Thursday, June 18th - Fort Sisseton State Historic Park
7:30 am Continental Breakfast at Ft. Sisseton
8:30 am - Welcome and Introductions
9:30 am - Jim Beddow, Mike Knutson and Lindsey Karlson, The Rural Learning Center, Howard, SD
The Rural Learning Center is home to a remarkable community and economic development movement that works to restore social capital and build relationships while nurturing entrepreneurship in Miner County, South Dakota. Today, the RLC understands that building genuine relationships is the foundation of creating successful community development initiatives in any rural place. The creation of social networks is one way to build these relationships. Join the Rural Learning Center staff for an interactive session to explore how you can use social networks to connect and build relationships with entrepreneurs (and others) in your community. We’ll spend time exploring various social media tools, and create a network among conference attendees. Laptop not required, but bring one if you have it.
10:30 am - Break
10:45 am - Barb Fails, Ph. D, Director Rural Entrepreneurship, Michigan State University. Christine Hamilton-Pennell, Growing Local Economies
Barb and Christine will make a joint presentation entitled "Librarians as Economic Gardeners: Promising Practices and Lessons Learned." One of the defining characteristics of economic gardening is its emphasis on providing growing companies with relevant business research that is tied to high-level strategic counseling. Learn about the role local public and university libraries can play in providing research services to an economic gardening project, as well as other ways that communities can integrate the research component. Participate in a discussion about the issues involved in delivering research to local entrepreneurs, including identifying a target audience, determining levels of service, leveraging available research tools, developing entrepreneurial support networks, setting up business resource centers within libraries, training librarians and business counselors, and tracking economic impact of an EG project.
11:45 am - Lunch served at noon onsite
1:00 pm Beth Davis, President, SD Rural Enterprise, Sioux Falls, SD
This will be an overview of the Dakota Rising – Entrepreneur Development System by Beth Davis, Jael Kampfe, the Program Development Consultant, and Glacial Lakes Dakota Rising Site Coordinators and Fellows. Dakota Rising is designed to spur a renaissance of South Dakota’s rural economy through strategic partnerships with local communities to invigorate rural entrepreneurs and their enterprises. This community based initiative is currently being piloted in four South Dakota Sites. Sites commit to creating a culture to support entrepreneurship through specific strategies and activities. Each Site champions applications for the Dakota Rising Rural Entrepreneur Fellowship. Fellows 1) receive a $10,000 grant for professional and business development; 2) are paired with business mentors and a coach, and 3) engage in a Fellow’s cohort for support and accountability. Dakota Rising is a learning community. We hope this session will be an opportunity to share the program design, what we have learned to date and then glean additional insight and ideas from conference participants.
2:00 pm Michael Foster, Cowra Business Officer, Cowra Council Australia
Cowra, Australia is a small farming community a few hours west of Sydney. Cowra's Economic Gardening project is just underway and Michael will talk about the series of events leading up to the kickoff and the early experiences of the program. Cowra is well known in Australia for a massive Prisoner of War breakout by Japanese soldiers. A short history of that event will be presented also.
3:00 pm Break
3:15 pm Rob Pochert, City of Beaverton, Oregon
This session will tell "The Beaverton Story--How a community of 85,000 people without a business development program, started an Economic Gardening program. The presentation outlines the process utilized to move from a basic recommendation, through the planning phase, to market testing, to funding and implementation.
3:45 pm Ed Morrison, Open Source Economic Development and Strategic Doing, Purdue University
This presentation will introduce you to open networks and how they are transforming our economic development system by integrating education, workforce development and economic development. Ed will also introduce the discipline of Strategic Doing. You will walk away with a new understanding of how to translate ideas into action quickly as well as some tools that you can apply immediately. In addition, you'll be joining a growing group of if economic development and workforce development professionals learning to accelerate innovation through simple steps.
4:15 pm Closing Comments for Day One
Evening: Dinner, recreation and conversation at Ft. Sisseton prior to traveling back to hotels.
