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Running your own business can mean a lot of time on your own, in the trenches, building your company brick by brick, pushing the gears forward inch by inch. Next week, however, there are many opportunities for entrepreneurs to step back from the daily grind, connect with one another and be inspired.

That’s because the week of May 4 to 8 is National Small Business Week.

Organized by the Small Business Administration, this is the 52nd year that the president of the United States has declared one week per year the official celebration of the Main Street entrepreneur.

In his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, President Obama touted a slew of federal initiatives aimed at stimulating small business hiring and growth. Again.

Business plan competitions tend to emphasize technology. Many competitions, like Nokia’s Mobile Rules Contest and those held by Rice University and the Hong Kong University of Sciences and Technology, either prefer or require plans in the fields of life sciences, clean technology, aerospace, mobile or information technology.

President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to "spend our way out of this recession" until more Americans are back at work.

You can study common economic indicators like the GDP, CPI, inflation, deflation, housing markets, unemployment or bull and bear markets to determine if our economy is heading in the right direction, but I prefer to take a different tack. Perhaps you could call it the “Main Street” approach as opposed to the “Wall Street” approach to analyzing the hopeful economic rebound.

From Wall Street to Main Street, organizations big and small are leading the fight against climate change by purchasing green power. For the ninth straight year, Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is honoring  Green Power partners across the United States for outstanding contributions in helping grow the nation's voluntary green power market.