a business, financing strategies, marketing strategies, management strategies and the risks that might befall a business and how such risks can be avoided, mitigated or absorbed. The speakers also enabled me to have awareness of the process that is effective in ensuring that I gain a clear perspective of myself as a whole complete with my personality so that I can minimize errors in the exercise of creating an investor’s portfolio for myself.

During this event, there were exercises that enabled every attendee to be paired with another using a system that will enable both parties to learn in the end. As I registered for the event, I was asked to indicate the career that I am currently pursuing and given that I am a student, I had to be offered a badge that put me at the lowest level in such a professional environment. This system is not meant to discriminate, rather, it is meant to help all participants benefit from their peers and other people that rank higher than them, in an attempt to bring those who rank lower, closer and closer to the top as possible. During my interactions, I got to receive many success stories all of which did not lack a failure story. These stories all had a motivating factor that showed the bittersweet experiences of a running an enterprise. One thing that stood out is the factor of uniqueness in all these experiences, where no one’s challenge was similar to those of others. This made me realize that I had to retain the contacts of such experienced individuals in the case that I may want to ask for professional opinions and advice in the event of a unique problem that I may experience in the future. I managed to gain several phone numbers, emails and even physical addresses that I can use in the future.

The education background that I currently have was not enough to create a clear distinguishing factor that I could use to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the materials presented in the sessions. All that I could say is, I was in a very comfortable environment that helped me learn a lot and given the personal success stories that were availed to me throughout the event, I could gain a view of personal entrepreneurial experiences from a practical and realistic angle that is free from scientific and methodical barriers. I believe that these experiences will be helpful to me in the future as I seek to expand my career beyond the employment level and towards a more independent and entrepreneurial

Sessions Summary

Name:

Student Number:

Date of the Session: Friday 24th July 2018

Time: 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Name of Presenters: Top entrepreneurs and national experts

Preparation hours: 12 hours

Activity hours: 6 hours

Reflection/ Summary hours: 7 hours

Total Time Spent on Activity: 25 hours

References Commerce, U. C. (2018, June 29). Discussion with SEC Commissioner Mike Piwowar. Retrieved from U.S Chamber of Commerce: https://www.uschamber.com/event/discussion-sec-commissioner-mike-piwowar