Can't see invite? alberrios.com/events/cef/0507invite.html. To be removed, see below.

You are cordially invited to attend the Consultant Entrepreneur's Forum, an idea exchange intended to increase our value to our clients and firms, and more importantly, provide a much needed vent for our frustrations about how "utter nincompoops" are running governments and global corporations .

Our next meeting will be Friday, May 11th, between the hours of 2pm and 4pm at Pane e Cioccolato café on 10 Waverly Place (on the corner of Mercer) in downtown NYC (map). It's BYOF - Buy Your Own Food, and Pane only takes cash.

Participants can arrive any time between 2pm and 4pm, but note that arriving at 2pm permits you to get more out of it. Please RSVP to reserve an optimal number of seats.

For our next meeting, we will be discussing:

1) I went to a friend's church on Good Friday night for no other reason than to pick a fight about religion afterwards. Although I was prompted to start instigating during an open Q&A forum at the tail-end of the service, I restrained myself - not because I was in "the lion's den", but because I didn't want to risk putting anyone's faith in doubt. Until it hit me: why is the onus always on the non-believer to give belief a try? Why don't believers suspend their belief long enough to accept that maybe, just maybe, all religions may have duped them? This discussion will explore the double standard that is religion-preaching and how we can navigate this path without losing our minds to our passions;

2) After a rather offensive op-ed on the symbolic banning of the "N" word in NY, I was introduced to the term "Black Rage", apparently a mental illness like road rage, where any hint of racism - from being asked to keep a loud conversation down to being called a "nappy-headed ho" - triggers uncontrollable rage and violence in black people. This discussion will explore White Rage, Brown Rage, Red and Yellow Rage, and what, if anything, can be done to calm all these raging colors down;

3) F**king the help. It appears that hiring your vice president as a f**k buddy is not standard operating procedure... anymore. (At least it's not if you're a female Wal-Mart manager hiring a man.) Well, why not? What difference should it make as long as the job is getting done? Potential sexual harassment liability aside, this discussion will explore the moral (if any) rationalization of our profession's inter-office relationships, from friends "with benefits" to outright, out-of-zip code bigamy;

4) Big consulting firms have big-consulting sales down to a science: a really smooth talker sweeps a prospect off his feet over a $25,000 shmooze-fest weekend - escorts and all. Peppering his horrendously sexist and profane "sales pitch" with complex psychology, the smooth-talker then sets the prospect up for a yes, after which inevitably follows a spare-no-expense engagement, where dozens of consultants (excluding the smooth-talker who'd manage the whole affair from his vacation house in Aspen) are flying in from dozens of cities on a project to figure out something like how to get two feuding departments to make nice. The question on all our lips, I'm sure, is how we can get away with the same thing, (with or without the escorts). This discussion will pool our know-how on getting our firms to end up this big.

If you have a topic in mind, let me know and it'll get added on. Otherwise, bring it with you...

Remember, this is a casual forum, with no expectations of transactions, unless you're using ideas as currency. The notion continues to be that there are simply a dearth of stimulating experiences in our networking travels, making this a refreshingly innovative concept. For more information, including the forum's participation policies and a history of this endeavor, visit: www.alberrios.com/events/cef/.

See you in 4 weeks!

Al Berrios
Managing Director
al berrios & co.

P.S. Craving more perspective into your profession? Read our About Consulting reports.

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