Treat your Creative side!!
This month's topic is Using Innovation to Grow your Business, with Dave Franchino.  He is President of Design Concepts in Madison, which is a group of product innovators, specifically product strategists, designers, engineers and researchers.

We will talk about:
*What makes a product remarkable?
*What is exceptional innovation?
*Emerging trends and roles for innovation.
*Where does innovation come from?
*The importance of strategic alliances.
*How Renaissance Innovators help your business.
*Innovation tools for success such as Product Design, Engineering, Model Making and Prototyping.

Please help us spread the word by bringing some friends along or forwarding this message.  Remember, the meetings are free, the second Tuesday of every month, so join us when you can.

Come early to network at 6:00 pm, program starts at 6:30 pm.  New ideas are just a spark away!  Everyone is welcome.

The manager of the Kickapoo Exchange Coop sent a message to members that is in the full story and provides more details, but below is Erin's hope that all might participate and reach the best decision together:

By participating with an open mind and respect for each other's views, we may be able to create a stronger village community with improved chances of survival, viable economy, responsible land use and river management, and social cohesion.

Our next Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club meeting is Tuesday, June 10th at the Gays Mills Community Building, 212 Main Street. Come early to network, program starts at 6:30 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm.  Everyone is welcome!

The speakers this month are Bob Starks and Loren Cade, co-owners of Vernon Vineyards Winery.

 They established the vineyard in 2001 and the winery in the summer of 2006 as the first winery in Vernon County.  They will share what they learned through their experience on "How to Survive as a New Business" including researching your idea, risk management, marketing, budgeting and finances.  According to Bob, "It's important for businesses to work together to promote each other's business."  Hear his perspective on "How getting involved in your community can help your business."

For more information contact Sue Noble, Vernon County Economic Development Association at snoble(at)veda-wi.org or 637-5396 and Laura Brown, Crawford County UW Extension at laura.brown(at)ces.uwex.edu or 326-0224.

This month's topic is networking,  "Making the Right Connections for Your Invention or Business" with Julann Jatczak from the Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corporation.  Julann will share her perspectives on how to make a plan for networking based on your strengths and weaknesses, tools of the networking trade, business resources, and strategies to make networking easy and fun.  

Tom Martin, School to Work Project Coordinator from CESA 3, will also demonstrate some simple computer technology you can use to enhance your networking.  His brief "Tech Five" will include tools such as Doodle, Skype, Twitter, and others.

The first email announcing the founding of The Freecycle Network was sent on May First, 2003. Happy Fifth Anniversary to us! As it would happen, we also just broke the 5 million member mark globally!  WOW! We've certainly come a long way from that first email which went out to about 30 friends and a handful of nonprofits. I was offering a bed. Salvation Army doesn't take beds as they worry about fleas and none of my friends needed it, so what a great reason to start a gifting network. When we quickly grew to over 800 members, I thought it could never work at that huge size!! How wonderfully wrong I was!

Anyway, my thanks go out to the 10,000 volunteers globally and the now over 5 million members in 85 countries.

Warm regards for our shared successes and phenomenal growth these past years. What a fun ride. If people weren't basically good and giving, Freecycle wouldn't work. But, indeed, it does work, in a wild and beautiful way...

Keep on keepin' on!

Deron