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

GreenLeaf Market is partnering with Viroqua Food Cooperative and Valley Stewardship Network--space is limited, so please sign-up early.  Contact Jessica at the Valley Stewardship Network 637~3615 or vsn[at]frontiernet(dot)net to register for this exciting training opportunity.

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Yes, we want farmers to attend but this summit is also about integrating local foods into our community vision for health, conservation, education, economic development and more.  Please help us spread the word through your area of expertise!

Supporting farmers and businesses that grow and use locally grown products is important to many businesses and ventures in SW WI.

Contact Rink DaVee

daveer(at-sign)uwplatt[dot]edu

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This month's speaker is Al Waller from Out of the Box Publishing and creator of the acclaimed board game, Apples to Apples.  He will share what he has learned as a serial inventor and entrepreneur.  If you especially have ideas for games, you'll find good connections at this meeting!

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.

Thank you!!

The original show of its kind in the region, the Green Home Show provides the community with an opportunity to explore the rapidly expanding green-building movement, to create and maintain healthy and sustainable homes, and to recognize and avoid "green-washing" that's becoming quite prevalent.

Attendees will have the chance to meet with the region's premier green building professionals, including architects, builders, designers, building material suppliers, energy experts, consultants and alternative building experts to discuss the broad range of green building option available today.

Friday, March 14th:  vendor set-up and open social, 5pm to 9pm
Saturday, March 15th:  vendors 9am to 5pm followed by music and refreshments
Location:  Green Man Music Hall (formerly The Move) located adjacent to the Main Street Station at 215 S. Main St., Viroqua, WI  54665

Admission to the show is free and children are welcome!

Visit the Kickapoo Green Builders Guild website website