WorldCity Business Magazine

President's Note

by Ken Roberts

We’re more committed than ever to South Florida, even as we cast our trade net farther. Check out www.worldcityweb.com for proof.

WorldCity has a new web site and it contains surprises for those of you who have come to know us as the source of information on everything multinational and international in South Florida.

That’s because our home page provides a gateway to information on not only Miami but also Houston, Atlanta and Savannah, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and New York. We’re stepping out a bit.

We are, of course, as committed to South Florida as ever. That is evident in the bounty of South Florida information on our web site. We also have been improving our magazine over the last several months. (We hope you’ve noticed.) And we’ll be posting the content of this issue at www.worldcityweb.com .

Over time, all the articles that have appeared in WorldCity since its 1998 founding will be available to subscribers.

We also have good news for the many companies that have purchased our Who’s Here multinational directory in book or CD form, or both. Now it’s all online. Who’s Here subscribers will have complete access to the database for a year, and that includes the ability to download the information. The frequency of those downloads will correspond to your particular subscription level.

On the events front, companies that sponsor our conferences and briefings, as well as those that attend them, will be able to learn more about the events and even register at the web site.

And then there’s trade. We will be posting trade statistics at www.worldcityweb.com for those of you who want to keep up with key indicators and other developments linked to the almost $66 billion in imports and exports moving in and out of South Florida’s airports and seaports annually.

We encourage you to sign up to receive the e-mail alerts that we offer at no charge. Those alerts will cover a range of information, from the new multinationals we’ve discovered for our Who’s Here directory we’re adding close to a dozen companies each month to a recent promotion or firing to a reminder about an event that might be of interest.

It is all about adding depth to our efforts to create a community for South Florida’s global business leaders.

Beyond South Florida, we are stepping out a bit in a partnership with The Datamyne, an entrepreneurial Miami-based company that provides detailed intelligence on trade flows. With our home-page gateways to other cities, we are providing a more detailed look at how multiple communities trade with the world.

As part of this expansion, we will host half-day events and produce TradeNumbers publications in those new cities after first launching U.S. TradeNumbers here in Miami. That takes place April 21 with an all-day event at the Hotel Sofitel. We have a lineup of outstanding speakers. The gathering offers incredible opportunities to meet other multinational executives and learn about their businesses.

Of course, you can register for the event at www.worldcityweb.com.

Those TradeNumbers publications will be similar to the one we have produced for Miami for the last five years, sponsored each year by the Miami-Dade County International Trade Consortium.

With the annual statistics now released, we are hard at work producing the sixth Miami TradeNumbers and the third FTAA-related TradeAmericas as well as U.S. TradeNumbers and TradeNumbers publications for the Atlanta/Savannah, Houston, New York, Boston and Los Angeles Customs districts.

To get a sense of how those communities trade with the world, take a look at the pull-out poster in this issue, a wonderful new innovation that will find its way to many a wall across the country and world.

Whether through our web site, our magazine, our events or our trade publications, we are working hard to get the word out that international business is enormously beneficial to not only those of us in trade-friendly South Florida but across the nation and world.

Let us know what you think of our web site, and how we can make it even better.