edco 2016 annual conference town halls transforming your communities through discovery communities...

EDCO 2016 Annual Conference

Town HallsTransforming your Communities through

DiscoveryCommunities with Populations

from 25,000 to 100,000

Facilitator- Anya CodackY Factor

February 4th, 2016

Wisdom of the Crowd

Potential Topics for Discussion

• Business Retention & Expansion• Workforce Development• Marketing/Attraction• Regional Cooperation/Collaboration• Main Street/Downtown• Entrepreneurship and Small Business• Real Estate Development • Tech-led• FDI and Exporting

Business Retention & Expansion

1. Issue Any work on investment selling and attraction

Catalogue of opportunities. Opposite approach….identify individuals looking to buy a business. Get to the accountants and lawyers in the area.

Ideas


2. Commitment to BR&E and able to get out

Bringing in others to assist is good however the EDO needs to have the personal connection. Talent attraction, workforce attraction, skills. Really try to focus on locally grown companies. Foreign owned challenges. Work with locally grown as the primary focus.How to develop a culture of entre. to support BR&E. Challenges with secondary school; system. No understanding of business and what is required. Local business partner with the secondary school not the college. Businesses can’t find workers who will show up to work. Issue with most. Employers have to have flexibility. How to create an entrepreneurship culture. Needs to start early in school system. You have to have the passion to make it work. Community Profile outlines success stories. Have them share their success stories

Ideas

• Successful ones to become mentors. Speak at high schools to

share. Sowing the seeds. Partner with High Schools to come for the day and series of workshops, etc. Local businesses involved.

• Business Appreciation dinner, 40 businesses invited along with Mayors/Deputy Mayors. Find out what is going on in the company. Very successful and helped with lack of resources to do individual visits.

• Easy to do the Networking events and quick way to connect with businesses. Sustainability of the program. Get the chamber or business enterprise centre or local school or community college to assist. Get the Mayor/Warden to host a BBQ. Coincide with Small Business week. Events that are fun versus formal. Beer works!!

• Helping business grow through exporting. Everybody can export. Good examples of retailers exporting. Quite a few however still don’t have web-sites or capability to export.


3. Issue

Ideas

Workforce Development

1. Issue

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2. Issue

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3. Issue

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Marketing Attraction

1. Difficulty in regional trends, how to attract, ROI

2. All agree this is a challenge. went through a complete rebranding, including web-site, social media, focusing efforts, complexity as an upper tier, take your time, keep it really simple,

Challenge is always budget. Help business community understand what you are trying to do. Newsletters have proven effective, do the follow thrugh with BRE

Issue

Ideas


2.

Personal relationships work well

Region has come together, joint marketing, realtors who know the community

Few are measuring ROI. Starting the process of KPI’s. Result based vs activity based. Client tracking model. Survey after the fact. Time challenges. Need to develop results based measures. New jobs, sq. footage, now report good news to council. Measurement needs to be a combination of results based and activity based. Tracking municipal contribution vs. private contribution for downtown revit. Program.

Ideas


3. Issue

Ideas• Experiencing commercial vacancy. Established program to market the space, attract new

business. Work closely with local stakeholders. Got the community involved. Small business advisory centre support. BIA funded the space.

• Some businesses looking for buyers, can’t sell, etc., Succession Planning seminar by Business Advisory Centre can help. Educate the sellers on what the options are. Confidential site where buyers/sellers can access info. Sometimes the business doesn’t have a proven track record. Succession Planning/training needs to start early. Training on how to sell your business. Put together databases of businesses planning on selling.

Regional Cooperation/Collaboration

1. Issue

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2. Issue

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3. Issue

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Main Street/Downtown

1. Issue: Store hours, getting people out to events, how do you get people into our downtown

Animate your downtown through summer company. Arnprior story. Draw on your strengths. Create the environment where people want to come and shop.

Ideas


2. Issue

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3. Issue

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Entrepreneurship/Small Business

1. Issue

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2. Issue

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3. Issue

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Real Estate Development

1. Issue

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2. Issue

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3. Issue

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Tech Led

1. Issue

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Tech Led

2. Issue

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Tech Led

3. Issue

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FDI & Exporting

1. Issue

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FDI & Exporting

2. Issue

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FDI & Exporting

3. Issue

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Questions/Comments?

edco 2016 annual conference town halls transforming your communities through discovery communities...

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