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January 2012 Meeting Resources Now Available

Thursday, January 19th, 2012 by admin


The meeting presentations from the January Alliance meeting in St. George are now online in the resource section of our site, located here. I think we all agree it was a fantastic meeting with great information presented. One of our presenters, Marlin Eldred from Davis County, presented a matrix of possible ideas for upcoming meetings. If you get a chance print out the matrix and fill it out. During our board meeting, we had quite a discussion about what topics we should cover this year. We are very open to your ideas and would like to hear the topics that may be of interest to you. You can also reply to this blog with any ideas you may have.

The upcoming meetings for 2012 will be:
April 12 in Salt Lake City. This meeting should be great. We will be touring the City Creek development after our meeting.
July 13 in Richfield. More details to come.
October in Park City. More details to come.

We look forward to seeing you at our next meeting in April. Keep your ideas coming.

Posted in Alliance Meetings, Economic Development, Training | No Comments »

Does your Economic Development Organization Blog?

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 by admin

This year, one of my goals is to set up a blog for Salt Lake County Economic Development, the organization I really work for. We have a wonderful website that we set up a couple of years ago. It needs a bit of a facelift, but I’ve been waiting for our IT organization to implement the new content management system (for almost a year now). So I’ve decided that while I wait, I will implement a blog and then incorporate it into the current website, in hopes that a new site will also come this year.

In doing my research on how economic development organizations are handling their blogs, I came across this great training video through GIS Planning. The video interviews Neil Stechschulte from City of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on the success of his blog. He put it together a year ago and has had some pretty impressive hit numbers. The thing I like about this video is that Neil is a “one-man-show”. He doesn’t have staff to put up the posts - he does it all by himself. In the video, he discusses how to put the actual blogger site together, how to track the traffic through Google Analytics, and how he put together a Project 365 - blogging something everyday. If you haven’t put a blog together for your community, it is definitely worth the 55 minutes it will take to go through the presentation. GIS Planning has also put together their Top Ten Economic Development videos on this site. They are free and well done.

Economic Development Blogging for Business in Minutes from GIS Planning on Vimeo.

Does your community have a blog? How's it going for you?

Posted in Economic Development, Social media | No Comments »

Canyons Resort Gets Great Review in the New York Times

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011 by admin

Ryan Brandt
I’m always on the look-out for some positive press on Utah. This past weekend the New York Times reviewed the Canyons Resort in Park City and gave it a wonderful review. Most of you who grew up here remember it as Park West. We used to ski there because it wasn’t as crowded or expensive as Park City. We’ve seen it change hands a couple of times and go through some growing pains.

Waldorf Astoria
But if you haven’t been there in the past couple of years, you are missing out. Check out this article and see the what the press is saying about us.

Photo Source: Djamila Grossman, New York Times

Posted in Community, Economic Development, Tourism and Travel | No Comments »

Made in America: Are you in?

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 by admin

Made in America logo
Being the news nerd that I am, I go home every night and click on the ABC National News with Diane Sawyer - who I love. They have been running a series called “Made in America” where they have been trying to encourage us to purchase products made in America. One of their stories featured a contractor who made a committment to use only American-made products in building a new home. What he found was that he could purchase most all products made in America, it just took a little extra time to research and find vendors.

Another story highlighted a family who agreed to have everything that wasn’t made in America taken out of their house. In the end, they were left with a glass vase and some flowers. That was a sad commentary to me on the number of the products we purchase everyday not made here. When we purchase American made products, we create jobs and we suppport our small businesses.

Fast forward to today and the Christmas shopping season. ABC News is challenging every American to purchase at least $64 worth of product made in America for Christmas. Their calculations show that by doing just that - $64 - we would create 200,000 jobs. With our economy struggling - we could use those jobs. Personally, I’m doing my part in purchasing Blue Bonny Ice Cream for my family.

So here’s the challenge: Are you in?
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Posted in Economic Development, National Economic Development, Utah Companies | 1 Comment »

Available Resources

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 by admin

You know that we love to have you personally come to the Alliance Meetings. The meeting committee tries to put together subjects and speakers that will be educational. The meetings move around the state so that we all have the opportunity to see other areas and become more familiar with the Utah “product.” If you would like to host a meeting in your area, let Kim or I know. We would love to showcase new areas in the state.
Tooele Miller Sports Park

If you cannot attend the meetings, we have a meeting resource section available on our website. The fall meeting notes were recently added. And for those of you asking for them, the presentation given by Bill Brady, Eli Kirk, on marketing is there too under the summer 2011 section.

Please let us know what else we can do to make the Alliance meetings and the website more helpful to you!

Posted in Alliance Meetings, Economic Development | No Comments »

Mystery of the Universe Solved

Friday, October 21st, 2011 by admin

There are probably many things that keep you awake at night, such as wondering where your children are or what color to paint your front door. You might have pondered whether we are alone in the universe or whether man really walked on the moon. But thanks to our Fall Utah Alliance meeting, you will never have to lose any sleep wondering what the inside of a bowling ball looks like. Mystery solved!

Bowling Ball

Thank you Corbet Austin from Storm Products for your helping us solve that mystery! Storm Products is just one of the wonderful Box Elder Companies we heard from at our meeting. Some BIG companies call Box Elder County home - including ATK, Autoliv, Gem Products, Walmart Distribution, and of course, Procter & Gamble.

Posted in Alliance Meetings, Community, Economic Development, Utah Companies | No Comments »

Social Networking is BIG

Thursday, October 13th, 2011 by admin

When I opened my Utah Policy Daily email this morning, a couple of articles jumped out at me. Both articles addressed social networking and the growing size of the numbers. We all know that social networking is big, but do you know how BIG? Facebook today has more users than the entire internet had in 2004 - less than 7 years ago.
Royal Pingdom took the Facebook announcement that they have 800 million users and tried to put that into perspective for us number dummies. So here’s the picture:

Facebook size

And here are the numbers:
Facebook’s active user base is…

2.5x the population of the United States
3.9x the population of Brazil
5.8x the population of Russia
6.3x the population of Japan
9.7x the population of Germany
12.4x the population of France
13x the population of the United Kingdom
13.8x the population of Italy
19.7x the population of Spain
23.5x the population of Canada
36.6x the population of Australia
76.7x the population of Belgium
88x the population of Sweden
144.6x the population of Denmark
185.7x the population of Ireland
Only India and China have populations larger than Facebook.

And not only is the size of users BIG, so is the advertising dollars going to social networking sites. A new study says that ads on social networks could pull in $10 billion annually by 2013. The study says that the bulk of these dollars will go to Facebook, while a much smaller share will go to Twitter and other social networks.

So if you haven’t already taken the dive into Facebook, why not? Be part of the population explosion!

Posted in Economic Development, Social media | No Comments »

Fall Meeting Wrap-Up

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 by admin

Thanks to everyone who helped plan and execute the Fall Utah Alliance Meeting in Box Elder County. For those of you who couldn’t attend, you missed a great meeting. The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge Center is absolutely fabulous.
Bird Refuge Center
This picture doesn’t do it justice. The resources that are available in the center are really great. You need to take your family there to visit the center and then drive on the Wildlife grounds to see the birds. Call before you come so you can plan a time where you will see more birds - obviously in the spring and fall when they are flying through. However, they say that December is a great time to view the Bald Eagle.
marshes
Not only did you miss out on the great scenic and eco-tourism aspect of the meeting, you missed out on some pretty fabulous presentations. Mayor Fife welcomed us and gave us a brief overview of what’s been going on up here. Natalie Gochnor gave a great presentation on the current state of the Utah economy. And there was a great panel discussion on the siting of Procter & Gamble’s facility here.
photo collage

For copies of our meeting presentations, go to our meeting resources section here. Some of the presentations didn’t load due to their size. I’ll be trying to correct that and get the rest of presentations online this week.

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, January 10, 2012 for the next Alliance Meeting. We will be meeting in St. George - again the day before the What’s Up Down South meeting. See you then!

Posted in Alliance Meetings, Community, Economic Development, Tourism and Travel, Utah Companies | No Comments »

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