Montreal Community Entrepreneurship Awareness Group

 

Title: Community Entrepreneurship Awareness Group

Estimated Duration: The project is a long term project that will be established as a community non-profit organization and will be sustained by the community for the community. The actual establishment of this project is expected to take two months for the preparation of the full proposal and to prepare initial advertisement material and presentations before launching the project.

Objectives:  The objective of this project is to promote entrepreneurship in Quebec and to link people with entrepreneurial ideas to the proper resources including funding, mentorship, consulting etc… Even though the mentorship and consulting services will be open for all interested individuals the target audience that will be addressed by our advertisement and promotion will be the Muslim community in Montreal and most importantly Muslim women and mothers.

Introduction:

Entrepreneurship is a vital component in the Canadian and Quebec economy. The importance of small to medium size businesses has been supported by a paper published by Human Resources and Social Development Canada. According to the said government agency small and medium size businesses constitute 43% of the Canadian GDP and they have contributed the most to creating employment opportunities over the past few years; while large companies of over 499 employees shed 184,000 jobs, the small firms of under 100 employees created 661,000 employment opportunities. Many of the employment opportunities created were also self employment.

Furthermore, it has been proven that self employed individuals and employees of small firms enjoy a higher level of job satisfaction than employees of large firms or employees of the public sector.

Due to the reasons mentioned above and others it is important to promote and support entrepreneurship in our Quebec community. Currently there are many organizations in Montreal that work to fulfill that objective through providing support to ambitious individuals with business ideas and other work. However, these organizations do not get much visibility among the Muslim and immigrant community in Montreal. Many of the university and college students are not aware of what organizations are out there to support them to make their business ideas come true.

Therefore the purpose of this project is mainly to reach out to prospective entrepreneurs and business people and show them what resources are available to them.  CEAG would also provide them with basic advisory on how to prepare a business plan, how to pitch your idea, where to go for help etc…

Even though the services of CEAG will be open to all interested individuals the focus in terms of outreach and promotion will be Muslim youth and Muslim women. Our hope is to empower them to voice their ideas and work to make them a reality; a reality that can help them grow financially and professionally while helping stir the Quebec economy and increase the healthy competition the Quebec market.

The advantage our group has in terms of reaching out to Muslim youth and Muslim women is that both Abdullah and Bilal are well connected with various Muslim groups in Montreal, especially the Muslim Student Associations of various universities. As such we would be able to identify the various events at which we can present or do tabling. We can also organize our own presentations and reach out to organizations within our network to help us reach out to housewives and young youth that are still exploring their career opportunities.

We are hoping by these efforts to help stir the economy in Montreal and improve the economic position of the Muslim community and help the Muslim women gain their economic independence.

Project Leadership (We can polish up this section later)

1-      Bilal Abd el-Qader: a successful entrepreneur who has initiated many projects and businesses. He also has an MBA from Concordia University and is currently a PhD candidate at Concordia in Finance.

2-      Abdullah Husen: An active student of accountancy at Concordia University who has occupied many executive positions in student organizations including R4 Concordia, the Muslim Student Association, and Rotaract Concordia.

Collaborating institutions (potential collaborators)

Entrepreneurship club Concordia, MSA, Human Resources Canada, Investissement Quebec, YES.

Methodology

The work of CEAG can be broken down into two components:

a)   Promotional activity

This includes activities to encourage young people and Muslim women to become entrepreneurs or at least consider it as a future career. This will be done mainly through motivational speeches and presentations that will demonstrate to the audience the advantages of self-employment and also prove that it is not an impossible or difficult path, but rather it is doable as long as one seeks the proper support and mentorship.

These presentations will be given at various events that the Muslim community holds. The presentations would also be presented at various CEGEPs and highschools in Montreal to show the young people what opportunities are present for them in entrepreneurship.

b)   Advisory activity

This includes i) connecting the prospective entrepreneurs with various organizations and funding facilities and ii) help them develop a business plan and help them learn how to pitch an idea successfully.

Conclusion

We believe that by reaching out to the young people in Quebec and to Muslim women we would be able to attract some of the most brilliant minds to develop and run successful business ideas that would help the economy at large and the local community through giving these individuals job satisfaction and economic independence.

Researh tools

I have noted earlier that going into academia is a long quest and require high levels of dedicaiton, perseverance and commitment. This is not enough, one needs a toolbox to proceed with.

I would put here a lot of the items that are extremly important for any research discsipline. I will follow with another list of tools that are needed for financial reaserch.

For any kind of research one needs:

1. Strong exposure to research methodology, ethics, and norms
2. Solid comprehension of statistics and statistical measures, tests and appropriate interpretation
3. Clear style for reviewing the literature
4. Access to academic scholary databases and libraries 
5. Critical understanding and assessement of literature
6. Ability to narrow down on a resaerch topic that is not too wide and not too narrow. 
7. Ability to classify and organize readings on the go

The approaches I suggest to fulfil the above:

1. Following a strong reaseach methodology course with an experiences professor. Unfortunately, I have seen so many methodology courses that fit anywhere but in a methodological paradigm. Students coming from different backgrounds into the Phd program, needs refined methodological courses that help them find their way into the academic research areana and fix their feets. I had to read a lot on my own to cover this gap in my studies. Yet, I can not claim that I mastered the methodology I should follow.
   
   
2. Invest enough time to grasp all the required stastical concepts and know the ins and outs of the statistal package mostly used for that discsipline. It would save you tens of hours in modeling and debugging if you really know the tool you are using extremly well.
   
   
3. Work with an experienced researcher on the literature review part in order to improve your skills and learn the tricks that others are following. This would be a great step to get you on track with something that is easier to collect, classify, digest and then reproduce from your resaerch point of view. There are a lot of tools that would help succeed in doing a great literature review. One of my supervisor advised me to get this book: "Fink, A. (1998). Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From Paper to the Internet. Sage Publications, Inc.". It is available on amazon but I have borrowed it from Concordia University library. There is another resource to hint on how to conduct your own review at this page:
   
   

   The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It

   
   
4. The last point I woudl like to mention in this area is the access to a rich collection of books and electronic resources. Your unversity library should have a lot of what you are looking for. Do not let books sitting on cold dark shelves. Go on and use those books. We are paying a lot for these collections and more than 80% of it goes by unnoticed for many years. In the golden age of libraries, we used to find books with torn pages. Now, I get a lot of books untouched. Really brand new. I would like to note that Concordia Library has one of the richest collections I have even seen in a Library especially for some disciplines that students rearely goes into. We are very lucky in Montreal, if the book is not available in Concordia, McGill is there, HEC or even UQAM. A wealth of knowlege waiting for someone to dig and mine into its pages.

In addition to that, one needs real tools to get the job done. I will not talk about these tools in details now. I would just list them:

• Fink's book
  
• Statistical Packages (Matlab in my case)
  
• Firefox and Zotero (For bibliographical referncing). I prefer Zotero over RefWorks or EndNotes.
• mediaWiki (Really? Are you sure? Yes absolutely)
  

A fresh start

It is not easy to claim that Phd can be made easy. It is a long term quest that needs at least 5-6 years investment.

I spent three years so far in my Phd program at John Molson School of Business and I am looking foward toward finishing in two years maximum in order to catch with the market that might collapse or might run up again. Either way, staying for a long term in here is not the best option for any student because of the high opportunity cost associated with longer term studies.

Anyway, I might go back to ponder upon the social aspects of Phd studies later on. However, for the time begin, I would like to dedicate this blog for my research experience. I do not have a long experience so far as I just strated serious research work last term only. However, I would like to present my observations in here in case someone is looking at organizing his own work in a better way.

I do not claim that I am talking about my own knowledge. Rather, I will be talking about what I am learning from my supervisors:

1. Dr. Lawrence Kryzanowski
   
2. Dr. Chitu Okoli

Dr Kryzanowski is my supervisor for my dissertation in Finance, while I am working with Dr. Okoli on a side research about Wikipedia because I have a keen interest in the wiki model from an MIS point of view.

On this blog, I would note my research observations from time to time and add everything I am learning as time allows in order to keep a reference for someone who came fresh to the Phd program as I did three years ago.

Skilled labour rules may be loosened

By DAVID AKIN
December 15, 2008

The federal government is changing a key immigration rule it says will help Canadian companies more easily find skilled foreign labour.
Ottawa is announcing today that such skilled professionals as engineers, accountants or professors from the U.S. or Mexico will be able to get three-year long work permits instead of one-year permits.
"We are trying to get all the skilled people we can to Canada quickly," Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. "The last thing we want is to strangle a Canadian company that's ready to grow because of a shortage of labour."
Canada grants about 5,150 such permits every year. Most, about 5,000, are for Americans coming to work in Canada and the rest are for Mexicans coming to work here.
"I talk to employers all the time who do not get even one job application when they put a help wanted ad in the newspaper," Kenney said. "Even though we are going into a period of economic difficulty, we continue to have a number of skilled labour shortages in certain areas of the economy."
Kenney said granting work permits in three-year increments will help Canadian companies because employers will be able to count on a skilled import to complete a project. The government says this makes Canadian companies more competitive and can help lower costs.
"This is about less paperwork, less red tape and less waiting time," Kenney said.
The Canadian rule change follows a similar one made in October by U.S. authorities that allow Canadian engineers, computer scientists and other professionals to obtain three-year work permits in the U.S. Mexico is also considering such a change.

What is God for you??

Isn't He the one Whom you'll be able to talk to anytime and without taking any previous appointment?

Isn't He the One Whom you'll be asking for anything, anytime, freely and unconditionally?

Isn't He the One Who will always be there whether you are aware of Him or not?

Isn't He the One Who will ever be with you irrespective of whoever has left you?

Isn't He after all the One who deserves all your attention, love, and obedience... isn't He the One and Only One who deserves to be worshiped?

Source: What does God mean to you?

SONY Innovative poster

It is not Sony innovation only, its partners are competing as well to deliver the best message about new products.

php_flag settings when PHP runs as CGI (.htaccess / register_globals / php.ini)

A lot of people got puzzled because .htaccess does not work when PHP is running as CGI under Apache. Searching on the internet for a potential solution does not give an easy way to solve the problem.

The easiest is to create a php.ini file inside the folder where you want to set the flags in and voila.

For example, to set register_globals off, create a php.ini with the following

register_globals = Off 

Upload this file to that folder and try now phpinfo() to see the local settings for register_globals. Yes it is off.
This setting in important to get rid of the warning you got from Joomla or Moodle.

PHP is really an amazing language.