Tag: Conference
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A Closer Look at the 2015 Municipal Agriculture Economic Development Forum
Topics presented were: Building a Bio-Industrial Cluster in Southwestern Ontario One Detroit: Building an Inclusive and Diverse Entrepreneurial Community Performance Measurement guide for Agriculture & Agri-food Organizations Golden Horseshoe Food & Farming Alliance Asset Mapping Project The Closure of the Heinz Plant in Leamington Getting Results from Social Media Agriculture as a Local Economic Development…
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Staff Profile: Barry Potter, Agriculture Development Advisor
Get to know our staff. We’ll be profiling them here so you can get to know who can help you grow your ideas. What is your role in the Regional Economic Development Branch? I cover all of Northern Ontario as an Agriculture Development Advisor with a Livestock specialty. I work with the other advisors in…
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10 takeaways from EDAC 2015 in Whitehorse
Economic Development happens in a complex and highly competitive environment. When you’re competing for investment, labour, and other resources with literally every other municipality across the globe it can be hard to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Especially, if you’re a small rural community. The 2015 Economic Development Association of Canada (EDAC) annual conference…
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New Performance Measurement guide for Agriculture & Agri-Food Organizations
A new performance measurement guide has been developed for Agriculture and Agri-Food organizations. The guide takes the reader through a step-by-step process designed to to help organizations develop a performance measurement plan. Performance measurement is the ongoing process of collecting, analyzing and reporting results. Performance measurement has a ton of benefits and helps organizations in…
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Population changes in Rural Ontario
According to a recent factsheet prepared by the Rural Ontario Institute entitled “Change in non-metro population 2014” less than half of the rural counties in Ontario had population increases over the last three years. Over the same period, however, all urban counties experienced population increases. Ray Bollman the author of the factsheet highlights the long…
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New $6M Investment in Local Food
The Ontario government is providing $6 million over three years to increase sales of local food by making it more widely available and building awareness of the variety of food grown and produced in Ontario. This funding is not restricted to the Greenbelt, and is available to organizations across Ontario. The funds will be administered…
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3 Ways Data can Support Economic Development
As I stated in my last blog post “Effective Economic Development Requires Data”, data is critical to understanding the local and regional economy. Expanding on that point, there are three main areas where data supports economic development. Use data to inform economic development strategies Data can help identify a region’s most important economic assets and…
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E-Learning: Building Organizational Capacity – The Importance of Effective Governance
An effective governing body is an essential component to any organization. Despite their importance; they can be quite complicated to understand. The Board Governance learning module is one of four new e-learning modules that focus’ on the important aspects of building an effective organization. This interactive module covers valuable information that will help establish how a…
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Celebrating Ontario’s Leaders in Agri-Food Innovation
As part of Ontario Agriculture Week, we wanted to highlight some of the past Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence winners, who contribute to the success of the Ontario’s Agri-Food sector. The Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence Program recognizes innovation that creates new products, improves existing products, helps in the creation of new jobs and…
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Outputs are good….outcomes are great! Improving performance measurement in economic development organizations
Performance measurement is the collection and analysis of data and the reporting of the data results. Performance measurement helps organizations assess the progress their initiatives are making towards desired results. The results can include both outputs (what products or services an organization delivers) and outcomes (the resulting change that occurs as a result of a…