I have a problem: I'm trying to pull some pods data into a sidebar widget. I have set up a plugin which creates and registers the widget in WordPress, but when I add the following code to initiate my pods data, I get the following error message:

Fatal error: Call to a member function findRecords() on a non-object in C:\webserver\public_html\ael\wp-content\plugins\sidebar-plugin.php on line 39

Here is an excerpt of the code I'm using to get the data:

$events = new Pod('events');

$orderby    = 'date ASC';
$portfolio->findRecords($orderby); //order by here
$total_rows = $portfolio->getTotalRows();
if( $total_rows>0 ) :
    while ( $events->fetchRecord() ) :
        //set variables
        $name = $events->get_field('name');
        $date = $events->get_field('date');
        $location = $events->get_field('location');
        ?>
            ... data goes here ...
        <?php endwhile;
    endif; ?>

It seems that the Pod() method is not registering when I call it from within my plugin - can anyone offer any help on this?

Thanks in advance!