Richard, thanks for asking. It's most certainly in our plan, although it probably won't be one of the first things we deploy. We think the hard part of the matching is that people don't necessarily have the best frame of reference on what "good" is. What makes a conference good or crappy, in your mind?

I was struck by the wide variety of goals and foci in the crowd, and wrote about one flavor of change-making Jed Emerson's goal of transforming traditional capital markets, also picked up as a treat by The Economist.

The other important theme I was tuned into was the diversity of web platforms supporting this space, and the willingness of the social enterprise / social media leaders to collaborate. More coming on that soon.

very cool, thanks for posting. like you, i've had a long buycott of starbucks. not only have i moved many proposed meetings from there, i've actively not bought anything on the two occasions when i just couldn't shift location.

and this info makes it even harder to hold out -- like my son, i may now be stubbornly fixed in one view.

but the one thing they do that i still can't support is exporting profits from our community. once they start re-investing profits in our community (IE, transform their entire corporate charter, ala B Corp), that will be the final straw in my ever weakening buycott.

but thanks for keeping us up to speed on the evolution.

awesome. better than anything on "real" TV.

Waylon, continuing to love the electronic elephant. Keep up the good work. Please include in your list:

@nuance_intel -- boulder-based consultancy at the intersection of sustainable business, progressive capital and transformative IT.

http://twitter.com/nuance_intel

just finished a blog post about progressive economics, including TechStars, Slow Money, Balle and new banking, and last week on sustainability metrics for startups. Long live the boulder paradox: http://nuanceintelligence.com/

Congratulations -- it's great to have someone as humble, smart and successful as you joining the ranks of fund managers in our community.

waylon, at one level i agree -- local and independent media are important to the core of our democracy, our culture and to mindful living. i'm a very careful curator of my own media intake, and love the work you do at elephant, having been a reader and casual supporter for a long time.

and i suspect that you and i share many perspectives on the world of right and wrong, good and bad, healthful and sickening. and we also want to live in worlds that are governed by rules more holistic than we do today. i suspect this is why you are considering running for the City Council (or whatever it's called).

but i think you have made two leaps where i can't join you:

1. taking outside investment is akin to selling out. i do not agree. i will stipulate that treating media as an investment has essentially ruined "the news," but it's amazing how quickly people have rushed in to meet that void. i do believe that media has a responsibility to serve the people, and that is why i LOVE PBS and NPR so dearly -- they get paid by the people they serve. but the sad truth of the matter is that media *is* a business, and until we can push a new corproate designation through the DC power structure, it's not going to stop. so raising capital to grow your footprint is one pretty legitimate way to do it. if that capital leverages a media owner to do things outside that media company's ethics, it's a tough spot for the owner, but that's means they picked bad investors, not that investing in media is bad.

2. also, while i steadfastly support local business, largely because i want the profits (such as they are in media) to stay in my community, it's not to call all businesses outside our community bad. we all hold patagonia up as the scion of ethical business, but there are many outdoor clothing companies that manufacture and headquarter their businesses much closer to our home. what i think bugs me about this is that you seem to ascribe a moral certaintude about the badness of carpetbagging media firms that seems to be out of what i know of your character.

i'd say, bring them on. you've got massive staying power, already demonstrated. you've got significant impact in your community. sure it's tough -- been following long enough to appreciate how tough. but your competitive differentiation -- highlighted in the first paragraph of this article -- is worth more than $500k.

besides, until we change the game, we still live in a bottom-line driven world, and as much i don't like it, those are the rules of the game.

namaste.

Nice post -- sorry to all the hard-working journalists who are suffering today.

Great move. Good to see the program expanding. We need more entrepreneurs to keep building opportunity, innovation and new jobs.

Marc, Very interesting concept. Have RSS'd your blog, followed your twitter.

As to the concept on the table here, we are working on a slightly different solution to the same problem set. At Business Catapult (.com), we are building a series of connected tools that creates one big service that builds communities of entrepreneurs and investors, ultimately helping them find each other, in a rules-based environment that optimizes everyone's role, info access and privacy.

Although I'm a social entrepreneur at heart -- and was a .org guy in a .com world in the 90s -- I'm still skeptical of micro-finance for a couple reasons. But your idea around the clustered risk taking by entrepreneurs is brilliant.

Will follow-up with direct communication to connect more privately.