A successful northwestern Ontario entrepreneurship conference will return for a third year this fall.
But one of its organizers plans to tinker with the format of the FI:RE (Fueling Innovation: Reigniting Entrepreneurship) conference.
“Everyone thought it was for firefighters or the Ministry of Natural Resources,” jokes Mike Greaves, general manager of the Northwest Business Centre in Kenora.
For the first two years of its existence, the conference was held at the Dryden Regional Training and Cultural Centre for a two-day workshop.
Organizers are now toying with the idea of holding a string of smaller conferences to be rotated to different venues in the region.
The inaugural 2007 conference focused on home-grown manufacturing by showcasing local companies who had launched new products. The second year had more of an entrepreneurial flavour with separate workshops for start-ups and business expansions.
The next conference will target specific industrial segments, such as a workshop for tourism packaging development in Dryden and a Kenora retail summit to analyze industry trends, consumer behaviour and purchasing
Greaves said despite a slew of short and long-term layoffs in the forestry industry, entrepreneurship remains at relatively small scale level in the region.
“It's sporadic, but we get quite a few people coming off their severances or employment insurance who are leaning toward applying their skills for a business start-up in the service economy."
For more information contact Mike Greaves at 807-467-4643 or mike@nwbiz.ca.
