The Round Rock Public Library and Austin SCORE will be offering a series of free workshops for entrepreneurs and small business owners on Fridays from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., Jan. 17 through Feb. 28. SCORE is a nonprofit dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs start, develop and maintain their businesses.

These free timely workshops, presented by recognized experts and practitioners, will cover a variety of issues facing small business owners and entrepreneurs including finances, marketing, and strategic planning.

You have an amazing idea! But how do you navigate between "idea" and "outcome"? The trick is to build a prototype!

What's a prototype? Anything that takes an idea in your head and makes it easy for another person to experience! A prototype could be something you hold in your hand, such as a 3D printed object, or a paper mockup of a mobile app. It could even be something intangible, like a spreadsheet showing a new business model or a treatment for a screenplay. The only thing that matters is that it helps you move toward a solution, no matter how hard the problem!

Join Frank Coppersmith, CEO of Smarter Reality, a local software company that works with entrepreneurs and small businesses, to learn the tricks of prototyping. Use a prototype to boost the flow of fact-based information - not just feedback but actionable feedback! Shift the conversation from opinion to a conversation about real performance - a prototype gives you objective data.

But you don't have to be an entrepreneur to use prototypes! If you are tired of boring meetings, use a prototype to make progress even in the face of big business bureaucracy! The discussion around a prototype creates immediate value - imagine how powerful your next meeting will be if you can show the team a prototype!

Speaker: Frank Coppersmith

Frank is the CEO of Smarter Reality, a software consulting and development firm focused on helping entrepreneurs and small/medium businesses build enabling technology in the areas of e-commerce, training & simulation, and entertainment software. He has been in entertainment software for a decade and has shipped more than twenty titles on the web, Facebook, mobile and PC (Steam), getting his start as CFO of Challenge Online Games. In 2010, he was named Austin’s CFO of the Year by the Austin Business Journal. Currently Frank serves as the president to Blank Media Games, a web and Steam multiplayer game of digital deception with more than 7MM players in over 40 countries and as the chair of the Austin Game Developers Association / IGDA-Austin.