After the tremendous learning and community-building experience at SSTI’s conference last December at the beautiful Sheraton at Wild Horse Pass in Arizona, many people are looking forward to our next gathering. We are too, but have decided to postpone the event until next year with dates to be determined.
If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to register for SSTI’s Annual Conference.
If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to register for SSTI’s Annual Conference. The registration deadline is December 3—that’s less than two weeks away! Register now to ensure your spot as practitioners and policymakers from around the country come together to learn from each other the best way to advance their innovation economy. The agenda contains four plenary sessions with national thought leaders and more than 20 breakout sessions to help plan for 2025 and beyond. Sessions include:
SSTI extends a huge “thank you” to all of the organizations partnering with us to make SSTI’s 2024 Annual Conference a success! Please take a moment now to learn more about our partners here and then be sure to visit them in person this December.
SSTI will continue the conversation about the SSBCI program at the Annual Conference. SSBCI director, Jeff Stout, will provide an update on the program in The latest on Treasury’s $10 billion investment in small businesses. The session will provide insights into Treasury's current thinking and to better understand how SSBCI might be better leveraged as a regional resource. SSBCI outreach team member Karl Fooks will moderate the session, How regions are adapting to trends in equity investment.
We’ve negotiated an extraordinary room rate for this year’s conference: $209 plus nominal taxes and fees at the conference venue, the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass in the Gila River Indian Community within the Phoenix, Arizona Metro Region. But our negotiated rate expires once the room block fills or after Monday, November 18.
Additionally, our registration closes on December 3, so why not check both these items off your to do list and do them now?
The TBED community, similarly to research scientists, faces communication challenges with elected officials, regional stakeholders, and even their friends and family. SSTI has conducted three surveys over the last nine years to uncover problematic jargon, illuminate alternative approaches, and inform our members’ communication strategies. At the SSTI Annual Conference, we'll present the latest results from a focus group and survey that will help the community communicate better with non-TBED audiences.
Since the pandemic, those working on local prosperity through the nexus of science, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship—the four cornerstones of SSTI’s mission—have seen the largest investment yet by the federal government to catalyze and support their work. It awakened teams of organizations across the country in virtually every city, institution of higher education or region to start or improve innovation-centered economic development strategies.
Whether one calls them transformational or disruptive, challenging or exciting, topics like generative AI, Big Tech, climate change, and geopolitical/economic issues will have significant influences on the future focus and efforts of every organization employing readers of this newsletter. There hasn’t been a forum for the field to talk about all of it openly and honestly—until December, that is.
Growing your local or state economy through innovation and technology-based economic development most often feels like a full-sprint ultramarathon. It doesn't help that so many external influences on how you do your job seem to change the rules and landscape thrown at you all the time. Take Nov 5, for example. You need a break! But you also need time to pause, think, and strategize with your teammates for the coming year. There is a way to achieve both simultaneously, and I love it! More...
As a part of the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI)’s Technical Assistance (TA) Program, the Treasury Department has announced 14 Small Business Opportunity Program (SBOP) awards to 12 states and two Tribal governments, each ranging from $1.6 to $10 million, totaling $75 million. SSBCI’s TA program is divided into two major programs: the TA Grant program and SBOP.