I am very excited to have the opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts and join a group of individuals who are already leaders in the Twin Cities community.  I have spent the last five years focused on getting involved in the Twin Cities and along the way have made some great friends and built lifelong relationships.  The Twin Cities is an outstanding community to get involved with and truly make a difference.  I encourage everyone to be involved in some way.  That involvement will be different for each and every one of you but that is what makes this community great.  The more different areas we are involved with, the more ideas and experiences we can learn from and share.  That is the genesis of this blog — we each come with different experiences and interests but can learn from each other and share our thoughts with all of you.  Our hope is that it will spark an interest and discussion which ultimately leads you to take action and encourage others to get involved, share ideas and make a difference.

As I am sure will become clear in my future posts, I have a huge passion for getting others involved in our community.  This passion has been built as I have come to see the impact each and every one of us have on this community.  Most of the time we will never know the full extent of our impact, but every once in a while we get a glimpse of it and that makes every minute we spend in the community worthwhile.

One of the hardest things for me was the first step of trying to figure out where to start.  Please visit my personal website (http://www.timhuebsch.com) where I have listed some of the best organizations I have found to get started in the Twin Cities community.

As we come up upon Labor Day and move into the fall season, it is a great time to see where you might try a new experience in the community or reach out to meet a new employee and tell them about an upcoming event in the community.

A standard feature of my column will be a list of upcoming events that I plan on attending.  I hope some of you will choose to join me and I look forward to giving a recap on some of the very best events on this blog.

Featured Upcoming Events:

TEDxTC

Wednesday, September 2nd – 6:30 @ Science Museum of Minnesota (Event Sold Out)
In the spirit of the TED Conference, experience amazing people from the Twin Cities, sharing with you their ‘idea worth spreading’.  TEDxTC celebrates the vision, work and leadership of folks from our own back yard.

Summit on Leading in Crisis host by Bill George

Thursday, September 17th – 5:30 @ Ted Mann Concert Hall – University of Minnesota (FREE Admission)
Join Bill George, former Medtronic CEO, Best-selling author and Harvard Business School Professor, as he moderates a discussion of personal stories from the trenches on leading in a crisis.  Panelists include some of the biggest names in business including:  John Donahoe, Chair & CEO – eBay; Ann Mulcahy, Chair & former CEO – Xerox; Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chair & former CEO – Carlson Companies; and David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership – Harvard University.

Why would we start another blog? Who has time to read all the blogs that are already being published? What makes this blog unique? These are questions we’ve asked ourselves as we’ve developed this forum.

After many discussions, we became more aware of this blog’s possibilities and the things we share in common:

• a passion for learning more about our community
• a desire to share what we have learned
• a love for having healthy discussions on community issues
• a belief that we all need to do our part in strengthening our community

We hope you share these same interests.

Our goal with this blog is to expand the conversation about community and leadership in the Twin Cities area. We hope you will join us in this adventure.

Please let us know what you think. Join in the conversation. We want this blog to become a hub for community information, opinions, and discussions. Ultimately, we hope you will be inspired and encouraged to lead on issues and take action.

So, if you care about our Twin Cities community and are interested in healthy discussions, please join us. Together we can develop an online community dedicated to improving the Twin Cities.

Please share your thoughts and ideas with us.