Participants hard at work at the Policy Development Roundtable

We had a great turn out for our Policy Development roundtable on Jan. 17th. All ages were represented, with a diverse industry representation as well. These roundtables are valuable in that they assist the Chamber board and Political Action committee to get an idea of the issues faced by our business members. The PAC committee works all year addressing the issues raised by the members and seeking out policy areas that need to be addressed. I also sit on the Political Action committee of the Alberta Chamber of Commerce and have just recently begun dialing into the meetings that have been initiated by the Sask Chamber.

On January 18th, a team of Community Leaders lead by the Chamber ventured out in the cold to attend a meeting in Edmonton with the Deputy Ministers at Government House. Health, Education, Advanced Education, Seniors Care, Economic Development and City Government were all represented along with Chamber business members. This was a great opportunity to help the deputy mininsters to understand Lloydminster a bit better and to consider the challenges and complexities of our day to day operations whether that is City Council managing our City, businesses working in our bi-provincial environment, health and education trying to ensure equitable programs and services for all of the citizens who get those services in Lloydminster and emphasizing the "real" area served by Lloydminster as one city serving regions in two provinces.  I believe the meeting was successful and now we will begin work on phase III which will be to bring the Deputy Ministers from both provinces to Lloydminster for a special Lloydminster focused summit.


Mayor Mulligan, David Fan, Leanne Sauer, Brian McCook and Scott Musgrave in conversation as our team waits for the arrival of the Deputy Ministers.

Business Education Month will be holding a sales and marketing workshop in March. Normally to get this calibre of workshop, you would send your employees out of town for a day or two. What makes this workshop so affordable, is the workshop will be coming to you. For less than $300. you can have your employees attend a first rate workshop, with no extra travel and accomodation costs. Watch the Business Ed Month partner's workshops for more information on this workshop.

The new "Mix and Munch" noon hour networking events will begin in February. They will be held on the 4th Thursday of the month at noon and we look forward to meeting some members who are not able to make it out to the after hours Chamber Connect.

Till next time ......

Pat

Isn't this winter great ....

Wow! Who needs to go south with this kind of weather. Haven't even pulled out the winter boots yet. Sure makes the winter shorter.

The Chamber has been a strong supporter of the Regional Business Accelerator and it looks like they have an interesting workshop coming up - The Inventor's Toolkit, "Navigating to Commercialization"  I talked to Janet last night at the Chamber Connect and she let me know that it wasn't just for brand new inventors, but for those looking to move to the next level as well. January 19th is the date and more information can be had at events@smallbusinessinformation.ca.

The Chamber Connect held at Digital Connections last night was well attended. Troy and his staff were great hosts serving the wine and cheese. Congratulations to Michelle Duzchek on winning the "most frequent attendee" at the Chamber Connect in 2011. Michelle's prize was $500.00 in Chamber bucks to be spent at any one of our 580 Chamber members.

Congratulations as well to the Gold Star Service With A Smile recipients. Kayla Marcy from Fabutan Sun Tan Studio, Melinda Bottorff from Safeway Pharmacy and Vickie Lamb from Marketplace Solution were all recognized for giving exceptional customer service.

Next Tuesday, January 17th we will be hard at work developing the policy resolutions for 2012. Come out to the lunch time event and assist your Chamber to set the policy direction for the next year. Call the Chamber office to register. On Wednesday, January 18th our Community Leaders will be off to Edmonton to meet with the Deputy Minister. In September 2011, the Leaders Group met with the Deputy Minister's in Saskatchewan and Phase 3 will be getting the provincial DM's together in Lloydminster so that our Communnity Leaders can work together with them to solve some of the complex issues that we encounter trying to do business, run an organization or a municipality in this border city of ours.

 Business Education month is in March. There are several good speakers coming to town for both the kick-off event on Feb. 29th, the Women's wrap up event on March 28th and for the workshops in between. The Chamber will hold their annual Labour Standards workshop on March 8th. Stay tuned for the complete line up of events coming soon.

Dabir Naqvi has been working hard with his committee to continue the dialogue on the work done by the Premiers Council on Economic Strategy. A class of business students at the college will also be working with us on this project and we are excited to be meeting with them on Feb. 17th.

Perhaps I will see you out to the   open house at the new Thorpe Recovery Centre tomorrow. It looks impressive from the outside, and I am looking forward to seeing the rest of it. It is exciting that we will have a facility of this kind serving our community and our provinces.

Till next time....
Pat