CED Newsletter - July 2010

2010 Economic Gardening Conference

By: Michael Suplita

On the morning of June 16th, my colleague, Marcy McCormick, and I flew to Bellingham, WA for the 8th Annual Economic Gardening Conference. Economic Gardening is a term coined by "The Godfather" of Economic Gardening from Littleton, Colorado, Chris Gibbons and refers to actions undertaken by economic development entities to encourage small business growth in their communities. These actions include assistance with research, business advising, market mapping, financial analysis, and other services aimed at promoting small business expansion. Economic Gardening is often referred to as the un-sexy side of economic development because the growth that is spurred is not quick and does not show immediate benefit to the community like business attraction would. However, it has been proven that Economic Gardening supports significant and sustained economic growth, long after the shine of a relocated business is gone.

**Michael Suplita**
**Project Specialist**

The first leg of our journey led to a short layover in Seattle where some confusion on the part of the airline left us a little heated. After walking from one end of the airport to the other three times due to terminal changes, the airline even brought the wrong plane into pick us up and had to swap it out. The gloomy weather in Seattle was also quite disheartening, but we were greeted by plenty of sunshine once we arrived in Bellingham. After getting settled in to our hotel, we were shuttled to a catered dinner on the beautiful Bellingham Bay. We met a lot of the conference attendees before and during dinner, including many from all over the United States, Canada and Japan. Dinner was followed by a chilly cruise on the bay.

Day one of the conference was enlightening. Economic Development professionals serving a variety of geographic regions illustrated their Economic Gardening models and tools, and told anecdotes for all of the attendees. Our office already uses many of the tools that were presented at the conference, including, ESRI's Business Analyst, Arc Map, Dunn and Bradstreet, and Hill Search. However we were introduced to two industry market research companies, Ad-ology and BizMiner. Tom Dorr, the director at the Center for Economic Vitality (CEV), our host organization, and his staff did an excellent job of keeping things running smoothly. In fact, we have since been working with Meg Greenfield at the CEV to implement some of their strategies into our Economic Gardening program, known as "Market Intelligence for Small Business." One thing the CEV does well that we hope to replicate is effectively identifying clients who can utilize the Economic Gardening services to their full potential and use the information provided to help them expand, increasing both employment size and sales. This allows the CEV to allocate more resources targeting businesses that have a higher growth potential. In addition, the CEV and many other represented organizations at the conference supply two to three page mini-reports to their clients, allowing them to better explain the information they are sharing. Currently, we just present numbers and perhaps a few explanatory sentences. I often worry that when just numbers or maps are presented to a client, especially a client with limited business experience, the information becomes a "data dump" of sorts and is underutilized. This is definitely one thing from the conference that we hope to utilize to help our clients, as long as there is funding to allow for the extra time it would take to write a personalized report.

It seemed that the CEV saved the best speakers for last, as the second day of the conference was filled with insight and even boasted some of the more humorous speakers, including Maury Forman from the Washington State Department of Commerce and James McCafferty of the CEV. The major point I took from the second day of the conference was that time is a crucial part of business assistance and community development. It helped me realize that taking extra time with a client could mean the difference between truly helping and missing something important.

Another important idea that made the return trip from the conference was borrowed from the Florida State EDC. One thing the state of Florida is doing is putting on vendor sponsored meet and greets/banquets for stage-two businesses owners (businesses with between ten and ninety-nine employees). We plan to survey past clients and see if a meet and greet such as this might be helpful for them to make connections for business to business advertising.

The return trip was even more chaotic than the jaunt north. Upon arrival at the Bellingham International Airport we were informed that our plane was delayed approximately an hour. We had purchased direct flight tickets to Sacramento with a stop to take on more passengers in Seattle. Upon boarding the plane we were told that we would no longer be stopping in Seattle, we would actually be making the airline's maiden voyage to Portland. Note to self: no more maiden voyages on anything, boats, cars, and especially planes. Something always seems to go wrong. After a three hour delay in Portland and a plane change we were finally on our way home. After the debacle it was nice of the airline to give me a complimentary glass of red wine on the flight home. Unfortunately we hit turbulence and I spilled it all over my white Dockers. At that point I wanted nothing more than to be home asleep in my own bed, which I finally was allowed to do sometime around midnight, much to my dad's amusement (note the sarcasm as he had to pick me up from the airport four and a half hours later than planned). However the nightmare homeward bound trip was overshadowed by Bellingham's beauty and the learning experience the conference provided.