If you see anyone from our team over the next couple of weeks and they have white knuckles, it’s because we are cruising. September is a critical month in statewide economic development due to a number of important upcoming marketing activities, events, and missions. Here’s a quick peek into what’s coming down the pike:
As you’ll recall, setting up the Mega Sites program has been a major strategic priority for us, and we are excited to hit an important milestone this week. The Mega Sites grant committee has its inaugural grant funding meeting on Wednesday from 9:00 – 11:00 am. If you’re interested in hearing how the committee prioritizes projects, please feel free to attend. The meeting will be at the GOED offices. The Mega Sites Program is run in partnership with the Utah State Legislature and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. Several individuals within GOED have been instrumental to the program, including Val Hale, Jill Flygare, Ben Hart, Thomas Wadsworth, and Linda Gilmore. Without these partners, our fabulous committee members, the MRED students, and the great internal team at EDCUtah, this program would never have gotten off the ground.
I’ll spend the latter half of the week with our Governor’s Office partners in Northern California, where we are splitting our efforts between what we call “Keep the Customer” and in nurturing relationships with some active prospects. I’ll look forward to reporting out on this mission in a future post.
We’ll get to share the Mega Sites grant winners, review our prior year’s fiscal results, honor some great economic development champions, and thank our board leaders for a fantastic year at our annual member meeting next week. Check your email for more details on the event and to register. We are stoked about a new format this year and hope you’ll enjoy a look back and a look ahead at this important meeting.
Mike Flynn will support the Governor’s trade mission to Asia and will focus his time on enhancing the FDI components of the mission. The timing is fantastic, as we’ll be able to plant some mega sites seeds with large Asian industrial users on that trade mission.
And finally, Jake Berlin will work with our partners at Bio Utah, USTAR, and the Governor’s Office at the MedTech Conference in Philadelphia later in the month. This is a great opportunity for us to support the existing industry in the state and to bone up on major industry trends in life sciences.
So, if you see someone from our team this month, I hope they’ll be smiling from ear to ear. Yes, it’s a white knuckle month. But if we execute well, it will be a month that represents the many facets of our work: community strategy, keep the customer, global strategies and outreach, existing industry support, and marketing. A big thanks in advance to the internal team that keeps it all running and our terrific partners across the state who invest in the mission. 3…2…1….GO!
