IEDC 2009 Annual Conference | Reno, Nevada

With the economy in a state of depression, major employers are downsizing, factories are closing, unemployment is on the rise and retailers are struggling to survive. Economic developers are battling in the trenches against strong approaching forces.

How are communities equipping themselves to navigate the minefields ahead? What ammunition does your community need to win the battle and create a path towards recovery?

Serious times call for a serious conference and IEDC’s 2009 Annual Conference is the single most important conference to attend during this global economic crisis. It will be an unprecedented experience with highly relevant sessions and top speakers tackling the tough issues economic developers are facing now.

This Will Not be Your Average Conference

IEDC is taking a far-reaching approach to explore and discover unique solutions to current challenges that you can put into practice in your community.

Grow your crisis network: Rally your army. Your peer network will help you respond to the extreme challenges better and faster.

Learn what’s working: Learn from those who are ahead of the game with emerging solutions that are working.

Experience a come-back city: Learn from Reno, a city that has faced many challenges and risen from the ashes each time.

As a living laboratory, the Greater Reno-Tahoe region provides an amazing range of examples of how a community can combat numerous obstacles. The region has dealt with blighted areas, drops in tourism, and loss of industry. Through it all the region has diversified and survived. Learn and experience this come-back city first hand through sessions and tours.

Sessions Examine Key Economic Crisis Topics

Renewability

• Innovative Financing Strategies to Make Projects Happen
Learn how communities can tap into tax credits, incentives and other financing mechanisms to make projects happen.

• Community-Based Venture Capital as a Key Tool
Learn how experienced economic developers tapped, grew and even created new streams of funding through innovative, new vehicles to grow the economy of their regions.

• Leveraging Clean Tech for Recovery
Tactics communities can implement to jumpstart clean tech businesses to create jobs and growth opportunities today.

• Sectors in Transformation: Finding Opportunities, Ameliorating Distress
Communities worldwide are struggling to cope with the downsizing and facility closures. Learn how are they are finding new economic opportunities for their businesses and people.

• How to Stand out from the Crowd: Corporate Real Estate Directors’ Speak
Many companies are consolidating their operations or closing their doors. Learn what criteria corporate real estate directors are using to make their location decisions in the recession.

• Building Green to Slash Energy Expenses and Enhance Competitiveness
Gain a comprehensive understanding of the most effective methods for promoting green developments, how to access funding, evaluate the ROI of a project, and build the political coalitions to make it happen in this harsh economic climate.

Resiliency

• How Communities Have Created Local Stimulus Initiatives
Even before the Federal Government stepped in with its stimulus plan, local governments have implemented strategies, large and small, to stimulate their local economies. Examine what local strategies are available to stimulate the economy and what is working.

• Are there International Deals in the Current Economy?
Can foreign direct investment help accelerate the economic recovery for communities? This session will discuss and answer the question.

• When the Factory Closes: Survival Strategies for Small Communities
Learn how to look for signs an employer is facing difficulties, how to strategically plan should a major employer close their operations or lay off part of their labor force, and what to do if it happens.

• Using Metrics to Steer Resurgence
Learn how your EDO can create a metric system that it can use to report its progress, understand and steer the local economy, and use it as a recovery tool.

• Using Web 2.0 for High-Impact, Low-Cost Marketing
Learn how EDOs can embrace social media as an important tool to support local companies as well as to attract companies and/or talented workers to their communities.

• Restructuring, Re-thinking and Recreating Marketing Models for New Opportunities
Examine the opportunities arising from the economic crisis and what communities’ strategies communities can use to access these prospects.

• How Partnerships Can Enable a Stronger, Faster Economic Turnaround
Learn how communities have each found ways to capitalize on the assets and strengths of related organizations in and around their markets to retooled workforces, evolved core competencies, build alliances and leveraged limited resources to build growing economies.

Revitalization

• Tactics to Bring Tourism Back to Life
The recession has been marked by significant reduction in consumer spending and extensive changes in consumer buying habits, reducing overall demand for travel and tourism. Learn how you can tap into your own backyard market to keep your tourism industry afloat.

• BRE Strategies that Work in a Recession
For most communities in economic turmoil, finding ways to keep local businesses afloat has become the number one economic development priority. Examine effective BRE strategies that can be implemented on small budgets to meet the needs challenged economies

• Combating Unemployment: The Potential of Green Jobs
Learn how to identify sources of green jobs, how to grow them, and how to use them effectively to not only combat unemployment but build the green economy of the future.

• Salvaging Downtowns in the Wake of Closures
Examine the strategies communities are using to bring people back downtown to live, work and play even in these harsh economic times.

• Nurturing Small Businesses in Challenging Times
Small businesses face massive challenges during periods of economic distress. Examine methods communities can use to support small businesses in challenging times.

• Using the Downturn as an Opportunity to Reinvent Local Economies
When the largest employer or industry closes its doors, communities need to evolve their plans and refocus on revitalization efforts. Hear how communities from different regions survived a downturn and created real economic opportunities in tough times.

• New Lives for Dead Malls
Examine what communities can do to revitalize these open retail spaces and find the resources to make it happen.

Resourcefulness

• Finding New Sources of Finance: Tapping into Local Foundations
Examine how communities can tap into local foundations to finance economic and workforce development programs and projects.

• Developing New Skills for Mid-Level Workers
As many mid career and older workers become unemployed, they are finding it harder to find jobs at their current skill level. Learn how to support mid-level and older workers build skills and find new jobs in the current labor market.

• Cultivating Entrepreneurs for Economic Growth
First time entrepreneurs need special environments that are innovative and nurture needs to grow and flourish. Learn how to provide it.

• Surviving the Coming Workforce Crisis
A growing workforce crisis is taking shape. Some communities will face older workers retiring without a younger workforce to replace them. Other communities will have young talented workers unable to find jobs in their communities. Learn how to prepare for the coming crisis.

• Nurturing Second-Stage Companies for Economic Growth
Around the globe, businesses are closing their doors, consolidating locations and placing on expansion plans on hold. Learn how to confront the challenges of working with second-stage companies and quickly implementing programs to serve their needs.

• Infrastructure Investments for Short-Term Job Creation and Long-Term Competitiveness
Federal and state governments are authorizing funding for infrastructure projects around the country to create jobs and reinvigorate the economy. Learn how to tap into infrastructure improvements for new jobs for your community.

• Staffing EDOs in Challenging Times
As economies turn downward, EDOs are asked to perform new tasks outside their traditional roles. Examine the various staff roles of the EDO in challenging and new economic times.

» View the full conference program

Register by July 10 and Save

Attendees who register for the conference and the hotel before July 10 will receive a special $79 single/dbl room rate for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. After registering with IEDC for the Annual Conference, you will receive via email a promotional code to make your hotel reservations and receive the $79 room rate. Regular rate of $99 single/dbl applies to Friday - Saturday nights.

Attendees will also receive a free copy of the 2008 Salary Survey Report - a $150 value - by registering and booking their hotel rooms by July 10. This is a comprehensive report of salary and compensation data from economic development professionals. It is a key tool for benchmarking your compensation to other professionals in the field and for hiring positions within your organization.

All registered attendees canceling their registration and who received the special room rate of $79 will be charged a $200 processing fee, regardless of when the cancellation notice was received. Individuals who cancel will be able to keep the Salary Survey Report.