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If your job is to locate and book entertainers or musicians for a big upcoming corporate party you almost certainly will feel a bit of pressure. It tends to be worrying when you know that your boss will place the blame on you if the corporate entertainment falls short of expectations. Booking an entertainer that will be fresh, wholesome, and fun for a huge crowd of people isn’t an easy chore, but by making use of a few simple guidelines you will ordinarily be able to choose the ideal entertainers or musicians for your important company or corporate party.The primary objective is locating clean talent that will actually show up, put on a wonderfully special performance, be fun for your guests, and cause you to look great. Booking someone that tells offensive jokes may well put you in dire straits with the boss, so make it a point to search out clean and wholesome entertainment. If you can complete these goals, your boss and guests will certainly be pleased. But how must you attain ideal corporate entertainment? Just how do you start looking?Prior to commencing the search it is critical to understand and evaluate your potential attendees. Are they rambunctious and crazy or peaceful and laid back? Or could they be a mixture of the two? Being familiar with your attendees’ personality will usually assist you in ascertaining what style of corporate entertainment might be the best. By way of example, a young audience might perhaps like a comedian or noisy live party band whereas an older and restrained crowd will typically go for a speaker, company or corporate magic act, or maybe a swing band during the meal and for after-dinner dancing.The next step is to generate a listing of potential musicians or entertainers that may perhaps be an effective fit for your crowd. If they like humor you might want to put a magic comedy act on your list. Should they like to dance you need to add dance bands to the list. Should you hire a comedy magician, make sure they perform wholesome and family-friendly comedy that is fitting for everyone in the audience. Booking good party bands is extremely common as corporate entertainment, but you’ll usually have troubles if you get heavy metal groups. Stick with live dance bands that will perform current and classic songs which are recognizable to a wide variety of individuals.Along with illusionists, humorists, and live party bands you will find many other unique varieties of corporate entertainment which could be of interest to select groups. These can sometimes include Yo-Yo experts, funny jugglers, yodelers, ethnic performers or dancers, skilled dancing entertainment, and countless others.As soon as you have decided on the best type of corporate entertainment for your particular guests your next task is to find and book the entertainers. You will find a couple of methods for doing this. You can either search online for the exact type of entertainment or music in your town or you may look for a competent booking agent. Any time you want things to go smoothly you will surely want go through a booking agent. Merely convey to them what style of entertainers or musicians you would like and how much your budget is and they’ll do all of the labor for you personally.A top notch booking agent can also take care of the legalities and contracts. Using an agreement or contract between you and the performer can offer you peace of mind that your corporate entertainment will appear at the agreed-upon time and place. Without using a signed agreement many performers may cancel on you for a bigger-paying affair if one comes along, leaving you without an act. A top notch booking agent is aware of which entertainers are responsible and always put on a good show and which ones don’t. A top notch booking agent will normally lessen your stress or anxiety a lot while undertaking all of the tedious work so you don’t need to.

As global stock markets fluctuate wildly, individual investors, private equity funds and other large institutions are increasingly looking to alternative investments to provide balance and stability to their portfolios.Given the rapid run-up in agricultural commodities and food prices recently, farmland investments are becoming an increasingly attractive asset class. For both institutional and individual investors with long time horizons, agricultural land is an ideal method for diversifying beyond a portfolio of purely stocks and bonds, whilst also providing a steady stream of good dividend income and offering excellent upside potential for capital gains due to the ongoing agricultural “super cycle” as coined by noted farmland and commodities investor Jim Rogers.In the UK for example, over the last ten years, agricultural land has appreciated roughly 13 per cent per year in the according to Investment Property Databank (IPD). The US and other Western countries have seen similar farmland investment returns. Farmland prices have therefore skyrocketed, reaching as high as £17,300 (approximately $30,000) per hectare in the northwest of England to take just one example.As a result, investors are increasingly turning their interest in agricultural land investing to areas of the world where farmland prices are starting from a much lower base, thereby providing much greater upside potential. One area where this has been particularly prevalent is Africa, where hedge funds and other large institutions have been making large agricultural farmland investments. Hedge funds and private equity funds alone have purchased 148 million acres of farmland in just the last three years. Just to take one example, the UK’s well known Guardian newspaper just outlined how major a full 5pc of African agricultural land had been purchased or leased by outside investors, and that more than 200m hectares (495m acres) of land – roughly eight times the size of the UK – were sold or leased between 2000 and 2010.Given the long history of colonial exploitation in Africa, there has been increasing resistance to what is perceived by many western Non-Governmental Organisations as well as Africans as a “foreign land grab.” Whilst some of these feelings may be based on old stereotypes rather than current conditions, there is no question that some abuses have occurred. Just to take one example, farmlandgrab.org just published an article arguing that a US firm was running roughshod over the local population in Cameroon with one of its agriculture investment.It is undoubtedly true that frequently large institutional investors make deals directly with the central governments of African countries. Given the amount of corruption and generally poor governance that still exists in Africa, the investment capital frequently disappear into the pockets of corrupt local officials whilst local farmers are forcibly removed from their homes and lands.By the same token, it is far from true that all foreign investments in African farmland are predatory and exploitive. Global consultancy McKinsey recently produced a report on the future of Africa which noted that the continent had over 25 per cent of the globe’s arable land yet produced only ten per cent of agricultural output. McKinsey argued that up to $50bn/year of African agricultural farmland investment would be needed to bring the sector up to global standards and allow African agriculture to maximize its potential output.One reason to consider outside investments in African farmland is that the amount arable land globally has been decreasing. As farmland continues to be lost to urbanization, transportation networks and real estate development, the world must try to feed more people on less farmland. Africa, however, holds approximately 60% of the world’s remaining uncultivated land that is suitable for farming, so looking at food security from a broader perspective, Africa has a an opportunity to feed both itself and the world in the coming decades.Given the need for investment in African agriculture, there is no reason that foreign farmland investments on the continent cannot be structured as a win-win for both private investors and the host country populations. With the right guidelines and intentions, foreign investment in African farmland can be both ethical and profitable. The major issue is whether a set of basic principles for “win-win” farmland investment in Africa can be developed. Just as an example, we believe that the following principles can be used to evaluate the fairness of foreign farmland investment in Africa:1. The investment was directed at completely unused land, and none of the local population has been removed from any of the land since it was not in use as a food source;2. The farmland investment was negotiated directly with local villagers and tribal chiefs, so there was no chance for corruption at senior government levels;3. Farmland investments in developing countries should not simply be premised on food security concerns by the foreign investors, who may want to simply ship the entire crop production back to their home countries;4. The workforce should as much as possible be local hires who should be paid a fair wage well above the minimum for that country; and5. Finally, foreign investors in African farmland should also have at least some kind of community re- investment programme in the host country.Whilst these principles will not solve every concern of local African NGOs, they are at least a starting point for considering examining whether a farmland investment is structured as a win-win for both the investor and the local population, or if the investor is behaving in an inherently exploitative manner. One other interesting factor is that when farmland investment projects are structured such that retail investors can participate, we have seen that these types of individual investors demand that any project they are involved with be both ethical and profitable.