Posted today on Craig's List:

10/29: Starting a new career? (Capitol Hill)

The Denver IDEA Cafe Meetup Group Starting down a new path with a new project or campaign, a new career or new business? Want to get more involved with grassroots as an entrepreneur or newly-active citizen, or to share your experience with newcomers? Then join us! Each week we invite people to share their career, business, and political startup experience and we brainstorm. Since 1994 we've heard from people such as: Dan Brogan, 5280 Magaz...
	The Denver IDEA Cafe Startup Workshop Friday, October 29, 2010 at 2:00PM Speaker this week: Professional photographer and University of Denver photography instructor Roddy MacInnes, http://roddymacinnes.com/ What is the Denver IDEA Cafe? Since 1994, we help people turn their inspiration into effective action. Anyone who is starting a new project, a new business, a new career or a new career is invited to join us. How do we help? We share startup experience and we do brainstorming. We also give you information about how to start or join a Franklin Circle peer advisory group, see www.CommunityRoomCollege.org If we are successful, you will be too busy to come back to the Denver IDEA Cafe next week! An RSVP is NOT required, but it's helpful if you do RSVP for a couple of reasons: 1) It reserves your seat; and 2) You'll get a reminder each week you can forward to friends, family, and business associates who you think might find the meeting helpful. The first 9 to RSVP each week are guaranteed a seat until the start of the ... See the full event details, including location, at http://www.meetup.com/Denver-IDEA-Cafe/calendar/15072168/i3/cl.
Check out what members are saying about The Denver IDEA Cafe Meetup Group: "Great format, small group works best for this. I encourage everyone to try this group if you want some help getting started." - Anthony Sanchez, /MarketingClub "Good place to foster ideas" - Joseph Alaniz "The Group was warm,friendly,as well as caring. If you are looking for a group of people that will not only provide excellent business wisdom,and doing while genuinely caring...then this is the place for you!" - Dale Henderson "We all think we can't take a couple of hours to get and share ideas. If you don't do that the business world will pass you by. This is a refreshing look at new ideas and new energy around start ups." - John Gies "There is no reason in the world why any of us has to go it alone. The support is completely non-judgmental and I guarantee you will walk away with many many ideas. It's up to you to do the rest." - Melissa Bennett

PLEASE FORWARD, I JUST SENT THIS OUT TO THE LOCAL DENVER MEDIA.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 26, 2010

Contact:  John Wren cell (720)495-4949

Professional photographer Roddy MacInnes with Denver IDEA Cafe.

Since 1994, free help for people starting a new career, project, campaign or new business.           

DENVER—The new, free Small Business Chamber of Commerce's Denver IDEA Cafe startup workshop  meets from 2 to 3:30 p.m. each Friday at Panera Bread, 13^th and Grant in Denver. More information and RSVP at http://www.sbccblog.com/ or http://Facebook.com/Small.Business.Chamber, or contact (303)861-1447.

Speakers on the topic of "my startup experience," will be:

Oct 29:  Professional photographer and University of Denver photography instructor Roddy MacInnes, http://roddymacinnes.com/

Nov 5: Graham Russell, Truepoint Advisors, past Executive Director of CORE. http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamrus

November 12: Lisa Cratty, Founder and CEO of the new Teagan and Mack baby clothing line. http://www.teaganandmack.com/

Since 1994, the Denver IDEA Cafe has been helping people who are starting in a new direction by providing a free forum where successful people share their startup experience and then brainstorm specific questions or problems.

IDEA is an acronym for:  I= Inspiration or Identify the Problem; D= Develop Alternatives; E= Evaluate the Alternatives; and A= take Action. The meeting is free and open to anyone who is starting a new career, a new campaign or project, or a new business.

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My friend Amar Bhide's new book A Call for Judgement continues to gain attention. The main argument of the book is that financial institutions don't do well when management is centralized and lending is based on financial formulas rather than the judgement of the loan officer.

With technology changing so quickly it is more important than ever that the "man on the spot" make the go/no go decision and then all the little adjustments that must be made on a daily basis. Once the reach a certain size, EF Schumacher thought the magic number was only 300 employees, business enterprizes loose their ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions and take advantage of local circumstances.

Maybe this number has grown beyond 300 employees with better information systems and better management practices. But at some point, large businesses are at a disadvantage and start making dumb mistakes.

It looks to me like Starbucks is making a mistake putting beer and wine into their coffee shops, what do you think?

We'll be brainstorming again in anticipation of our first monthly "Big Event" at this Friday's (Oct 22) Denver IDEA Cafe. Hope you'll join us, or email me your thoughts at JohnSWren@aol.com. Our brainstorming question will be, "what incentives can we give other chambers of commerce to cooperate with what we are doing and to staff a free table at our first event?"

 "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong — but that is the way to bet." Fiction writer and journalist Damon Runyon, (books by this author) born this date Alfred Damon Runyan in Manhattan, Kansas (1880). His mother died when he was young, and his three sisters grew up with various family members in Kansas. But young Alfred Damon was raised in Pueblo, Colorado, by his dad, who was a gambler, an alcoholic, a literature enthusiast, and a newspaperman.

I've decided to post about the DU Alumni Symposium (see yesterday's post here below) on http://www.johnwren.com/ One inspiration yesterday at our first session, "Why do we still need libraries," regarding what we are doing here: Ben Franklin gave us our first lending library, so it seems to make sense that lending libraries would be open to helping patrons form Franklin Circles. More about that here and also a progress report about the idea of chambers of commerce hosting IDEA Cafe's across the state here Monday morning. I'm off now to DU for the chancellor's talk. Hope you have a great weekend!

University of Denver Alumni Weekend

I'll be attending classes this afternoon and tomorrow at the University of Denver as part of their alumni weekend. I'll post what I learn here for you here the next couple of mornings. Tonight the speaker at our dinner is the editorial page editor of the New York Times. It doesn't sound like Archbishop Chaput will be attending. :)

If you're at the dinner tonight look for me and let's sit together, OK?

My friend, entrepreneur Mary Clement will be filling in for me at the Denver IDEA Cafe this afternoon, and she has a couple of great speakers. RSVP if you haven't already at http://meetup.com/Denver-IDEA-Cafe

Yesterday I went to Splashmedia's CEO Bootcamp on Social Media. As a result I'll be posting things like this to my blog here and at http://www.johnwren.com/ much more and you'll see a bit less of me on Facebook. I will also be creating a new website for the Small Business Chamber of Commerce where I will post a video each week.

I'm looking at a couple of options now for creating the weekly video. If nothing else, I'll post episodes of my old show, "John Wren's TV Journal," does anyone remember watching it on Channel 53? It was on each week for about 6 months, when it became "John Wren's Radio Journal" which ran for a couple of years on various stations. Does anyone remember either show?

Finally, I just received a copy of the printer's manuscript of the AA "Big Book." Lots of interesting editing marks that show the thinking of the group clarifying as the book went to print. The biggest change was adding "We" to the first step, and changing the subject from "you" to "we" for much of the rest of the book.

If any of this creates any thought you'd like to share with me, please post it as a comment here or share with me on Facebook if you'd rather, I'm there at http://Facebook.com/John.S.Wren. One of the big emphasises at the social media boot camp yesterday was to have a conversation rather that a monolog performance, and I can't do that without your help!

I'll be back with news and ideas from the University of Denver tomorrow morning, will you join us?