My Digital Coach Blog

The Big Idea Startup Community - Women Who Mean Business!

The Big Idea Startup Community is now open for online membership.  We are very excited to be expanding our membership base to include all entrepreneurial women.

What is “The Big Idea?

The Big Idea is a startup community for women entrepreneurs to inspire and support one another started in October 2007 by Robin Matuk, a solo entrepreneur struggling to launch her own company who wanted to meet and learn from other like-minded, action-driven women.  Robin runs and facilitates The Big Idea as the Group Organizer and Editor of the website. Robin is supported by her assistant organizers, Sheryl Daida and Ellie Klevins.

Robin wanted a place where women can come to learn about being an entrepreneur without having to pay a huge entrance fee. Within the first few weeks, she had 75 women join and was so impressed and inspired by all these women. It felt so good to provide an environment for budding women entrepreneurs.  As of July 2008 there are close to 200 women entrepreneurs and budding women entrepreneurs in The Big Idea Startup Community.

The Big Idea offers exciting meetings, a forum for communication and exchange of ideas, a place to ask questions and tell us about your entrepreneurial plans and ideas. We employ each other's wisdom and experience to your advantage. We give you the tools, inspiration and network of like-minded, lifestyle-oriented women to make any business dream a reality. Through our meetings, we harness this energy and drop it on your doorstep.

Who is this community for?  

The Big Idea is for any woman who wants to take an idea out of her head and turn it into a reality, any woman who already has a business but feels stuck and needs new and fresh ideas, and any woman who wants to take the first steps to becoming an entrepreneur.

Objectives of The Big Idea

1. Provide a community, both online and offline, for women entrepreneurs to network, learn, share, and mentor one another.

2. Share the tools, strategies and systems to shift from a struggling woman entrepreneur to getting on the path to becoming a successful woman business owner.

3. Organize In-person meetups are held to help members meet each other in person and continue learning together. Learn about what works and what doesn't work from fellow women entrepreneurs.

4. Offer helpful resources and materials in one central location that will aid women entrepreneurs in starting or continuing their venture.

5. Empower women to recognize that they have the power within themselves to make their dreams a reality through hard work, networking, and following inspiration.

6. Provide publicity, resources, education, and networking events for women entrepreneurs to learn and succeed in business.

7. Inspire women entrepreneurs to stay motivated, keep thinking BIG, and learn new ideas to getting more things – the right things – done quickly.

Online Membership is FREE and although we are physically located in the San Francisco Bay Area, we are open to all women everywhere. In our continuing effort to inspire women entrepreneurs to stay motivated, keep thinking BIG and learn new ideas, we am thrilled to announce the addition of online Resources for all members. With the addition of the online Resource center, we provide a community, both online and offline, for women entrepreneurs to network, learn, share, and mentor one another.

These Resources offer helpful material in one central location that will aid you in your entrepreneurial venture. Articles, e-books, podcasts, forms, checklists, templates, and videos will provide you with the tools, strategies and systems to shift from a struggling woman entrepreneur to becoming a successful woman business owner.

Visit The Big Idea to learn more about us and to join our community of inspiring women.

Does Your Group Need a Group Website?

Author: Kathryn Beach

There are a lot of websites out there that represent groups of people - companies, sports teams and leagues, non-profit charities, clubs, event planners, collaborative efforts. But maybe you have an idea of sharing more than just bandwidth with your group. Maybe the members of your group would like to have more autonomy while being a part of a greater, supportive whole.

Who could benefit from such a group website?

Family & Friends

Sports teams and leagues - baseball teams, basketball teams, soccer teams, football teams, softball teams, coaches, managers and parents

Community Groups and associations - neighborhood associations, church groups, temple groups, home owners associations, community centers

Nonprofit organizations and boards, volunteer groups, event organizers

School groups - class websites, teacher websites, project websites, PTAs and PTOs

Social Clubs - book clubs, stock clubs

Work groups - project teams, intranet

Travel groups

Let me play devil's advocate here. I love collaborative projects but there are difficulties. Maybe not all group members have the technical savvy necessary to work with a website. Maybe no one does! Maybe group members are so busy they don't have the time to learn. Maybe one group member has the knowledge and some time, but not enough to run the site for everyone. But now you're back where you started; just pay someone to do the webmaster work? You'd lose all the benefits of allowing people to be more independent.

What you need is a hosting service for websites and blogs that removes technical obstacles to publishing profitable text content on the Web.

You need a system that makes it easy to create a website, to invite and add members, and to maintain, as well as being customizable and collaborative. Sharing information, photos and YouTube videos should be fast and easy. Instead of websites being one-person endeavors, they might easily become social projects. This would encourage individual creativity and responsibility as well as participation in a greater whole.

People are such social animals. We work at home to get out of our cubicles, make our own decisions, and set our own priorities. But then we miss the water cooler! Can't we have a website that serves as our water cooler, but with some rules and safeguards?

Whether your group is a loose-knit gathering of colleagues supporting each other's work, a group united by charitable intentions, an online magazine, business partners, a timeshare network, a knitting circle, babysitters club or jogging group - you need a time-saver, not another project! You need a convenient way to stay in touch, share knowledge and schedules, and help each other.

Wouldn't it be cool if independent participants could take responsibility for their own work, and colleagues could read about each other's research, studies, and accomplishments and benefit from the exposure to each other's readers and mailing lists? Charities could network fundraising, volunteer projects, activities and programs. An online magazine could easily manage multiple editors and topics. Business partners could delegate tasks and stay updated easily. Social networks could share schedules, transportation, successes and stories.

One person would own the website and manage the site as a whole, but no one would have to do all the technical work because there would be software in place to do all that.

As Bob Marley said, "Let's get together and feel alright!"

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/does-your-group-need-a-group-website-372637.html

About the Author:
Come read about how you can  build a group website  easily and add participants easily too. You can test the system for a month for free.