Promised intel...

oops - I promised this to post this - then never checked to see if the post 'took' on the WIRED blog. Ugh. My bad. Also, it's not clear I will be able to call in next Wednesday, but I will try!

Powerpoint Sharing:

The 2 services I was thinking of are no longer good options - one is kaput and the other is
charging a lot... a lot.

More sophisticated approach (but free) is Vyew (www.vyew.com) that has lots of options
(including some paid, but cheap). This one has the potential for one person to control the
slide flow, etc. Longer-term, we should be looking closely at Vyew. However...

Easy as pie (and free) is Slideshare (www.slideshare.net). Just post the PPTs online -
protect with a password, if you like, with clear slide numbers shown. Then, during the
conference call, we can all log in and whoever is leading the discussion can simply say "now
go to slide 47". This way, we can view the slideshow without downloading slides. You can
protect the slides by either changing the password or don't use a password & simply delete
after we use them.


Youth (High School) Entrepreneurship Course:

The Idaho Rural Partnership's Entrepreneurship Task Force commissioned the Idaho Digital
Learning Academy (www.IdahoDigitalLearning.org) to create a new version of the required
'Economics' course that has a major, major entrepreneurship spin to it. It must meet the
state's standards which aren't too high, but do push students toward financial literacy (which we've talked about before). They develop and deliver true distance-delivery courses in an amazing array of subjects.

IDLA's deal is that schools do not have to pay extra for students to take their courses.
Obviously, the home-schooled, et al. are a key market, but it's open to any Idaho HS student. And i really pays off for rural students.

They are REALLY good at distance-delivery and are very cost-effective. Only $10K to develop
and TechConnect has put up the $10K, so kudos to Rick & all.

Content is obviously following the Econ standards PLUS cutting edge entrepreneurship material
provided to us by the entrepreneurship training group of the International Labour
Organisation. ILO has done entrepreneurship training in developing countries since the late
1970s! They have the "Know About Business" first course & IDLA is adapting much of their
material. They will also have a series of genuine experiential exercises provided by yours
truly that will make this unique. All this will be followed by at least one more course that
will be a 'pure' entrepreneurship elective.

* Nobody has a true distance-delivery Hs entrepreneurship course of this type
* Nobody else has access to the ILO's battle-tested content material
* Nobody else has the bleeding-edge experiential approach... but that is changing.

Two or three national conferences want this presented - a real coup for Idaho.

Note: This is particularly good for the WIRED effort. There are ways to take some leadership
in helping this. Obviously, the first semester is a beta test - but the course developer & I have built in ways for the community to get involved and for the students to engage the
entrepreneurial (and economic development) communities!

Again, sorry for the tardiness...