Big News: The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived!

Pre-register here for the Insider Discount on the new book

Finally, finally, finally…

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After more than five years of learning and doing and failing and learning and doing again, the revised, updated and expanded version of my 2013 book, The Local Economy Revolution: What’s Changed and How You Can Help will be released in print, PDF and digital formats on February 10!

It’s hard enough to write a book, but it turns out that it’s even harder to redo a book that you’ve already put so much work into, and that’s become so much a part of your own professional identity. So why do it?

Actually, it’s pretty simple. I had some new things to say.

One of my biggest frustrations with the first version, and with much of my early-2010s writing, is that I could identify what we were doing wrong, but I was still pretty fuzzy on what we should be doing to make it right. When people asked me for specific recommendations… I didn’t feel like I had good enough answers.

I addressed that to some extent in two more recent books: Crowdsourcing Wisdom, which outlines specific methods for getting the general public more actively involved with planning for the community’s future, and Everybody Innovates Here, which outlined an approach to creating new ideas in work and in business that depends on creating a system to involve the widest range of people possible (a pretty radical idea in both the public and private sectors).

And during the years between 2013 and 2020 I had the opportunity to learn through doing in ways I would have never imagined before. After nearly 20 years working, with increasing frustration, through policy and planning anda a range of local to national programs, I

• Ran an online magazine about civic technology,
• Worked with tech and startup leaders and doers internationally,
• Ran a company that gave college students the chance to create groundbreaking innovations for companies ranging from tree farms to high-tech devices,
• Helped a national nonprofit reposition itself as a leader in the local economy movement,
• Supported the launch of the first virtual superhub for Black business owners and founders.

And a few other things as well.

I went on that journey to find new ways to solve the old problems that my policy and planning and program tools didn’t seem to be able to solve. And I figured out some keys to doing that.

So it was time to go back and help bring the Local Economy Revolution to reality.

If you didn’t read the first version, I think you will find the new book fun, insightful, easy-to-read and illuminating for both your mind and your heart — for reconnecting to the reasons why you started trying to make your community better in the first place. And if you did read the first version, I think you will find that this one gives you more tools to put that deep thinking into action.

This is a book for anyone who, as I wrote, “gives a damn about their community,” whether you do that as your job or your passion. Or because someone has to do it and it might as well be you.

It’s been a long, sometimes difficult road, but we all know that nothing worth having comes without a cost. Hopefully I can save you some of that cost, and help you and your community accelerate into the future that’s coming at us — and leverage that future to make your community everything it should be.

Pre-register here to get a special discount on The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived! What’s Changed and How You Can Help. And stay tuned for additional benefits and resources from the Wise Economy Workshop.

2021 is the year we’ve been waiting for.

Let’s go get ‘em!