"It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for
Please Note: The "Letter from the President" evolved in 2001 from "Tomorrow's News" that we had previously published in The Business Forum Calendar & Report since 1984. It started out as a simple way for me to convey the benefits from conversations I have with leaders in Government, Academia and Business and potential problems that I learn about during my occupation as a Moderator of Think Groups for The Business Forum. However, since we began publishing on-line it has over the years become a personal "Bantering" from someone (me) surrounded day by day in the endeavor of Change. Usually it is whimsical in nature, and nothing more than my viewpoints on what I see happening around me on a daily basis. The "Letter from the President" therefore, has little to do anymore with The Business Forum, it is just me sharing my thoughts and ideas with anyone who cares to read them. Please feel free to publish it, in part or in total, or to pass it on. Twenty five years ago a few of us established The Business Forum, (Charter Members) under the real impression that we were just going to organize one Luncheon Discussion group every three months in Los Angeles. You only have to browse through our site to see what happened after that, and here we are now, a quarter of century later, and we are still doing it, plus some. If anyone had told me back in 1982 that I would spend over forty (40%) percent of my life having lunch with intelligent people and staying in 5 Star Hotels for a living, I would have thought them to be crazy - but that is precisely how it happened my friends. You will also notice that after a decade of running a completely naked site, we have now added advertising (administered by Google) to help offset the costs of maintaining the site. So if you see an advertisement that interests you my friends, click away! Please - for it increases my income! If everyone who visited our site 341,288 Visitors last month from 183 Countries around the Planet last month were to click on just one of the Ads by Google on our site, all of our financial problems would end! The problem is a simple one, people go to our site for information and get it from what we publish; they appear to have little or no interest in the commercial advertising we list. There is also the problem that we were formed to provide information sourcing "at no cost and no obligation", and we have done exactly that for 25 years, therefore becoming a member (even though it costs your organization nothing, as it is tax deductible, does not seem to be a priority for our visitors How I would like a hundred or so people to click on JOIN and become a member, or at least make a donation to our operations! A Thank You: I am also very grateful to those of you who forwarded our site to friends, schools, colleges and universities; (especially I thank you for forwarding our World Information pages), for today we are getting more than 2,500,000 hits from more than 175 countries every month! - and we know that students all over the world are benefiting from this absolutely free access to unbiased information - because they email us to tell us so. Thank you again my friends, it just goes to show what passing the word on can do. Please: What is also gratifying, is that IT professionals across the globe are already opting into our email lists for White Papers and updates at an amazing pace. So the task for the coming month for our friends, members and supporters is to forward our site to colleagues and friends in the Information Technology Industry, where so ever in the world they may reside. My goal and hope for 2007 is to build the largest international database of "friendly" IT professionals The Business Forum has ever been able to assemble. As an aside note, it is strange to realize that many of the once well known organizations that sponsored our luncheons over the last twenty-five years, are now gone and all but forgotten. The aerospace industry, which 25 years ago during the Cold War seemed to be the backbone of California business and once made up a sizable percentage of both our sponsors and our guests, is now all but gone, or has merged into giant conglomerates and much of it has moved out of the Pacific States. Many of the West Coast's metal and plastic Industries have also long been replaced by manufacturers in China and the Third World. A lot of the Banks, and the once seemingly indestructible Big 8 Accounting firms, that we worked with over the years have also disappeared into mergers that I watched happen as they shed loyal and qualified people to the mantra of ever greater profits and captive customer lists. "C'est la vie Capitalism" as my grandfather called it. Today it is the Computer and Technology industry that rules supreme it would seem - companies with names that were not even known back in 1982 have now become household words; and I am very proud to say that we worked to help launch many of them back when no one had heard of them. What comes next my friends? God only knows! I do hope that I will see you at one of our luncheons very soon:
John Hathaway-Bates You can email me at john@bizforum.org
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Letter from the President