In my takeaways on the book The Venture Cafe I said in business you cannot truly go it alone. But what if you took it to the extreme, where the ideas for what your business does came from other people, namely the same people you are trying to sell to? This is the premise of the book e-Preneur, subtitled “From Wall Street to Wiki: Succeeding as a Crowdpreneur in the New Virtual Marketplace.”

A crowdpreneur, as defined by the author Richard Goossen, is, “an individual or organization that uses the strategy of online crowd empowerment in its various forms (collective intelligence, mass collaboration, crowdsourcing & others) in the pursuit of an entrepreneurial venture.” In other words, your business is solely about the ideas from others. Crowdsourcing, as I have digested it, is making an open call for ideas. An example of a crowdpreneur often cited is Chicago’s Threadless, a t-shirt company where ideas are submitted by the community through their Web site, who vote on what shirt designs will eventually be sold.

To many this is not only a new idea but one they probably would never consider. How can you give control over what your business does to others? However if you have some curiosity on the topic, this may be a read for you. Even though my own business Dunkirk Systems, LLC would be considered traditional in comparison to a crowdpreneurial business, I did have takeaways from this book.

My greatest take away is to keep in close contact with your customers. Business owners of all sizes can easily lose focus of their business and the service they offer to their customers. As a small businessperson, the input and ideas from my partners and clients are critical to the success of my business. On the other extreme is the airline industry, who plainly doesn’t give a damn about their customers. Input can sometimes be a distraction, but managed properly it can be a vital source for ideas and as a result increased business.

Another take away is that there is no shortage of ideas for running a business. Advances in technology, including Internet technologies labeled as “Web 2.0,” have enabled companies to do many great things, including crowdsourcing and being crowdpreneurial. Just think back a few years for many of the services and Web sites (e.g. YouTube) were merely good ideas in someone’s head. By keeping an open mind and being able to adapt and change as needed, companies can either stay ahead of the game, or survive in tough economic times.

E-Preneur takes the reader through 5 steps to create a crowdpreneurial venture, from the original concept to funding it. Throughout the book there are many lists, though if they were broken out more as tabular lists would have been more helpful in organizing your thoughts as you read it. The book closes with some basic business start-up concepts that, if you are already at this point, you may already have down. Where many books have a type or two, a glaring error was in citing name of the chairman of Cisco Systems as John Cisco instead of John Chambers! All things considered, if you are looking for ideas or a different perspective on business, e-Preneur is a good and encouraging read.

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Today, July 11, LinkedIn released a long-awaited feature to its service, the ability to search LinkedIn Groups. Previously, the entire list of groups was a mystery, and the only real way to find one was from either their short list pages or from the profile pages of members.

So what is a LinkedIn group? On a basic level, it is like any other group where members have something in common with another. After joining a group, you can then view the list of people in that group. You also get a “merit badge” on your profile page with the logo of the group. If you have allowed group members to contact you, then they can, otherwise they cannot. Otherwise that is it – there are no direct contact features or any way to schedule events, share files or other resources, etc. with other group members. It is up to you to initiate contact with people in the group if you want to contact them.

The search feature is long overdue, as not only did you not know the full list of groups, but there could be multiple groups. I manage an alumni group for my former employer, IDX Systems Corporation, and the first thing I did was search on the group name and found there was only my group. I then did a search on Computer Sciences Corporation, or CSC, another former employer. I am an administrator of an alumni group setup by another alumni and friend. To my dismay, but not by surprise, there are many CSC alumni groups. Fortunately the CSC group I am involved with is at the top of the list.

I heard about the new search feature because I am a group manager and received an email earlier in the week advising me of this and suggesting I may want to review the description of my group. As of this morning of the release of the search, there is no mention of it on their home page.

People want to belong to something, thus the popularity of LinkedIn groups. Groups are a huge feature of Facebook and other social networking sites, and its nice to see LinkedIn catching up. Now they are valued at US$1 Billion, it will be interesting to see their next steps in further connecting people.

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This past Monday I participated in a behind-the-scenes tour of the Chicago Tribune and chicagotribune.com. The invitation was extended by Colonel Tribune, the Web ambassador for the news and information Web service, via Twitter. For someone who has complained before that I want to know what is going on, I jumped at the opportunity, and along with me were Blagica, John and Adam.

The first stop was the daily meeting for chicagotribune.com. As the Colonel himself was not there, Daniel Honigman, their social media guru took us to the meeting. It was led by their innovation guru, Bill Adee, and staff for the site. I was impressed that as the meeting proceeded, the Web site was projected on the screen with overlays of Web traffic. As stories were reviewed, their relevance to the greater audience of the newspaper and the Web site were discussed. Where I did not assume all stories from the paper were simply posted to the Web site, it was interesting to see this in action.

Following the meeting we got a tour of the Tribune Tower, the iconic classis office building on Michigan Avenue that houses the newspaper and all its interactive properties. Leading the tour was Charlie Meyerson, a media veteran who is the editor of the highly informative Daywatch daily news email and joining us was Jonathan Ozeran who leads many of their interactive projects.

The Tribune Tower is more than an office building. It houses the history of the newspaper, which is intertwined with the history of the city of Chicago. There are the pieces of buildings from around the world woven into it, plus the awards and pictures over the decades. Many people who have been covered on the pages and Web pages of the Tribune have been through this building as well, and this video of the Tribune Editorial Board Conference Room shows just one of these many rooms of history.

We also visited the basement of the building where onetime printing presses roared and what is now the home to Tribune Interactive. Along the way we met their SEO guru Brent Payne. Other stops in the building showed us the Red Eye offices and the TV desk where many interviews have originated from.

Like the others on the tour, I took many pictures and you can view my Flickr set of my visit to chicagotribune.com. Special thanks to Colonel Tribune, Daniel, Charlie and everyone else whose workday we disrupted somewhat, but in return helped the public learn what it takes to make the World’s Greatest Newspaper and its accompanying Web site.

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The next likemind coffee will be Friday, July 18, 2008 in dozens of cities around the world. In Chicago, it will be at Gallery 37 Cafe, 66 E. Randolph, at the corner of Wabash in the Loop in the Gallery 37 building. Note the cafe opens right at 8.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, et. al.

No RSVP is required but is always welcome, and you can by commenting to this post or at the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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A few weeks back on Flag Day I said I would be handing out US flags on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. In the end, it was a successful event, but it didn’t start that way.

Positioned next to the Wrigley Building, I stood with arms extended and a flag in each hand shouting, “Happy Flag Day!” The few people who did give me eye contact just stared at me. I was taken aback as I wondered why people didn’t want a free flag on its namesake day. A few minutes later my lovely wife came from across the street and told me to tell people the flags are free – this worked for her as people were ignoring her as well. When I changed my proclamation to “Free flags, Happy Flag Day!” I was out of hundreds of flags in no time.

I should have known this from the start. As someone who walks along these very streets, there is a plethora of inundations from people for various reasons. Some want your signature, some want money, and some just want to give you something free. But with all the noise, it is hard to filter especially as you are clipping along the sidewalk. By making my message clearer, accompanied by a clearer visual of several flags in each hand, I was successful at doing what I was there to do – handing out free American flags.

If I were talking about delivering a clear message on a Web site, I would use the term “user-centric.” Looking back on that nice sunny day, that term also applied equally on the Magnificent Mile.

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