Chris Michael will be the featured speaker for BALLE's Accelerating Community Capital Webinar Series. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, or BALLE, is North America's fastest growing network of socially responsible businesses, comprised of over 80 community networks in 30 U.S. states and Canadian provinces representing over 22,000 independent business members across the U.S. and Canada.

Pasted below is information about the event from their website:

BALLE Accelerating Community Capital Webinar Series

Aug 14 2012 - 10:00am - 11:00am

PST

Webinar topic: Local Stock Offering Part 2: Worker Ownership and Direct Public Offerings

Speaker: Chris Michael of Workers Development and Workers Diner

About the topic: Chris Michael and his partners at Workers Development have been working to create Workers Diner, a family-friendly dining establishment serving traditional New York City diner cuisine in the heart of Central Brooklyn. Pending funding through a Direct Public Offering (DPO) launched this spring, Workers Diner will be organized as a worker-controlled business, or worker cooperative, with all voting rights and profits retained by worker-owners.  Of primary importance, Workers Diner’s founders intend on establishing a replicable model for the financing of worker-controlled businesses: with startup costs raised from local communities, profits and proceeds can remain in local communities.  Chris will share the story of Workers Diner through the lens of a worker cooperative using a DPO as its community capital mechanism -- how they set the stage for this mechanism and how it is serving the business and community.

Registration is open for our summer Accelerating Community Captial webinars - register now!