This week Blake and Ryan got to go down to Thief Wine at the Milwaukee Public Market in the 3rd ward to taste some wine and chat with Phil of Thief Wine.

This is a great entrepreneurial story of following your passion and providing your customer with a bit more than they expect. Thanks Phil!

Check out the Thief Wine blog for more info.

This week, Blake caught up with Milwaukee’s own John “The Nickname Guy” Leaf. John talks about the idea behind his forthcoming book about nicknames and the stories behind them. John is collecting these stories in a number of ways, one of which is Nicknamestories.com. Check it out!

You can also follow John on Twitter.

You can read more about John and his plans in this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article.

Happy New Year from ActionsTalk! We’ve been on a brief hiatus for the holiday season, but now we’re back with a fresh crop of startup spotlights!

This week, Blake met up with Amanda Guralski, founder of bizMe.biz, at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Amanda discusses everything from how she got the idea to start an online magazine for young professional women to what her hopes are for the future. Another great Milwaukee startup!

This Week Blake and Ryan met up with Cd Vann, the founder of Magazine SOHO and Sohobiztube.com.  Cd talks about the challenges she’s faced so far and about how she leverages her social networks (online and in person) for reinforcement. Cd has been instrumental in supporting the growth of many Milwaukee businesses.

Steve Glynn chose ActionsTalk to be the first new media outlet for his big news! Spreenkler, which started out as a networking group and has now morphed into so much more, just won the Wired grant for $120k for the purpose of growing and retaining talent in the Milwaukee area.

This is huge for Steve and the Spreenkler crew! Congrats Steve!

Steve Glynn was at the very first ActionsTalk meeting at Alterra by the Lake so many months ago and has supported our growth ever since.

Be sure to check out the latest Spreenkler meeting tonight (Nov 5th) at Bucketworks.

This week Blake and Ryan meet up with Romke de haan and William Campbell of the Miguel Pro Association. They’re building a non-profit/for-profit hybrid business in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The non-profit will be focusing on training at risk youth in Information Technology and the for-profit piece will be a boutique IT/design firm available for consulting.

This week we interview Tim Cigelske of Teecycle.org, a site dedicated to finding new homes for old T-shirts, and helping the environment. “Reduce, Reuse, Teecycle”.

In this interview, Blake and Ryan met up with Hillary Kay to talk about Milwaukee Fashion Week.  Here is some more info about MFW from Hillary:

“There will also be a unique, first of its kind boutique onsite where designers will showcase their collections and take orders from buyers. Consumers will also be able to shop and pick up ready to wear or samples. Then, hopefully they will be able to go back to the boutiques in their
community and continue picking up new pieces.

-A portion of the proceeds go to benefit the ‘bloom-where-you-are-planted’ mentalities of Thembalethu Welfare Society (Childrens Home in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) through HummingbirdProject.org and Bucketworks.org Though they are not related, they mirror each other in many ways in how they uplift, unite and support a segment of the population that wants to move beyond surviving, to thriving.”

Read more at Milwaukee Fashion Week

Blake met up with the crew of Bucketworks, “the health club for the brain”. Bucketworks is having a “Physical Wiki Weekend” on Aug 23-24. If you’re available in the Milwaukee area, they could really use your help.

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