Personal Branding Summit - 8 November 2007

We want to return favour to Megan Fitzgerald and mention an upcoming event at her request. Megan is an American expat in Italy. She is also a Career & Branding Coach who helped us out with an Expat Confession recently about A Portable Career. If you are interested in a free telesummit on Personal Branding, with a big list of guest speakers, please see Megan's blog entry for a further explanation of the event and some details of all of the guest speakers. Thanks.

PS. Megan tells us that the entire event is completely volunteer and that their goal is to raise 100,000 USD for their social cause partner KIVA (who facilitates small loans to entrepreneurs from developing countries to help them aspire to economic independence).

Final day at the Worldwide ERC Conference

Friday was the final day at the conference. I met many workforce mobility professionals from around the globe as well as real estate professionals from the United States.

I attended many interesting sessions (Ask the Experts on Critical Global Mobility Issues and Ensuring Consistent and Professional Destination Services in Every Corner of the World) on global mobility, providing an opportunity to learn and network.

I also visited the exhibition hall where many companies where marketing their services to companies to help them areas such as tax and immigration, housing, destination service, relocation amoung others.

The final speaker at the conference, Scott Friedman who is a humorist, made us laugh about the events and speeches that took place over the two-day event. And made us think about not taking ourselves so seriously.

Things to think about as I wait for my plane back to Mexico.

Jill at the Worldwide ERC Conference

I spent a very interesting day at the Worldwide ERC Conference taking place in Denver, Colorado. There are about 1500 professionals here from corporate relocation managers to destination service providers from real estate agents to relocation companies. The two-day conference is full of interesting sessions with speakers from all over the world. In fact there are people from over 60 different countries.

The day started with keynote speaker Marshall Goldsmith PhD, a well known executive coach. He told us to focus on changing only one thing about ourselves at a time and really make that happen. One area he said everyone can improve (even the CEOs he has coached) is sending negative messages. How many times do we say "No, that is a great idea!, "But I agree with you." Why do we use these negative words when we really mean to send a positive message? These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against the other, which can lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive or person back.

I spent the day going to interesting sessions such as "Next Best Practices in Global Mobility", "Managing Multi-national Teams in a Global World--Can we Get it Right?", and "Make a Wish--Blue Sky Service Delivery Models." I promise to tell you all I have learned in my write up for the December newsletter.

My goal at the conference is to meet as many corporate relocation managers as possible and spread the news about our website. Another goal is to learn what everyone views as the main issues from their expatriates (before, during and after assignments) so Andrea and I can address those issues in our articles and interviews to help women expatriates like you.

Tomorrow is the final day of the conference with many interesting sessions to listen to! I will write again Friday.

Did You Email Us?

If anyone emailed one of our expatwomen email addresses last week, sadly, the emails (most likely) did not get through due to a technical hitch at our end. If you tried to contact us in the last seven days, please re-send your email. Thanks for understanding - and best wishes to you, Andrea & Jill.

Expat Women November Newsletter

A very warm hello to everyone. We're just putting the finishing touches on our Member newsletter for November (which we'll send out on 1 or 2 November). If you haven't signed up to be an ExpatWomen.com Member, there's still time to sign up so you can receive it!

Highlights for November's issue include:

Jill's interview with Jo Parfitt - one of our heroes. Jo has lived as an expat in several countries and always manages to carve a portable career for herself, wherever she goes as a trailing spouse. Jo has written more than 20 books on subjects ranging from careers, through computers to cookery. She helps others to achieve their publishing dreams, is founder of The Book Cooks, speaks at conferences about life on the Expat Rollercoaster, owns her own publishing company (Summertime Publishing) and is in charge of publishing for the Outpost Archive in The Hague in The Netherlands.

My interview with Leslie G - our Mentor of the Month for November, who packed up her husband and headed to Asia for her dream job!

Jill's interview with Sarah Takesh - an Iranian-born American, who is passionately helping Afghan women improve their livelihoods. From her office in Kabul, she hires hundreds of Afghan women to make the beautiful clothing that she distributes in Europe, North America, and the Pacific rim. Thus helping the Afghan economy and improving the lives of Afghan people. What an amazing woman!

The second and final instalment of my WIN Forum Norway 2007 Report... and much, much more!

Wishing you a fabulous ending to your week,

Andrea.

Worldwide ERC Conference in Denver, October 2007

Dear All,

I will be heading to Denver, Colorado on October 24th to the Worldwide ERC Conference. This conference is for HR professionals.

I hope to learn about what the new trends in supporting expatriates and their families and spreading the news about our website.

If you will be attending, I would love to try and meet up with you!

Jill

Mexico Accueil REVista Magazine and ExpatWomen.com

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the French ladies group in Mexico City, Mexico Accueil, about ExpatWomen.com. It was a great honor to have an article appear in the October 2007 edition of theír club's magazine, REVista.

Mexico Acceuil is a member of the FIAFE (Féderation Internationale des Accueils Francais et Francophones a l'Étranger) and has about 400 active members. This very well organized and friendly group plans trips around the city and activities for children. Their magazine REVista is a monthly color printed magazine full of interesting articles about the city of Mexico and life there. They also have a very useful color printed, spiral bound book called, le guide, which is full of addresses and telephone numbers to help French speakers settle in faster.

Our goal is to spread the word about ExpatWomen.com by talking to expatriate women's organizations worldwide and hopefully getting some press in their printed or online newsletters-- so this was a great step in the right direction!

Until I blog again,

Jill

The Final Word on WIN 2007 in Norway

Hi Everyone,

I wrote a long post a few days ago about WIN and my trip home, but I must have walked under a ladder that day, as just as I was signing off, I got what those in the computer industry often refer to as the "blue-kiss-of-death-screen" that said that my computer was starting to purge all of its memory! Needless to say that the "off" button was pressed immediately and I've been half-scared to log-in ever since. (True story.)

Anyway, if you're looking for more news from WIN, please just visit our website. The Part-One report is up now. Part-Two will be there when we re-do our homepage for November. If you were at WIN and happily smiled when I took your photo there last week but you cannot find your photo in Part-One, it will be in Part-Two in November, so please check our site again then.

And to all of the fabulous women that I met at WIN - thanks for your kindness and great energy last week. I wish you all amazing success - both your work lives and in your personal lives. x

In terms of the trip home, thankfully it was relatively uneventful, if you don't count the dash for the gate for the first flight, due to the airline keeping us standing in the Oslo check-in queue for 2 hours and issuing us boarding passes that said the gate had closed prior to the ticket being issued. (No joke)

The trip was just very, very, very long. Anyone who has travelled that far (Norway to Australia, with 4 flights plus buses at either end) will know that whilst you certainly feel like back-replacement surgery at the end... a few days later all is semi-forgotten and you start thinking about where you'd like to travel next. True? ;-)

I wish everyone a wonderful weekend!

Andrea