Strong Commitment to Small Business Owners: President Obama Signs Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act into Law

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President Obama signed the Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act of 2012 into law on May 30, 2012. Ex-Im Bank Chairman Fred P. Hochberg joined the President at the White House for the signing ceremony.

The Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act of 2012 extends the Bank's authority through 2014 and ultimately increases its portfolio cap to $140 billion. This provides much-needed certainty and predictability to U.S. exporters and their workers.

Learn more here.

Related post: Ex-Im's Hochberg Pledges $1 Billion Support for Executive Jets - Businessweek + Global Small Business Blog archives here.

Hat tip to Jim Greene (retired) for letting us know.

Taking a Club To The World

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Italy's World Cup-winning manager Marcello Lippi's job as the new manager of the Chinese Guangzhou Evergrande is to take the club to the world.

... his job is not to win over the local population. His job is to take Guangzhou to the world and he has already started. 

Read the entire article here.

Passing On Languages Skills to Millions of Students

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Starr Green is passing on language skills to millions of students.  She is a language teacher at a Leeds school, Morley's Bruntcliffe High School.

Starr Green’s lesson plans and helpful hints on the art of learning French and Spanish go way beyond her home ground at Morley’s Bruntcliffe High School – thanks to a website she appears on and which is run by the Times Educational Supplement.

Learn more:  Leeds teacher's going global with her language lessons

U.S.A.: Honor Those Who Have Served

©Laurel Delaney 2012, "United States Flag"

While Memorial Day traditionally marks the beginning of summer, it also reminds us to thank and honor all the men and women who have died in military service for the United States.

In your activities, please take a moment to read the Prayer For Peace (a prayer for the fallen).

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

The Global Winners of the International Space Apps Challenge

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A true global collaboration with thousands of people and organizations around the world participating.

The event celebrated technology development in its most positive context—using minimal resources and maximum brainpower to create outside- the-box solutions in response to interesting problems.

The six global winners are as follows:

1.  "Most Inspiring" Award to Planet Hopper (Oxford, United Kingdom) -- An app that visualizes Kepler data to allow children and teachers to explore all the exoplanets that we know about.

2.  "Best Use of Data" Award to Vicar2png (Virtual Participation) -- An app that allows anyone to view, enjoy, and remix NASA’s mission image data easily by converting
VICAR files to the popular PNG image format.

3.  "Most Disruptive" Award to Growing Fruits: Pineapple Project (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; San Francisco, US; Santiago, Chile; and Virtual Participation) -- An app that provides the optimal crop for your community by filtering a tropical crop database by location's rainfall, latitude, elevation and pH..

4.  "Most Innovative" Award to Strange Desk (Oxford, United Kingdom) -- An app that allows users to socially share and analyze the occurrence of strange events with others.

5.  "Galactic Impact" Award to Growers Nation (Exeter UK, San Francisco USA, New York City USA, Santiago Chile, Nairobi Kenya and Santo Domingo Dominican Republic) -- An app that explores the potential of unused land for the growing of fruit, vegetable and other crops through the use of location, climate and growing data.

6.  "People's Choice" Award to Bit Harvester (Nairobi, Kenya) -- An SMS-based remote data acquisition and control system for remote renewable energy installations.

Congratulations to all the applicants!  We are very proud of you and your amazing work.

International Space Apps Challenge blog post here.   International Space Apps Challenge homepage (other applicants).

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

Free Online Toolkit To Work More Efficiently Globally

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Create.  Share.  Edit.  Manage.  Host.  Poll.  Set up.  Post.  Chat.  Send.  Do all those things globally while working with files, calendars, links, groups, calls and messages.

Visit Wiggio.com

Hello Global Small Business Owners: Join a Twitter Chat Today

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Ref:  Heroes love company

In celebration of Small Business Week, two of my favorite small business experts, Rieva Lesonsky and Steve Strauss, invite you to join a live one-hour Twitter chat today, May 24th, from 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. EST.

During the chat, Rieva and Steve will discuss a breadth of issues facing small business owners every day including, but not limited to, revenue growth, talent management and retention, economic concerns, business challenges and personal sacrifices small business owners worldwide like you make to run their business.

The chat will be driven by findings from the inaugural Bank of America Small Business Owner Report.

Rieva and Steve will be available to answer your questions and provide insight on any specific pressing issues you may be dealing with.

To participate, check out @Rieva and @SteveStrauss Twitter accounts today (5/24), from 2:00 p.m. -  3:00 p.m. EST and join the conversation by using the hashtag #smallbizreport.

See you there!