We're hosting this summit in a new way. On this page you can learn more about the format and schedule of the Local Capital Summit, as well as participate in creating the content of the summit itself.

Quick Links:
- Summit Format
- Schedule
- Proposed Sessions
- Submit a Session
- Vote on Sessions

The Local Capital Summit is different than your typical conference. It's our experience (after spending hundreds of hours in various conferences) that often, just having one speaker presenting in the front of a group doesn't take advantage of the wisdom and ideas of everyone participating. Instead of scheduling lots of speakers and sessions in advance, we're using a modified open space format to allow every participant to convene a session. These sessions can be about what you're working on or what you're passionate about. You can convene sessions with yourself as a speaker or bring a panel of speakers. Sessions can also be open conversations with everyone involved. And if you're looking to gather feedback and ideas from other people, you can even convene a session about that.

Many of these sessions will be organized the morning of the Summit, but you can now suggest a session topic in advance - which means you can then promote your session to your networks. We will strive to accomodate all sessions that are posted in advance - and we're asking people to vote on sessions so we know which ones are most popular and can then organize the rooms accordingly.

We'll also have time and space during the summit for those spontaneous connections and conversations that always happen when you bring people together - and we aren't filling up all the time slots in advance. Here's how the day of the Summit will be organized:

Date: Monday, August 31, 2009
Time: 8:00 am to 6:30 pm

8:00 am	Registration, Continental Breakfast and New Session Proposals
8:30 am	Welcome & Keynote Address by Will Raap, Local Food Economy Pioneer, Founder of Gardener's Supply and the Intervale Center
9:30 am	Open Space Orientation & Session Sign-ups
9:50 - 11:00	#1 - Six Concurrent Breakout Sessions
11:10 - 12:20	#2 - Six Concurrent Breakout Sessions (Featured Session: Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if food, farms and fertility mattered by author Woody Tasch)
12:20  - 1:30	Lunch      Remarks from special guest Doug Linkhart, Denver Citycouncilman-At-Large      Speed connecting session from 1:00-1:30 pm for those interested
1:30 - 2:40	#3 - Six Concurrent Breakout Sessions
2:50 - 4:00	#4 - Six Concurrent Breakout Sessions
4:00	Reconvene for "Best Highlights" as voted by participants
5:00	Conclusions & Next Steps (taking new ideas, connections and solutions into our businesses & communities)
5:30	Breakouts for next steps among small groups

Keynote Address: Mobilizing Local Capital for Businesses & Community by Will Raap

Will Raap is founder and chairman of the Gardener's Supply (GS) family of companies. Founded in 1983 in Burlington, Vermont, GS employs more than 250 people and is one of the largest online and catalog gardening companies in the country. Under Raap’s leadership, the employee-owned company has won several national & regional awards for its’ innovative gardening products & services, as well as for it’s socially responsible business practices.

Currently, Will’s passion and energy is focused on two new environmental restoration initiatives; The Earth Partners/Earth Carbon Offsets ™ (http://www.theearthpartners.com/) and Carbon Harvest Energy.

Will is the founder and past Chairman of the Board for the Intervale Center ( www.intervale.org ). The mission of the Intervale Center is to develop farm-and land-based enterprises that generate economic and social opportunity while protecting natural resources. The Intervale family of businesses includes Intervale Compost Products, Intervale Conservation Nursery, Intervale Agricultural Development Consulting Services, and Intervale Food Enterprise Center, plus 13 private farms in the developed in the Center’s farm incubator program.

Will’s commitment to build linked enterprises guided by social missions has extended to Costa Rica where is founder of Greening Paraiso (www.greeningparaiso.org), a watershed restoration initiative, founding partner in El Centro Verde (www.elcentroverde.org), a sustainable agriculture and agroforestry education and demonstration center, founding partner of Finca Lagunita, the first organic CSA membership farm in Central America, and partner in two conservation developments, Tierra Pacifica (http://www.tierrapacifica.com/) and Pueblo Verde (www.puebloverde.org). Will also is working his son Dylan to develop the Reforest Teak (http://www.reforestteak.com/) reforestation project and furniture brand in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Will serves on or has served on a range of non-profit and corporate boards including Vermont Natural Resources Council, Vermont Business Roundtable, Vermont Land Trust, Champlain Valley Greenbelt Alliance, Intervale Center, Vermont Sustainable Agriculture Council, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, University of Vermont School of Environment and Natural Resources, Champlain College, and Seventh Generation.

Will received a B.A. in Economics from UC Davis, a Masters degree in Business and Urban Planning from UC Berkley.

Featured Session: Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if food, farms and fertility mattered by author Woody Tasch

Woody Tasch is Chairman Emeritus of Investors' Circle, a nonprofit network of angel investors, venture capitalists, foundations, and family offices that, since 1992, has facilitated the flow of $130 million to 200 early-stage companies and venture funds dedicated to sustainability. He is president of the newly formed NGO Slow Money. Woody was formerly treasurer of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. He is an experienced venture capital investor and entrepreneur and has served on numerous for-profit and nonprofit boards. He was founding chairman of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance, which supports venture investing in economically disadvantaged regions. He lives in northern New Mexico.

In 2008, Woody published Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered.
Here's a summary from publisher Chelsea Green's web site:

We must bring money back down to earth.

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money presents the path for bringing money back down to earth—philosophically, strategically and pragmatically, and with an entrepreneurial spirit that is informed by decades of work by the thousands of CEOs, investors, grant-makers, food producers and consumers who are seeding the restorative economy.

The months and years ahead will surely see a flood of books proposing micro- and macro-economic fixes to the financial crises of the day. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money brings a different vision—a meta-economic vision, looking above the top tine and below the bottom line, a new way of seeing what is going on in the soil of the economy.

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money investigates an essential new strategy for investing in local food systems, and introduces a group of fiduciary activists who are exploring what should come after industrial finance and industrial agriculture. Theirs is a vision for investing that puts soil fertility into return-on-investment calculations.

• Could there ever be an alternative stock exchange dedicated to slow, small, and local?
• Could a million American families get their food from CSAs?
• What if you had to invest 50 percent of your assets within 50 miles of where you live?

Such questions—at the heart of Slow Money—are the first step on our path to a new economy and a new culture.
Inquiries into Slow Money is a call to action for designing capital markets built around—not extraction and consumption but—preservation and restoration.


The Tattered Cover Book Store will be on hand during the summit with copies of Slow Money and related publications. For information about the movement growing around Slow Money please visit www.slowmoneyalliance.org