Examine your past; bring the best into the future. last update: January 2007 | view current episode
	Collaboration on the web There are plenty of options to collaborate. Online, Open, Town Hall meetings for small business owners: Market-by-market the local voice of the station will invite viewers to come to a special Smal Business School URL on the web to meet and talk with other small business people within their local geography, or Designated Market Area* (DMA). Each local collaboration event begins at the time the show is broadcast. However, others from around the world, once registered can say, "Count me in!" and be invited. The event is hosted by local small business leaders and runs a half-hour after the show finishes airing. Here's an episode about collaboration. These events are like a chat room on rocket boosters. Everyone sees and hears the samething at the sametime. The leader can review a case study guide point, transcript segment, and even a video clip from that episode if needed to demonstrate a point. Other web pages, i.e. of local business people can all be reviewed without opening another browser or clicking on a link. Everybody is together, all on the same page, all hearing the same voice, all at the same time. The leader can even pass the microphone to you; and if you have a webcam, everybody will see and hear you. Television has never been used quite this way -- a highly, self-selecting group all having watched the same educational television content, all then coming into a local session led by a local leader to discuss local issues. The leader of the session: The local small business advocates within the Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Commission, the local SBA-SBDC-SCORE office, Workforce Initiative, local business professors from your university, and even local business writers, editors, coaches or experts within a subject matter. This page is being expanded to open several practice activities for those people not familiar with collaboration software. It should be fun and informative, but ultimately we hope that activist television shows gain traction. Here at SmallBusinessSchool each episode could become a "must-do" event for most small business owners within their community. To make this all begin to happen, we are testing Microsoft's LiveMeeting, IBM's Sametime, WebEX and GoToMeeting. More ... Changing the nature of television Where Immigrants Can Make It Big And There are No Glass Ceilings Leaders are sometimes followers About these indexes of Good businesses What is happening today? What is possible? Understanding collaboration The challenge: Television is underutilized. It's always been a one-way street. Yet now, competition is too great. Plus there is a huge convergence that's bringing televsion to the web. You may want to review an episode of the show about that convergence: broadcasting, information, communications, education, publishing and systems (Even more). With a major super-highway running alongisde television's little one-way alley where everybody goes single-file, it behooves us to begin testing new ideas that access that suberhighway. It is not for the meek and the couch potatoes! It is a place for thinking people. Collaborating will open our imaginations, relations, and an entirely new dynamic.. Let's get together and solve some problems. Every region has problems and many wise people know how to solve them. Let's give them a forum. Small Business School Challenge: Each episode of our television show is broadcast at a particular time within the week. Most people watch television alone; there is no community. There is no discussion. As much as we have tried to get people to watch the show with friends or at work (some record it and do that), it would be so much better to create some buzz about how the show is redefining television... how it becomes a huge meeting of the like-minded ...how people from around the world discuss local problems after every broadcast! The Dynamics. The collaboration event will open at the time each episode begins to be broadcast. We will not discourage people from watching the show and "talking" while it is airing. People can get better acquainted with the software, mingle, review the homepage, overview, case study guide, transcript, and even watch the simulcast. When the session starts at the end of the broadcast, there will be opportunities for every person to get in the queue to raise a point. In each collaboration event there can be private chat sessions within the event, i.e. among local businesses owners in the same chamber of commerce or trade association. Landing page to enter. Each station will have their own special URL and landing page to gain access to their events. 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. A Collaboration Who's who Who, What, Why, When & Where. The small business owners in a local area (of a public television's broadcast signal) are invited to watch an episode of the show and then come online after that episode to discuss how these small business issues can be used locally. Future events Where People Power Works By Business, Industry, Owner, State Innovation is our "middle name" Manufacturing is coming back $400M: Keep PBS and your Station Alive $9B: Challenge to Pension Funds Sign Up, Get Listed, then Invited ...