I’ve got two public presentations to tell you about. One involves me and the other involves my colleague Tony Ramos founder and president of The Integra Security Alliance, which I’m a part of.

On Thursday, November 15, 2007, as part of the “Breaking Down Trade Barriers” day long conference, sponsored by the World Trade Center Illinois, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, State of Illinois and the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce, I’ll be part of the panel for “Legal Considerations, Accounting & Cultural Considerations.” We’ll address what you need to know in order to protect your company internationally and how to avoid cultural mistakes in trade.

Besides me, the panel will include attorney Tom Thoreli of the international law firm Thorelli and Associates and Karen Cornelius, President of the international consultancy KLC Associates.

The overall goal of the program is designed to help prepare small to medium sized companies for international commerce. It starts at 8am and concludes at 4:30pm. My panel segment, starts at 3pm. The other segments include: Trade Readiness and Market Assessment, Market Development and Product, Service Adaptation/IT Consideration, and Customs & Logistics & Trade & Finance Risk.

This takes place at the World Trades Center Illinois’ headquarters at the Aon Center, 200 E. Randolph, #2200, Chicago. The fee is $120 and includes lunch, beverages, materials, etc. You may register with Shufen Zhao at szhao@wtcc.org or 312-467-2924, or if you’d like, I can email you a PDF registration form.

This past November 7th 2007, Tony Ramos, as part of the Emergency On-site Planning and Integrated Facility Security Conference sponsored by the Illinois Safety Council, ADT Security and Integra Security Alliance, addressed the issue and benefits of security system integration. The objectives being to provide attendees with information regarding best practices, trends, latest technology, and the opportunity to interact with some of the nation’s leading security manufactures and experts. This one-day seminar included presentations on Emergency Planning Regulations, OSHA, War on Terrorism, FBI, Illinois Emergency Management (IEMA), On-site Emergency Planning, ISC and introduction to InfraGuard. All attendees received a free one-year ISC membership courtesy of ADT and an “On-site Emergency Planning Guide” courtesy of ISC. At the conclusion each of the other participating organizations and companies including Bosch, Honeywell, General Electric, Brivo, Inovonics, American Dynamics and AlertWave participated in a round table discussion.

Congratulations on this Tony.