September meeting follow-up

Hello to the Entrepreneurship Educators Society!

Thanks to Charlette and Lynette from Pima, Dama from PPEP, Suzette from ASBA, Lea from the Hispanic Chamber, and Lillian and Debbie from MAC for coming to yesterday’s meeting.

To those who are on the list but couldn’t make it, we all know this is a busy time of year with classes starting and schools in full swing; indeed, I was at a concurrent distance learning workshop and was a bit tardy myself.

Interesting items were discussed yesterday, both at the meeting and afterwards amongst various parties. Here is a (non-inclusive) list of activities over the coming months:

Next week: MED week workshops, include SBDC workshop at Pima Community Campus, 401 N. Bonita, Wednesday, September 9, from 8:30 to 12:00 pm, room A109/112.
October 7, Wednesday: Next Brown Bag, at MAC offices, 11:45-1:00
October 16, Friday: Entrepreneurship Scholars Society Evening Social, location to be announced, 4:00-5:30 pm, hosted by the McGuire Center
November 5, Thursday: IdeaFunding conference, all day (www.ideafunding.org)
November 13, Friday: Women in Business conference, co-hosted by MAC
November 19, Thursday: ASBA hosted major event (400+ attendees) with Harvey Mackey, noted author, speaking at J W Marriott Starr Pass from 4:00- 6:00 pm to benefit new 501c3 Business Education Center, to fund education for emerging and struggling businesses in Arizona. Details to be announced. Contact Suzette Colley at scolley@asba.com.


Now, about this Entrepreneurship Educators Society: our group represents the full continuum of venture development from formulating an idea to implementing and growing a venture:
• academic educators (from Pima and the UA) who primarily teach traditional and non-traditional students how to think about entrepreneurship and venture development;
• community educators who primarily teach adults how to actually plan and implement their venture (SBDC, MAC, PPEP);
• community organizations that help grow existing businesses (ASBA, with some overlap from SBDC, MAC, and PPEP).

This is great – we’re creating a working community that can radically impact our region by sharing ideas and collaborating on resources.

To that end, Lillian Perez from MAC said something very interesting yesterday. To paraphrase, she said this is a powerful group of people and organizations, and she would like to see it organize around a regional project so that we can make a larger impact.

In a follow-up conversation, Bob Fick from the SBDC echoed Lillian’s point and said that we can create a greater footprint in the region. The WIRED mini-grants are a nice step in that direction (to mix metaphors), with plans for over 1,000 people to be impacted by 12 different organizations over the coming months.

Lillian and Bob’s point is a good one: continuing in our informal mode, we can still impact the region – perhaps banding together for shared workshops, collaborating on grant opportunities, or trying to impact policy at the City, County or State level.

To that end, please think of larger scale projects that you would like to develop. The October 7 brown-bag can focus on developing a group project.

And please save the date of Friday, October 16 in the late afternoon. The McGuire Center will host of mixer for the regional educators to gather in a social setting, with informal networking and a more formal 3-minutes allotted to each person or organization to introduce themselves. We can call it Shameless Self-Promotion so that you can share aspirations and successes. We will provide more details in coming weeks.

September meeting

Agenda:
• Introductions, as necessary
• General conversation: courses, workshops, events planned for Fall 2009
• Distance Learning initiatives – conversation about courses planned, best practices, marketing, etc
• IdeaFunding announcements, including planned KUAT series on stimulus funds and implications for Southern Arizona
• October McGuire Center regional mixer
• Around the room