Let's Celebrate!

Home Enterprise Day is happening on Friday, November 20th and Enterprise Nation (a resource website I founded in 2006) members are making plans to celebrate.

The Day marks the first national celebration of home business. It's being held as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week and the aim is to encourage more people to start a business from home and support existing home businesses to grow. There are a number of ways you can get involved:

Attend the Enterprise Nation Conference

We're hosting a national conference on the Day with a top line-up of speakers who will inform and inspire. Speakers like Doug Richard (former Dragon & CEO, School for Startups), Louise Campbell (founder, Myehive.com) and, from the world of media Lisa Sykes (Features Editor, Country Living), Jenny Culshaw (Producer, Working Lunch) and Jimmy Leach (head of Digital, The Independent).  The event is being held in London and on the day we'll be launching our 2009 Home Business Report and announcing winners of the 2009 Home Business Awards. Plenty of reasons to come along!

You can register for the Enterprise Nation Conference here: Register now!

Join us on a Roadtrip

In the build-up to Home Enterprise Day, we're going on a roadtrip! Starting in Scotland and traveling south, I'll be interviewing people in their working homes, talking to policy makers and hosting home business meet-ups every night, at each stop-off point. The end result of the week will be a documentary looking at the rise of home business in the UK. This is where we'll be - please come out and say hello!

*Monday 14th September  -Scotland
*Tuesday15th September - North East (Newcastle)
*Wednesday 16th September - London
*Thursday 17th September - South West (Bristol & surrounds)
*Friday 18th September - West Midlands (Herefordshire & Shropshire)

Enter the Home Business Awards

The Awards will be open in early September with winners announced at the Enterprise Nation Conference on Friday, November 20th. We'll have the same categories this year as last which are:

*Home Business of the Year
*Home Business Couple of the Year
*Young Home Business of the Year (under the age of 30)
*Home Office of the Year
 
Entry is free and you're in with a chance of winning plenty of profile and prizes.

Run your own event

If you'd like to celebrate Home Enterprise Day but unable to join us for the conference in London, why not host your own event. We've prepared a basic sheet for anyone looking for tips on how to spend the day.

Whatever you decide to do, and wherever you'll be, I look forward to celebrating the UK's first ever Home Enterprise Day with you!

With summer conference season in high gear, workshifters are finding themselves away from their home base more than ever as they hop from one learning experience to the next. Whether you are a speaker, a conference attendee or part of the press, you'll still need to find ways to get things done while you are there.

I find that having a set list of items in my laptop bag for each of my various roles at conferences helps make my time as productive as possible. I also block out areas of time where I plan to disappear from the conference radar for about 15 - 20 minutes. This allows me to catch up on important texts, direct messages, phone calls or emails that may have popped up while I was attending, leading or covering a session.

One of the key components to a successful working conference is communication. Do not underestimate the power of letting your clients know that you will be at a conference in some capacity, and provide them with an idea of when they can get your attention if needed. If you have deadlines, take care of them before you go if at all possible (the increase of planes, trains and buses with WiFi makes this easier than ever before). Keeping everyone in the loop can avert many "fires" before they start.

At the end of the day, no matter how many to-do lists you make, reminders you set on your phone, brief blocks of time you set aside, emails you send or deadlines you meet before you go, you still won't be productive if you don't bring the right tools.

Attendee Bag

Your attendee bag is the most basic, and its contents should be your base in the other bags as well: pen or pencil, paper or notebook, cell phone for arranging quick lunch meetups or recording someone's contact info on the fly (volume turned to off), mints (you never know when you or someone you know will have horrendous coffee or garlic bagel breath), and a laptop if you have one.

Press Bag

The press bag has to keep you sustained for several sessions in a row, as you are usually there on assignment with a list of speakers as well as product or company launches to cover for your print or digital publication. In addition to the attendee bag items, the press bag should contain snacks (in case you have several back to back sessions and can't get to the snack area), water, a spare battery or power cord for your laptop and cell phone and some kind of camera (cell phone with camera, flip cam, digital camera - it doesn't matter).

Speaker Bag

For me, the speaker bag is always the heaviest. The most important part of productivity when you are a speaker is making sure you have everything you might need for the actual presentation you are making. Why is this so important? If you don't bring everything you need, you waste your 15 - 20 minute blocks of time hunting for someone who has a spare whaddayacallit, or trying to recreate slide decks or solve other problems and not doing your work!

Your speaker bag should include the following in addition to the attendee bag items: whatever AV connector your laptop needs to get your slides from the laptop to the screen; whatever obscure connecting able you don't think projectors use anymore, just in case; flash drive containing multiple formats of your slide deck; extra business cards for those after-presentation connections for further speaking gigs.

If you have the right gear and the right mindset, as well as a great to do list and straightforward schedule , your work will still get done, even if you are pressed for time at a conference.

What's your favorite way to keep track of your to-do list and keep focused when you are on the road at a conference? What's your essential "in bag" item to make it all happen?

Photo by: penguincakes