 Marketing
The Director of the Brockport SBDC conducts regular presentations during branch manager and commercial loan officer meetings at HSBC, M&T, First Niagara, Bank of Castile and other banks to communicate SBDC program updates and activities.
Program Development: Products and Services
The Director of the Corning SBDC met with a manufacturing consultant to identify topics for workshops focusing on utilizing technology to address “speed to market” issues, efficiency and profitability.
| The Brockport SBDC partners with various area libraries to provide workshops and seminars in library facilities. Partners include the Rochester Downtown library as well as the libraries in Brockport, Fairport, Victor, Ogden and Canandaigua. |
A Canton SBDC advisor spoke to Hermon-DeKalb Central School seniors in Government and Economics classes. Students were provided with an entrepreneurial skills quiz prior to the advisor's visit. The advisor reviewed the quiz answers with students, relating them to the skills and knowledge required for successful small business ownership. The advisor also discussed SBDC services, the importance of small business in the economy, business planning, and financing.
Sponsors, Host Institutions, Partners and Alliances
The Stony Brook SBDC participated in the first annual “How to Build Your Business Conference” event held at the Suffolk County Corporate Training Center. The event featured speakers from Empire State Development, NYS Office of General Services, Community Development Corporation of Long Island, Long Island Development Corporation, US Small Business Administration, and the SBDC. More than 50 attendees participated in the program.
| The Corning SBDC and the SBA in Elmira co-sponsored a workshop for Veterans that featured speakers from the Bath VA Medical Center, the NYS Division of Veterans Affairs, The Chemung County Department of Veterans Affairs, SCORE, the NYS Department of Labor Veterans Office, the Regional Economic Development and Energy Corporation (REDEC), the Southern Tier Planning and Development Board, and the Chemung Canal Trust Company. |
The Brockport SBDC co-sponsors Intro to Entrepreneurship workshops with Rochester Works. The workshop series was initiated in August 2006; 3 sessions have been held between August and October. The program helps to prepare unemployed individuals in their consideration of entrepreneurship as an income producing option.
Technology
The Brockport SBDC actively participates in a nine-county organization known as WIRED which has received a $15 million grant from the US DOL to develop and promote technology programs/businesses and related jobs over the next 3 years. |
Special Projects
The Director of the Mid-Hudson SBDC is actively participating in a Fed/State/Latino Small Business Organization. The organization will develop a bilingual directory/guide on bilingual services/products available to the Latino small business community in the region/state. The organization plans to combine resources, and with input from the Latino small business organizations, develop an essential Fed/State bilingual small business guide. The Hispanic Business & Professional Association has offered to take the lead in developing, printing and disseminating the directory/guide to the Latino Small Business community. The SBDC Director volunteered to be the primary point of contact for Spanish-speaking individuals throughout NYS seeking assistance from the SBDC.
In 2003, the New York SBDC was contacted by the Signage Foundation for Communication Excellence ( Portland, OR), which was seeking a partner through whom their materials about the benefits afforded by effective on-premise signage for businesses could be communicated to the small business sector. SBDC agreed to research, write, design & distribute a handbook on signage for use by SBDCs and other SBA business advisement programs across the nation, as well as to existing sign companies, city & town planning boards, small businesses, and other parties. The book distilled hundreds of pages of existing research relating to the effectiveness of signage into an easily readable guide to inform small business owners and improve their interactions with sign companies.
n April 2004, the book What’s Your Signage? was released at the International Sign Association’s annual SignExpo in Orlando, FL. Of an initial print run of 10,000 copies, over 8,600 have been sold or donated to the aforementioned parties. Feedback from the industry was positive, and the book won two separate awards for excellence from New York- and nationally-based library organizations. As a result, the International Sign Association (ISA) approached the SBDC in early 2005 to create a web-based version of the book. The website would also serve as an electronic means whereby a visiting small business user could create a profile of his/her own business, and then have that profile e-mailed to any of the 20 ISA sign manufacturers nearest them. The website was unveiled in the fall of 2006, and will be promoted heavily throughout the ASBDC- and ISA-member communities. |
Professional Development & Staff Retention
The Canton SBDC Director attended a web conference on “New Methods for Multicasting Video and Audio Content”. The web conference covered a range of topics including marketing, how to shoot video & record audio, RSS feeds, podcasts, and vodcasts.
| A librarian from the Research Network attended the New York State Data Center Affiliates meeting in Saratoga on October 23-25, 2006. The primary topics were the American Community Survey, Labor Force Statistics, and plans for the 2010 Census. |
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