Venue Manager

The Charm City Fringe Venue Manager plays a vital role in ensuring the festival runs smoothly. The Venue Manager acts as the point of contact for the artists as they arrive at their assigned venue. They also become the liaison between the artist and the festival staff during the week of the festival. The Venue Manager ensures that their assigned venue’s shows begin and end on-time, is friendly and courteous to artists in the space, makes certain the space is staffed and stocked at all times, and works with volunteers to provide smooth front of house operations.

Part-Time Visitor Services Assistant

Purpose

The part-time Visitor Services Assistant performs basic functions of the visitor services department in order to provide a high level of customer service to the Maryland Historical Society’s members, visitors, volunteers and staff. This position also has responsibility for security functions including monitoring the safety and security of MdHS facilities.

John Schveibinz, Founder and Owner of Paxridge Technology, LLC, spoke to the UMBC community about the first 18 months a business is being developed. John has also made himself available to talk to students if they have an idea for a business. Contact Vivian Armor (armor@umbc.edu) to schedule an appointment.

If you missed this informative and exciting workshop be sure to listen to the unedited audio of the workshop available below. Also below is the slide deck John used in his presentations.

John first introduces himself as an electrical engineer. He goes on to say that his first job helped him gain an "entrepreneurial spirit". After starting and selling his business he now spends his free time doing business mentoring with SCORE Baltimore. SCORE as well as Small Business Administration (SBA) and America’s SBDC have many free resources for people who want to start businesses.

The rest of the workshop was broken down into monthly spans. Each span contained what you should be doing with your business and how you should be thinking. A brief recap is below (see slide deck for more information)

1-3 Months
Businesses are solutions to problems. If you want to start a business you need to think of a problem you can solve. Remember that sometimes good ideas are not solutions or something that the public needs. He encourages students to read the book "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries to learn more about the concept. He believes that a lean startup is the best way to start a business because you spend a lot of time getting real feedback from people, allowing you to learn quickly and "fail fast." All entrepreneurs want to fail fast because it means less time and money was spend on a bad idea or concept.

3-6 Months

After you have an idea you have tested, the next stage is to build a prototype. A prototype can be as simple or as complicated as you want. A good prototype is quick, cheap, minimal, testable, and measurable. The best thing about a prototype is that is brings ideas to life so you can get substantial feedback from a customer.

6-9 Months

After developing and testing your prototype you then need to analyze your customers. Use the above flow chart to identify where your market is and how you can be profitable

9-12 Months

Once analyzing your customers you need to take their feedback, listen to it, think about how you can improve your product/service, and then fix it! You can then start "Formal Planning" which involves developing a business plan, market plan, design documents, pricing analysis, etc.

12-15 Months

In the next couple months you need to identify a minimum viable product. This is the simplest product that provides the most customer value. For example, if you are developing the idea of something to take someone from one place to another, your minimum viable product would be a bike instead of a car.

15-18 Months

Finally you want to beta test your product! This section is "to be continued" in another workshop

Arts Education in Maryland Schools (AEMS) Alliance seeks a full-time Director of Development.

AEMS Vision: All Maryland public school students have equitable access to arts education so that they can learn and achieve in and through dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts.

AEMS Mission:

Increase student access to courses in all art forms through purposeful actions.

Join us for an awesome discussion on creativity in entrepreneurship in ONE WEEK!

This workshop will be held on October 21 12:00-1:00 pm in University Center 310.

Event Description:

Ready? Set? GO! You have a great idea, everyone keeps telling you that you should start a business, but you are creative and have no idea what it takes to run a business. You know you have a unique skill set that can help you introduce your idea to a marketplace, but the only problem is you don't have any money or any real experience on how or where to start. Traditionally your role in the workplace is to help other people make their ideas successful.

What makes someone a design entrepreneur? And why aren't more designers starting their own businesses? Alyson Beaton will offer her unique perspective and experiences on launching a business with a MFA not a MBA. She will take you through her story, from using crowdfunding to bringing her idea to a national and international marketplace. She will get in-depth on how she uses creativity to see the marketplace through a different lens. She will tell all about how being a designer has helped her succeed, and in some cases fail. She has had first hand experience educating herself using the marketplace as her ultimate critic. She will discuss why she believes that design entrepreneurs have the power to shape and transform the future of our marketplace.

Grow Studio clients include: Nordstrom, Paper Source, J. Crew, MOCA Cleveland, National Gallery of Arts DC, Walker Art Center, Chicago Architecture Foundation, Heath Ceramics, and many more national and international independent retailers

All For Kidz, America's most popular school assembly, is seeking a trained, professional performer for "The NED Show," a school assembly. TED is an acronym for "Never Give Up. Encourage Others. Do Your Best. Trainer states: "Now in our 25th year of operation, we employ 18 full-time solo performers who present the 'NED' assembly in schools every day. 'NED Show' performers deliver a powerful, life-changing message to elementary school kids around the world through an energetic and exciting character education performance assembly.