Online, Open, Town Hall meetings for small business owners. Though many small businesses within a local geography, or Designated Market Area* (DMA), will get the broadcast notice of their local collaboration event, other people -- especially those who have registered and said, "Count me in" -- will also be invited. That notice will orient people to the collaboration event as follows:

1. Who, What, Why, When & Where. The first priority is to invite all small business owners in a local geography to watch the show and come online after each episode to focus on small business issues within their geography (which is also that of the local station's broadcast signal). Every region has its own unique small business issues. Each event takes place online. Everybody sees the key ideas within the study guide and the audio is currently an 800-number dial-in. The first 20 minutes of the session will be used to go through the study guide, point-by-point to see how each of these ideas can be applied locally.

2. The leader of the session. The leadership will be provided by small business advocates within the local Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Commission, the local SBA-SBDC-SCORE office, Workforce Initiative, business professors from the local university, and even local business coaches or experts within a subject matter.

3. The Dynamics. The event will open at the time the shows begins its broadcast. We will not discourage people from watching the show and "talking" while the episode airs. This a time for people to become better acquainted with the software, to mingle, and to watch TV. There will be links to that episode's homepage, overview, case study guide, and transcript. When the session formally starts at the end of the broadcast, there will be opportunities for every person to get in the queue to raise a point.

The collaboration software also provides the ability to have private chat sessions within the event, i.e. among local businesses owners who are in the same industry or the same chamber of commerce, etc.

4. Landing page to enter. You will need to know the special URL, a pathway to gain access to the event. Eventually, if there is a collaboration event that is going on when you visit the SmallBusinessSchool web site, it will be flashing on the homepage and you can gain access if you are registered and you have the client software loaded on your system.

This page will be expanded in conjunction with collaboration software provider to open several practice activities for those people not familiar with collaboration software. It should be fun and informative, but ultimately we hope this activist television show gains traction and each episode becomes standard fair for most small business owners in their community.

*Soon there will be links to take you to landing pages of IBM's Sametime, Microsoft's Live Meeting, WebEx, Google's Caucus, and GoToMeeting where you can download the software and begin to get familiar with how to use collaboration software.