I bought new Domains.

Soon, I will be available in German with even more cool stuff!

I will publish the domains here, as soon as they are accepted!

Oh, I am sooooo excited!

I MOVED!

Hey guys!

I moved onto my own server space

If you want to read my newest blog post, about how important sharing your business ideas is, when you want to start a company, go here:

http://www.krisenkindt.com

Mango Chicken Salad Wrap

I am on my way to class, so this is a crappy receipe write up (sorry) but it’ll do cause its really easy.

Remember my real blog moved here http://www.krisenkindt.com

So in case anyone wants to make it:

need (depending on amount of people you need to judge):
fresh ginger
1 mango
2 chickenbreast
1 cup soysauce
chili
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
salt pepper
cashews
salad leaves
2-3 cups plain yoghurt

Chopp up everything except the salad, cashews, ginger, chili and garlic into the standard normal, easy-to-mouth pieces.
Salad leaves & cashews stay as they are and the ginger, chili and garlic needs to be chopped really fine.

1) Mix yoghurt with a bit of salt, pepper and a clove of garlic, set aside so the garlic can spread.
2) Head a pan with a bit of oil and put the onions, chili, the rest of the garlic and the cut chicken breast in and let it heat up and take some nice brown colour, add pepper
3) Mix ginger and mango in a big bowl and mix
4) Go back to your pan and pour soysauce over the chicken (enough so all of it get some when stirring, but does not need to be covered) and let it simmer until the chicken is done.
5) Add the chicken mix to the mango mix and toss all together, taste if it misses soysauce
6) Roast cashwes just quickly and without adding oil and pour them on top.
7) Serve the bowl, and the yoghurt and the leaves separately so everyone can build its own wrap: A spoon of mango-chicken and a bit of yoghurt on the leave, roll it up and done

Its a mess though… you might want to consider eating it outside in the garden/ on the balcony

Copy Paste is fast and good… except in Business Plans.

Writing Business Plans is a lot of type work for the writer, but it’s also a lot of read work for the coach and analyser. So really, even if you are a little sick of coming up with new super-duper selling sentences, you do not want to bore the person reading it. Ever. Full Stop.

Now most of you might say: Well, duh, what do you think I am trying to do here? But really I gotta say this: One easy step to protect your reader from feeling like he is wasting his time is: DO NOT COPY-PASTE. EVER.

I have read exiting first pages of Business Plans, but as I went along I found that all the five or six paragraphs written in the Executive Summary were re-used exactly on other pages throughout the document. And even if I know the idea is great and the person has put effort in it: I can’t help but feel like I am wasting my time reading it all, if really it brings no new information to the table. I wonder if there was enough respect towards the reader, if the writer had actually ment it and is seriously trying to sell me his idea. I spend many hours on every business plan I review and I give detailed feedbacks to all the teams I coach, so this feeling can really break it.

The first page of your business proposal is what really gets your reader going, believing in the idea and wanting to read on. This why the Executive Summary needs to be the ultimate Sales Proposition in great, yet easy sentences, and it needs to lead the reader not only through idea and how to work it out, but also quickly through the team, the time frame and the needed investment. This isn’t easy, of course, and will take some time. If in the end you are really happy with the turn out and proud of the summary you have created, that is great, but don’t be tempted to go back to the other content to replace “not so super-duper” paragraphs in the various section with a paragraph from the executive summary.

You might have noticed that I said “go back”. And yes, that’s right. You should write your entire Business Plan first, control and check the numbers, review the spelling and bring the writing up the best-you-can-do.
Only then start the Executive Summary where you put together all you have learned about your idea and your plans for your start-up. Make it even better than what you had written so far. I know you can do it, because you are believing in your idea (otherwise you’d have given up on the other parts .

This way you can really make the reader believe in you and he or she will feel that someone really put effort in the plan and wants to get their opinion or will handle their money well if they invest. And if you think about it: Not copy pasting is not too much to ask, is it?

This business idea is stolen. Or is it?

I am sitting on a plane back home, my iPod ran out of batteries (so no audiobook…) and I didn’t bring an „actual book“, so I will write something.

I was unlucky to get a middle seat today (holiday eve) and my humongous and very heavy computer pretty much takes up all the space I have in this seat, but that’s okay. My neighbours are looking over curiously as I type away. I wonder if they embarrassingly turn away when they get to the last sentence… mmh. No. They don’t. Maybe they don’t speak English.

But let’s get down to business. I am not typing this to tell you about my boring, and rather ubiquitous plane stories… you’ve had them all yourselves.

So I recently decided to open up my blog to more than just the cause of human trafficking because I (being a little disappointed in myself) realized that, no matter how much I cared about the cause, I simply didn’t have as many insights to bring to the table as other people do, and just referring and linking is a little boring. I think hope I can offer you, dear reader, more than that; so let me try. Here, a recent story from my business plan coaching activities and what I find important in it.

Business Idea – Stolen, copied or taken to another level?

I regularly coach young teams of entrepreneurs and help them through various stages with their business plans, which they are creating for a Business Plan Competition back in Germany. The competition is sponsored by all kinds of alumni, business angels, companies, and venture capitalists and most of those people do their work pro-bono. In the end, the winner receives money to help start the start-up, but what all participants win is even more important: Trainings, Speeches, Networking Events; all for free.

That being said, it is obvious that stolen ideas should not be receiving awards for the great idea. It makes the competition lose credibility and the volunteer coaches will feel that their time and effort is not valued with the right amount of respect.

But where is the border of stealing an idea?

In this case, I received a really good business plan for a product for children that very well touched health issues the parents might be worried about, yet had a child friendly, cool design so kids would wish for it.

The team behind it looked awesome (people invest rather in teams than ideas, never forget that) and they even had doctors consulting the product design. The plan was well written, well structured and even in early stages they already had a showroom, test products, a Facebook page and a webpage with e-commerce and everything. They had done a competitor analysis with “all the competitors on the market” (which were more than I had thought) and they really seemed to hit a great niche. All in all, it looked marvelous and I had nothing to criticize, and suggested them for the price of the second round (there is a price for each round, the third is the last and thus has the highest prices).

A little later, I surfed around their webpage and Facebook page… it all just seemed to good to be true. Eventually I packed all the stuff together to put it away. My eyes fell on the team description again and I noticed the team member that had programmed the web page had another experience in e-commerce with a domain that suggested that it was even a similar product. I opened the webpage and found a product that to me looked the exact same. The webpage was a sales portal for a Norwegian company that sold their products there, and design, children friendly themes, all looked the same. The Norwegian company, nor the website (where the team member was still named as responsible) were shown in the business plan’s competitor analysis. The reference was never mentioned, even though they must have known those products before copying them as their own idea.

Now. What would you have done?

I decided to send another email to the committee to pull back my suggestion as winner for this team, and I wrote the team that I think that the way they had done it was by no means the correct one. I had spent hours analyzing their idea and their business plan and I honestly felt annoyed about the fact that they had hidden the original behind it.

They told me that they knew about the Norwegian Company but that they had taken it and made it better. They didn’t explain how though, and that was their biggest mistake.

Taking on an idea within the legal regulations and making it better is not copying.

Pretending it’s your own and hiding the original is.

Had they shown in their business plan, where they idea came from (e.g. in the competitor analysis) and had they shown how they made it even better and how they fit in: They probably would have won that round.

The themes were not protected, the company in China producing the product did not have an exclusive agreement as such, but the simple fact of hiding the original idea because they were afraid of being called copy-cats, made them copy-cats.

Keep that in mind when you write your business plans. Give your sources and explain why you are better. Show them what the existing products are missing. Cause in the digital world it will be a piece of cake to reveal what you are hiding to ruin your idea, but it will difficult to ruin it by pointing out that you improved the state-of-the-art.

So, do you think I did the right thing by removing my recommendation as 2nd round winner?

Please comment!

ADDITIONAL INFO FOR ALL YOU GERMAN SPEAKERS:

The Business Plan Competition is held annually and offers a great networking opportunity and much help, especially if you are able to participate in the various activities, mainly held around the Cologne area.

If you want to know more about it, check out:

Slavery in Brazil

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently published a small article about the contemporary slavery happening in various regions of Brazil. “The Government of Brazil has put in place exemplary policies to combat contemporary forms of slavery in Brazil. However, some landowners, businesses and intermediaries such as the ‘gatos’ have found a way to avoid criminal prosecution by taking advantage of legal loopholes that delay justice and foster impunity,” said Ms. Gulnara Shahinian, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, modern day slavery is more common in Brazil than most people would imagine, especially as it is one of the most developed and promising countries of all those on the verge to move from “developing country” to “developed country”. It might (will) soon be the 5th largest economy in the world. Yes, Brazil has safety and corruption problems, but they have been minimized in the last years and its economy in tourism and agronomy (cattle and crops) is enormous and very promising. Now, how can it be possible that under those circumstances slavery is possible? How can it be, that Brazil has one of the most rigid labour / work force laws especially for this farm work in the world, yet this is the sector where (mostly men) are victims of forced labour? That those who defend the rights of victims have been threatened, harmed and killed?

In my opinion, and ultimately in the conclusion of the article, Brazil has a tremendous issue with law enforcement. Simply because a law has been established, everyday practice will not automatically change. As Ms. Gulnara Shahinian says in the article, Brazil needs to really show the people that they are serious about punishing this crime. The Brazilian government could do so by passing a proposed constitutional amendment which would allow the expropriation of land, where forced labour is used. Personally, I would like to add that afterwards they have to actually, really take some land away from someone before people will believe it. (I am not assuming that it’s the only way, but after seeing how little impact the zero tolerance law for drunk driving had until it was enforced seriously, I consider it the most promising option. Btw, people here still drive drunk. Very drunk at times.)

So lets all hope that the amendment is passed, rather sooner than later.

Thanks for reading! Krisenkind

You can find the article here (english version):
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=10073&LangID=E

Or download the portuguese version here (word document):
http://www2.ohchr.org/SPdocs/Press/Bras%C3%ADlia_Slavery28May%202010.doc

Lets be honest…

Okay, lets be honest. As much as I am interested in the cause of human trafficking and modern day slavery, and hoping that, may it be just a tiny little thingy, I could do something about it. But really, I am not yet far enough in the topic, and simply do not know enough to give you more than regular updates on content that others have created.

Admittedly, I am a little frustrated with that. I am not creating content as much as I am leading you towards it through a small introduction and a link. But than again, it is better than nothing, right?

However, I have chosen to open this blog up for a little other and different stuff. For anything that comes to my mind, really. Cause in my understanding, blogging is about sharing you knowledge and your thougths as well as it is about leading people to information they may have always needed but never found.

Thus, from now on, you will find more category pages on this blog, from things that are about me and my thoughts, as well as interesting stuff that I stumble across my daily internet use, and of course, the whole reason I started the blog: How everyone can do his share about human trafficking.

I really hope that this way I can get a little better in sharing things that might interest you, and keeping up your readership.

Thanks for reading. As always.

Global Human Trafficking News Roundup (May 21, 2010)

Youngbee Dale publishes a  regular Global Human Traffic News collection on the http://www.examiner.com webpage. She sorted it by country, and you will be surprised to find that this topic needs to be taken seriously all over the world.

Youngbee Dale is a graduate from Regent University, where she has completed Master’s degree in International Politics. She has co-contributed to the anti-human trafficking publication, “Setting the Captives Free” by Olivia McDonald in 2007. She also interned at World Bank in D.C. and worked for trafficking victims and migrant workers in South Korea. (source: http://bit.ly/bWZpbU)

You can find her News Roundup from May 21, 2010 here: http://bit.ly/byDbdr
All other News Roundups can be found when you click on her name and thus publish all her articles and entries, or in the right column in her recent entries.

Brazil’s Slavery Black List

Brazil, being one of the BRIC countries, is growing fast. Other than maybe China, Brazil is not relying on foreign industries entering the country for cheaper production. One could rather say, that Brazil has natural ressources which fire up that growth. And by natural ressources, I am not talking about Oil, or gas, or gold. I am talking about soil. Area. Land. Brazils economy is driven by agriculture and the resulting industries and exports. It is the world leader in beef export, and produces 8.7 million tonnes of beef every year, as well as broiler export. Next to cattle and other farm animals, Brazil also produces coffee, tropical fruits, corn, soybean, cotton, rice, wheat and sugarcane in extremely large amounts, whereas soybean (>51 million metric tons, largest exporter worldwide), sugarcane (>560 million metric tons, largest exporter and producer of sugar worldwide), cotton (5th largest exporter worldwide) and corn (>35 million metric tons) are the main crops. In this are Brazil is leading the exports

If you have looked at a map lately, you for sure know that Brazil is one of the biggest countries in this world. Even if we subtract the Amazon Region, for it being strictly legally separated from farmland, inner Brazil still offers a tremendous amount of space with very fertile soil. Many of the farms are huge, and work with areas in the thousands of hectares.

I work in the agricultural business and I have travelled around Brazil and visited many farms in various states, producing various crops, and varying from a mere 200ha to 50.000ha. I am happy to say, that in all my visits I have not seen any farm that had their workers live in unbearable conditions. Some even had great cafeterias, beautiful hang out areas and a lot of free-time possibilities for their seasonal workers (as farms are usually far away from the city, they cannot just “go to the movies” etc.). Most of them are 100% concording with the very tough farm work legislation that the Brazilian government provides (a lot stricter than what you would expect, definitely stricter than in Germany for example). However, there are always some black sheep.

In Brazil, these black sheep are published with all their farm information on a “lista suja”, black list, where companies working or buying from farms and agricultural entrepreneurs can check if their partner is working according to the rules. The list is updated regularily and can be found here: http://www.mte.gov.br/trab_escravo/lista_suja.pdf or be downloaded: Lista Suja – Black List

Of course, the Ministry of Work (MTE) also gives an explanation for the list, however it is in portuguese, so here is a translation, followed by the link to the original:

The MTE (Ministério de Trabalho e Emprego) creates a registry of companies and individuals fined by exploitation of slave labor.
The Employers Register provided for Ordinance No. 540/2004, which contains offenders caught exploiting workers in a condition which is analogue to slavery received a new update in December 2009.

The biannual update of the Register consists primarily of the inclusion of employers who were found to have severe deficiencies and exclusion of those over two years, counted from its inclusion in the Register, manage to succeed in remedying deficiencies identified at inspection and meeting the requirements of Ordinance No. 540, 15.10.2004.

For deletion, the procedure is the following: analysis of information obtained by direct and indirect monitoring of those farms, through verification on site and through information from the agencies / institutions and non-governmental government, in addition to information obtained from the General Coordination Process Analysis of the Secretariat of Labor Inspection.

In this new update we’re permanently deleting ten (10) , as employers meet the requirements. The main causes of maintenance of the name in the Register are: no discharge of fines imposed, recurrence of illegal practices, and because of the effects of actions pending in the Judiciary.

Another aspect to be clarified relates to employers who resorted to the judiciary aiming be excluded from the Register. In compliance with the court order (injunction), the name is deleted immediately and remaines deleted until the possible suspension of the injunction or ruling on the merits. [...]

To make the new inclusions, inspection reports were analized, the postings in the system “sisacte” were searched to check the status of the cases pending, and further queries were conducted on databases of the federal government. This resulted in the inclusion of twelve (12) new employers in the Register.

The records from this update contains 165 (one hundred and sixty-five) offenders, including individuals and companies, not counting the exclusion cases under court order.

For the portuguese original on the site of the Ministério de Trabalho e Emprego go here: http://www.mte.gov.br/trab_escravo/cadastro_trab_escravo.asp

As profitable as Drug Trade – Child Trafficking in China

“Experts estimate that between 30,000 and 60,000 babies, children and adolescents disappear each year. They are kidnapped and then sold, often ending up as slaves in workshops and brickworks, or being forced to work in brothels.”

Spiegel Online, the online version of the German weekly magazine SPIEGEL, published an article today about Chinas “Child Trafficking Epidemic”. It was written by Andreas Lorenz, who is in Beijing, and published as part of the international section, thus in english.

Andreas Lorenz describes how child trafficking works in the country side and small towns of China (really, if a Policeman says “There is a children’s market in the town of Tanshan,” it really seems like all is lost) and links it to the corruption present in the country.

Below you find the first paragraph and the link. Please give it a read.

“Human trafficking, including stealing and selling children, is widespread in China. The police are almost powerless to stop it, and corruption facilitates the trade. Desperate parents are joining forces to search for their sons and daughters. But their efforts are usually unsuccessful.

Guo Gangtang sells dried pumpkin gourds in Beijing’s Yiwu City shopping center. The yellow containers are imprinted with historic figures, fairies or aphorisms — designs his wife finds on the Internet.” [...]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,696129,00.html