South America - Investment & Development
"Chance Business in a world without Limits"

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The three best places to view mosaic art in Ravenna

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This month’s Groupsite success story comes to us from the world of professional associations. The group is the Young Association Professionals (YAP) and their tagline, Eternally Beta, sets the stage.

Eternally Beta

Network with your peers in the association/non-profit industry. Meet cool people. Talk about interesting association-related issues. Host or attend YAP events. Interact and experiment with social media.

Oh and by the way – age is a state of mind. So anyone is welcome who thinks young, no matter what your real age might be. ; )

Two of YAP’s founders, Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer, share the following:

“In every boardroom of every professional association, the senior executives are having (or have had) the ‘What are we going to do about this social media phenomenon?’ meeting,” explains Maddie. “Some are asking ‘What is our Facebook strategy?’, ‘How are we going to attract and retain the Millenials?’, ‘Should we build our own Social Network?’ and ‘Should we care or is this all just a fad?’ Those of us who have already embraced social media and ‘Web 2.0’ tools know that this is, and will always be, an evolving space with new twists and turns that change the landscape every day.”

Lindy adds, “So, instead of trying to figure it all out first, or build our own proprietary version in a vacuum, our group decided to dive right in, even as we are figuring out the best way to use these tools as a group. We created a Facebook group where like-minded association professionals could network with each other. We called ourselves YAPstars. After just a few months, we were already outgrowing the capabilities of Facebook.”

Then Maddie and Lindy saw a demo of the new CollectiveX and the future of Groupsites.

“That changed our whole course,” says Maddie. “Even while we experiment all over the web (in places like Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and beta sites that aren’t ready for prime time), we need a highly interactive home base. Now, all of our activities direct people back to www.yapstar.org — a Groupsite powered by CollectiveX. Our Groupsite makes it easy for anyone—no matter what their experience with social media—to communicate, share and network. The new release of enhanced Groupsites will give us even more flexibility to create the space we need, including blogging, custom pages and so many cool modules. The sky’s the limit.

We hope that everyone who works for and with associations—from those just starting out to the leaders at the top—will join us on this ride. We’re learning from each other and finding out first hand how social media can work for associations of all types and sizes.”

Thanks Maddie and Lindy, YAPstars rock! Keep up the good work.

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close up shots of the Duomo of Modena

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Sort by date with duplicates included. The show, titled America United In Support of Our Troops, will feature Jessica Simpson, Toby Keith and Joe Nichols, among a plethora of other artists. Grandstand concert review Toby Keith offers mindless, boozy fun. S never shy on any topic from collaborating with the Dixie Chicks, to financing his own feature film. Sisters Sarah Weld,, and Leanne Weld,, both of Essex, came to the show decked out in Corey hart lyric black cowboy hats and Toby Keith T shir

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The Duomo of Modena is huge! It was impossible to get the entire church in one shot. There was a mass taking place the first few times I attempted to go inside the Duomo. Each mass was packed. Finally the last mass of the morning ended. There was so much to see. In just 15 minutes, the workers started to close the church for the day. I wish I had more time to spend inside the church. Modena is definitely on my list of places to visit again. Happy September!!

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Jump to the full entry & travel map Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy "I desperately want to make love to a schoolboy!" - Lloyd, played by Jim Carrey in the movie Dumb and Dumber Greetings from abroad! Similar to Lloyd in the movie, what I meant to say above was, I feel like a schoolboy again. To give you a quick update on what I've done since I arrived back in the States, I spent about a week at home in June and proceeded to move into my brother's place in the suburbs of D.C. at the begin