FAQs on EDPro Premium

What is EDPro Premium?

EDPro Premium is a subscription web space that provides powerful learning environment for economic development professionals.  EDPro Premium keeps economic development professionals updated with the latest information on new developments, tools and thinking.

In addition, EDPro Premium includes a weblog, a searchable archive of past articles, an introduction to Web 2.0 for economic developers, an extended commentary on new directions in economic development, and summaries of useful books and reports.  Finally, EDPro Premium includes a unique feature called Consultant in a Box.  This feature enables Subscribers to EDPro Premium to get valuable consulting advice.

The parts of the EDPro Weblog are still free?  Why is that?

Some economic developers to not have a budget to enable them to purchase a subscription to EDPro Premium.  I want to make sure that EDPro Weblogcontinues to be a valuable resource to every economic development professional, regardless of their budget. 

Each week, I will pick 5 to 10 articles on the EDPro Weblog and make them available free on the public side of the site. EDPro Free readers only get access to one week's worth of content. They cannot search the archives.  

Subscribers to EDPro Premium will see all of the posts that I make during a week.  Typically, I make about 20 posts per week. They will also get access to the powerful search tools now available on EDPro Premium.

How can I use the content of EDPro Premium?

The content of EDPro Premium is distributed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License. Basically, that means you are free to use the content of EDPro Premium, provided that you tell people where you got it.  You can read more about the Creative Commons licensing framework here. 

Is the weekly reminder EDPro News still free?

Yes.  I will continue to send out EDPro News each week to anyone who requests it. EDPro News is a free weekly e-newsletter reminder of the stories that I post to the EDPro Weblog.

How much does EDPro Premium cost?

If you buy access to EDPro Premium by the month, it costs $9.95 per month.  You save some money if you buy a yearly subscription for $105.00.  That works out to be $8.75 per month.

What are the tabs at the top of the page?

I had divided the content of EDPro Premium into five categories: brainpower, innovation, quality places, branding, and collaboration.  These five categories represent the five "systems" that any community or region must balance in order to develop a prosperous economy.  These five categories correspond to the strategy maps that I have developed for Open Source Economic Development.

What is Open Source Economic Development?

It's a new approach to economic development and emphasizes the importance of open networks and collaboration to build prosperity.  I developed this model over the last five or six years, and it proves to be a very successful way to generate new strategy ideas and to translate these ideas into action quickly.  You can learn more about Open Source Economic Development here.

Are the archives of EDPro Premium searchable?

Yes, you can search the archives in a number of different ways.  All of the content has been assigned a category and tag.  The categories correspond to the five categories I just mentioned: brainpower, innovation, quality place, branding, and collaboration.  The tags provide them more granular way to categorize content.  So for example we have tags on all articles that involve rural economies, or stories that involve K-12 education or universities.  These tags enable you to find exactly what you're looking for.  Finally, the entire site is searchable using the search field in the toolbar.

You say I can set up RSS feeds.  What is that?

RSS stands for "really simple syndication".  It's an easy way to transfer content from a web site into a newsreader that you may have on your computer.  If you don't know what a newsreader is you can learn more here.

It looks like EDPro Premium users can also set up e-mail notifications.

Yes, if you like you can set up your own e-mail notifications on any page in the site.  Most people will wait until the EDPro news comes out each week, but if you're anxious to keep up the with changes in the site minute to minute you saying an RSS feed or an e-mail notification is your best bet.

What is Web 2.0?  What is EDPro 2.0?

We have the 2.0 is an umbrella term that covers a range of technologies designed to make the Internet more interactive.  These technologies create tremendous opportunities for economic development and workforce development professionals to build new collaborative communities online.  In addition, I think these technologies will change the nature of chambers of commerce.  EDPro 2.0 provides you a glimpse of how economic develop a professionals can apply these new technologies.  I will review some of the more exciting applications and suggest to you how you might start to experiment with them.

Your EDPro Commentary, what is that?

Since the beginning, I have limited my comments on EDPro.  The purpose of the weblog has been to share information about what's happening in our rapidly changing economic development world.  I did not want my commentary to intrude too much.  Some people value the brevity of EDPro Weblog.  Everybody's busy, and there's not enough time to read everything.

At the same time, some EDPro readers tell me that they like it when I share my thinking on a clear economic development is likely to head.  So, for these people, I'm going to share with you some of my thinking about the future economic development, workforce development, and regional economic development. Below each Commentary, you can comment on my comments.

What about book and report summaries?

Again, nobody has time to read everything.  I will use this section of EDPro Premium to provide ease some summaries of books and reports that I think are valuable.  I will keep the commentary to a minimum, because they summaries should help you understand the main points of the book a report and decide whether or not you wanna spend the time to explore further. So, for example, who has had time to read the path-breaking report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm". Not many folks, my guess.

What's my next step?

Join EDPro Premiumand become part of a broader community of economic development professional interested in defining the new approaches to economic and workforce development.

Yes! I want to join now.