Ruth, Bridget, Christine and Stefan met on Tuesday to continue with our Entrepreneur Meetup series. 

Ruth shared her product presentation with us, her development with design, prototype production, patent, product feedback. She is looking for a business partner with an existing distribution network. 

Bridget wants to educate more clients on nutrition - and do more business in preventive care. Most doctor referrals are for diseases, but not prevention. We brainstormed were to find new markets.

Christine talked about her e book idea for local family adventures.

Stefan introduced the Office Junction and some strategy chances in the works.

We all got some valuable feedback. Now we have to do the followup.

If you want to participate in our meetups, we meet on the fourth of every month at noon at the Office Junction. 

Emily, Eric, Bridget, Christine and Stefan joined us for our Meetup. We had lots of healthy snacks and we commented each other on the great food choices we all made today.

We started talking about our favorite topic: Food. In particular gluten-free food and people in the PNW seem to be more concious of choices. We met with some other coworking spaces that also reported a high percentage of their members are gluten-free. We have some food experts and one food professional, our nutritionist Bridget.

Bridget will do a gluten-free cooking class at the Office Junction on Tuesday, July 23 from 6.30 to 8.30 pm. This hands-on class will feature: 
Prosciutto-wrapped Turkey Meatloaf
Mediterranean Quinoa Salad
Sweet Potato and Polenta Fries
Almond Butter Chocolate chunk Cookies

Register for her class at www.mylifenutrition.com/services. Cost is $45 per person.

Emily reported on her success with some contract work. She used the 'Just ask' method and succeeded.

Christine looked for creative ideas how to spice up 'Art Walk'. Emily recommended 'Art with a view' advertising the roof top bar, a great summer destination.

Bridget talked about her Social Media work, using HootSuite to schedule posts. Christine just started using Buffer for the OJ social media and is still open to any advice to do better. 

Eric just discovered the scheduled posting world and Stefan shared a book his daughter just read about a future were people are not working, but get paid by their social media ranking/status. Potential vs. nightmare. With more social media and advertising, video bloggers, facebook and twitter, most of us will be influenced by social media in the future. Eric shared something he heard on the NPR TED Radio hour about a musician realizing people will download music instead of paying and simple 'asked' her fans to pay her, so she can write and produce more music.

Emily talked about a study researching 'near-sightedness' in kids in relation with 'screen time' and how the vision changes with less outdoor time. Researchers might be able to track how much time someone spent in front of a computer screen by checking someone's vision. Asian kids apparently don't spent much time outside anymore, but get really successful in playing and watching (yes, watching - there is a whole market there) videogames instead. Preparation for the future? Or wasted time?

'Sitting is the new smoking'. We all know how much better we would feel if we would move more. But how incorporate movement in your work day, especially if it's in front of a screen. Stefan had some ideas to connect usual work day movements in workouts, e. g. having an oversized keyboard on the wall or a weight resistant mouse or other physical challenges to get tasks done. We discussed how this could work without losing productivity. 

This goes along with everyone spending way too much time on the internet instead of moving (stop reading and get movin'! or not yet ;-)) and how to set personal barriers for media use. 

Have we ever thought about pulling out cable or internet from your home? 
Have you ever put your TV in timeout?
Have you ever thought about finding a more physical job to keep you healthy?
Have you experienced how media consumption talkes over your life? 
How much easier it is to watch TV then to engage with your partner or family members?
We have! :-)

We talked about how to change our habits, find effective tools and tricks to limit our daily media use.

We also talked about how gmail changed to the 3 tab folders to 'primary', 'social' and 'promotions' and how each of us 'likes' or 'dislikes' it - and how much influence google has over our daily life by doing so.

We ended our lunch at 1.20.

Beth and Ron visited for the first time. Bridget, Carl, Christine, Eric, Kerrie, Renee and later Rob joined for our Coworking meetup.

Bridget is an Nutritionist at Full Life Nutrition and told us about her work providing dietary consulting as well as grocery tours. Her newest addition is a Cooking Class. The next takes place at Office Junction on 6/25 for $40. She will show how to prepare Super Food Salads.

Carl told us about his time on the road in Florida and that he is happy to be back in the NW. He shared ideas about his new ventures.

Beth and Ron offer bookkeeping services and reconciling bank statements with Quickbooks, also QB Advisory and Training. Their business is Northbeam Consulting. They are looking for new clients. 

Eric talked about his idea to start a video blog for his alter ego. His character has interesting world views and some personal struggles.

We talked about where to get professional head shots. Bridget shared a photo service that comes to Angelina once a month and Renee recommended another service she wanted to share with Beth by email.

Renee shared details about her upcoming Euro trip to do some research for her story sets and to participate in a conference in the UK. 

Kerrie talked about her past projects as an editor, working on academic and engineering articles about textiles, robotics, a Japanese space program. Ron suggested to try Amazon mechanical turk to find other writing gigs. Christine added taskrabbit and oDesk to the list.

Christine shared her discoveries from watching TEDtalks - and the list of regrets people had on their dying bed. We discussed the regrets and how to act on this knowledge.

Rob joined us later after a conference talk and introduced himself and how happy he is in the NW. Eric mentioned the grey cloud 'sinking in on you' after about 5 years of living in Seattle.

We finished the meetup at 1.05 pm. Thanks everyone for bringing gluten free cookies, Chinese food, cheddar popcorn and other snacks to share.