Last month I mentioned that one big idea I expect to see take shape in 2010 is local investing: a way for ordinary investors to direct part of their savings to local businesses that need capital, the same way retail investors can now buy shares in global corporations.

John Katovich, an attorney in Boston, is working on ways to make local investing a reality. Katovich is a veteran securities lawyer and entrepreneur with years of experience working with stock exchanges, starting at the Pacific Stock Exchange in San Francisco in 1983. At the time that market still traded stock issues of local companies that were not listed on national exchanges. (The Pacific Exchange has since been absorbed into the New York Stock Exchange Group.)

Katovich sees reviving local exchanges in some form as a way to connect business owners with their communities and provide capital to companies that reach a certain size and hit funding constraints. At a certain point, firms that need capital to expand but don't have the growth potential needed for an initial public offering hit a wall. The the only equity financing available may be from private equity groups that don't align with the company's long-term goals. Some of these are family-owned firms or partnerships where some of the owners are ready to get out of the business. "A company like that gets to a point where they end up either selling it, or the founder's children have disagreements, or they want to grow and they really hit their limit in terms of debt," Katovich told me. Local exchanges, he says, could provide a way for members of a community to help capitalize a business in this situation.

Katovich thinks local stock markets will provide patient capital for businesses. Because they're market caps would be tiny by Wall Street standards, the companies wouldn't be attractive to speculators, high-frequency trading, and the like. "We’re talking about little companies that will never be listed on major national exchanges," he says. Investors could park some small piece of their savings in local stocks for long periods, enjoying the returns both in their portfolios and the economic benefits to their communities.

There are real hurdles to making this happen. Securities laws dating back to the 1930s designed to protect investors make it expensive and difficult for companies to issue shares to the public. Any system where investors trade shares of local companies on the secondary market would likely have to be a licensed exchange.

But if local exchanges became commonplace, they could bolster certain types of businesses that have limited options to raise capital today. Katovich's idea is similar to Woody Tasch's Slow Money initiative, which is focused right now on financing local food ventures. A crucial aspect of both is connecting local businesses with communities in a new way -- not just as consumers or employees, but as small partners who have a vested interest in seeing local companies succeed.

Entrepreneurs have enough to worry about with managing their companies' daily operations, but what if in the next decade, your entire industry is, as the British say, made redundant? A new report by the market research analysis firm IBISWorld, projects a long-term look at which 10 industries will be the strongest and the weakest.Voice over internet protocol providers top IBIS' best industries list followed closely by retirement / pension plans, and biotechnology. The top fields fading from the spotlight are wired telecommunications carriers, tank and armored vehicle manufacturing, and small household appliance manufacturing. In total, the company tracks over 700 industries.While analysts can gather data on a company or industry's sensitivities such as whom they buy from and whom they sell to, some threats to your livelihood are beyond even the strongest predictive powers. "Over long periods of time, the competitor that might be the most difficult is the one that creeps up from a completely different industry or possibly even a completely different country as we've seen with foreign trade and outsourcing," says George Van Horn, a senior analyst at IBISWorld. For example, VoIP went from a non-existent field at the start of the past decade to holding the prime slot looking towards the future.On the plus side, while there is no such thing as a perfect crystal ball, Van Horn asserts that the size of an entrepreneur's current or future business should be no impediment to capitalizing on these trends. He says if an entrepreneur is flush with ideas but not with capital, "one of the things that they might consider is looking at where all the capital flows are going in these new technologies and then find a way to provide services to that growing industry," Van Horn counsels. However, the glut of opportunity doesn't necessarily mean it's time to make a switch into a new and unfamiliar industry. "There are a lot of reasons to make [career and industry] switches these days and it really should encompass a little bit of" both your fiscal and personal situation, says Stacey Mayo, an independent career and small business coach. She advises those venturesome enough to explore unfamiliar territory to shadow, interview or apprentice themselves to a number of experts in their new field to get a diversity of opinion on the state of the industry. A common problem is that entrepreneurs drag their feet about completing the jump. Mayo says, "People make the mistake of waiting until they feel they know everything and have it all perfectly lined up and that's not possible."Best Performing Industries In The Coming Decade (2010-2019)  Rank    Best Performing                                            Growth     1         Voice Over Internet Protocol Providers (VoIP)    149.6%     2         Retirement & Pension Plans                            133.7%     3         Biotechnology                                                127.6%     4         eCommerce & Online Auctions                         124.7%     5         Environmental Consulting                               120.3%     6         Video Games                                                112.9%     7         Trusts & Estates                                            105.7%     8         Search Engines                                              100.9%     9         Recycling Facilities                                           80.9%     10       Land Development                                           72.7%  Worst Performing Industries In The Coming Decade (2010-2019)  Rank   Worst Performing                                                             Growth     1         Wired Telecommunications Carriers                                    -52.0%     2         Tank & Armored Vehicle Manufacturing                               -51.9%     3         Vacuum, Fan & Small Household Appliance Manufacturing    -34.4%     4         DVD, Game & Video Rental                                                -32.8%     5         Photofinishing                                                                   -31.5%     6         Lighting & Bulb Manufacturing                                           -26.8%     7         Telecommunications Resellers                                            -26.4%     8         Laminated Plastics Manufacturing                                      -25.3%     9         Synthetic Fiber Manufacturing                                            -24.6%     10       Wire & Spring Manufacturing                                              -24.5% 

Whole Foods founder John Mackey has joked it may be 31 years before he publicly preaches more vegetables and less government-sponsored health care again, but he isn't wasting time sticking to his vow for less dough for the CEO. Though his compensation rose in 2009, the man who put organic on the mainstream map held down his pay, handing over his gains to the Global Animal Partnership, an animal welfare nonprofit.

Mackey – whom Inc. named an entrepreneur of the decade – slashed his salary to $1 in 2007, when company results disappointed investors. (He wrote in a letter to employees that he had "reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money but simply for the joy of the work itself.") He said he'd take no bonus or stock options, and announced proceeds from future stock options would go to charity.

For the 2009 fiscal year, Mackey's compensation was valued at $653,671, up from $33,831 in fiscal 2008, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents viewed by the Associated Press. He paid himself a salary of $1, and he took home no bonus, perks, or stock options.

The remaining $653,670 of his compensation was the balance of a previous incentive bonus plan that was frozen when he reduced his salary. He donated his after-tax profits of $379,636 to the animal charity.

Mackey has blogged that stratospheric CEO pay is bad for business. "Because of the yawning gap between the leaders and the led, employee morale is suffering, talented performers' loyalty is evaporating, and strategy and execution is suffering at American companies," he wrote.

Can someone simplify the meaning of these 4 words: INCOME, PROFIT, PROCEEDS & REVENUE?

Thank you.

tweeprints.

Developers and Twitter hackers, mark your calendars. The popular microblogging site has announced it will be hosting an official two-day developer conference, dubbed Chirp, in San Francisco in April.The conference day features keynote speeches by Twitter’s founders, including co-founders Biz Stone and CEO Ev Williams. Ryan Sarver, Twitter’s director of platform and COO Dick Costolo, are also slated to deliver remarks. Topics include Twitter’s authentication protocol, OAuth, streaming, geolocation and mobile integration strategies. “You'll learn from the experts that keep Twitter's heart beating,” the Eventbrite ticket site reads. The $469 ticket is good for admittance to the day-long conference as well as an all-night "hack day" that will run from 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 14 to early evening on April 15. In addition to the opportunity to work with some of Twitter's top developers, participants can expect to be "fed and watered throughout."Hack Day, which will be held at the Herbst Pavilion at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, includes a pre-dinner inspirational talk and a group meal before hack-time commences at 9 p.m. At 11 p.m., attendees can learn "Effective use of the Streaming API," and by 3 a.m., it’s on to search API. Before noon, there’s a session on OAuth implementation, and another on Twitter's adoption of Cassandra, the second-generation distributed database. Nap-time? Not included. Free beer at afterparty? Included.The historic Palace of Fine Arts venue is lovely, but not large. Just 800 spots at the conference are available, to be released in rolling increments of 100. By mid-afternoon Monday, more than 100 had already been snatched up by developers, including the people behind Twittelator, an iPhone Twitter client, Twilk.com, HootSuite.com, ScoutLabs and JustBought.it. For those with a secret code (instructions below), sales are still on. Trendy @chirp tweets include the automated "I want to go to Chirp, the Official Twitter Developer Conference!" and designers online are already praising the conference site, hosted by Carsonified, for its elegant design and whimsy. A hidden page delivers irreverent directions on how to construct a "Magical Origami Chirp Bird."For updates on sales and ticket releases, follow @chirp or text "follow chirp" to 40404 to receive text message updates. Or, to ensure a spot, simply equip yourself with a very easily hacked password (directions here) to enter to access the sales page (Pssst: a little bird told us it’s twitterapi).

In this video interview, SEO expert Shari Thurow explains how you can discern user intent from the search terms they use, and from that help them get where they're trying to go on your site. Search keywords can be classified as transactional, navigational, or informational.

Guidelines for dress codes, from Business.gov.

Despite the troubles plaguing the ARC loan program, they work for business owners who get them. Catherine Clifford of CNNMoney talks to one entrepreneur who refinanced $35,000 of high-interest credit card debt.

Scott Shane, writing at Small Business Trends, trains a close eye on the differences between two recent studies of how recessions affect startups and new business formation.

The National Small Business Association opposes an Obama plan to encourage retirement savings by giving employees automatic IRAs, Bloomberg's Margaret Collins and Alexis Leondis report.