Buffalo Niagara can better support its young professionals

I've blogged here before about moving to Buffalo Niagara after eleven years away in five states.  I'm from here, so I knew about the strong community and everything our region has to offer, but was also a bit hesitant to make the move. 

I was hesitant because, after spending eleven years in other places, I was unsure where I would fit in.  What would I do after work?  How would I occupy my time on the weekends?  I often wondered how young professionals who weren't from the area got acclimated, and assumed they struggled.

Three years ago, the Partnership launched our 360 program in response to concerns from our members who had difficulty attracting and retaining talented young professionals to our area.  We said we would initiate a program to help young professionals accelerate their careers and get involved in the community.  360 grew and grew, and came to be known for connecting young professionals in social settings. 

This summer, Christina Lopez was promoted to the position of Workforce Development at the Partnership and began overseeing the 360 program.  Through her leadership, the program is expanding beyond its social roots, and is growing in three areas relevant to Buffalo Niagara's future leaders: leadership development, business networking and community involvement. 

Three new programs have been added to the 360 calendar:

• Government Unplugged, which matches our area's young professionals with their peers in public service, offering both groups the opportunity to grow professionally and personally. 
• Be-A-Mentor, which connects young professionals with service opportunities in inner-city schools.
• Game Changers, which showcases a special group entrepreneurs - the big-thinking, risk-taking, no excuses-making visionaries who are determined to start their own businesses right here in our region. 

360 began its 2012 programming year a few weeks ago as hundreds joined together in the Larkin Center of Commerce for a Kickoff Celebration.  It's not too late to get involved, and a $25 membership (waived if your company is a 360 member) gets you access to the whole year's calendar of events. 

Learn more and get involved on the Buffalo Niagara 360 website. 

We can achieve great things in 2012

Welcome back from Thanksgiving!

For those of you who got an early start on your Thanksgiving celebrations, you missed a big week at the Partnership.

Last Monday, we unveiled our 2012 Buffalo Niagara Regional Agenda with our partners from the City of Buffalo, City of Niagara Falls, Erie County, and Niagara County.  The Regional Agenda rollout event, held Monday night at Pettibone’s downtown in Coca Cola Field, was well attended by our members, the media, as well as elected leaders representing Buffalo Niagara residents at the local, county, state, and federal levels.

Our Regional Agenda began in 2001 when the then-new Senator Clinton made it clear that our region was missing out by approaching the state and federal governments for project support in a piecemeal fashion.  Buffalo Niagara, she said, needed to speak with one voice, and the Partnership began assembling local stakeholders and leaders on an annual basis to prioritize key projects.  That approach has proven successful, yielding results in 2011 like the passage of SUNY 2020, Recharge NY, the Excelsior Jobs bill, and Article X, which streamlines the regulatory process for the siting of power generation facilities.

This year, the development of our Regional Agenda was led by Nadine Powell, our Manager of Business Development, with the support of AJ Wright, our Manager of Government Affairs.  These two worked with government entities across our region to build a relatively brief, but impactful list of projects that need support. 

Being in my first year at the Partnership, this was my first opportunity to see the development of our Regional Agenda up close.  As an observer to the process, I witnessed how initiatives the Partnership pushed to include were largely legislative and policy driven, whereas the content driven by our elected leaders often involved physical development.  I also saw how Nadine and AJ narrowed large lists of priorities from each of our partners into a workable list that would represent the interests of all parties.

You can review the 2012 Buffalo Niagara Regional Agenda here.  You’ll note that this year’s agenda is topped by the revised Peace Bridge expansion and renovation project, as UB/SUNY 2020, which had led the Regional Agenda for years, is now becoming a reality.  Achieving a faster, safer, and more efficient border crossing is a huge priority and major focus for all of us.  Later today, our President & CEO, Andrew Rudnick, will join US Senator Charles Schumer, the Canadian Consulate, the Peace Bridge Authority, and the Bi-National Economic & Tourism Alliance for a press conference at the Peace Bridge as they announce new efforts to make it easier for local residents to obtain Nexus passes and cross our bridges faster.

Imagine the impact if these projects come to fruition.  We’ve started the process by getting everyone on the same page and producing a unified, cohesive document that outlines what we want to do in the coming year, and we’ll continue our work to see them through.  The beat goes on. 

ASG Makes the Hive Buzz

I've been blogging the last few weeks about the new normal, and how we think our SellingHive program can give companies a leg up when it comes to selling in an increasingly turbulent economy.  One of our members, Applied Sciences Group will be taking advantage of the Partnership’s trial period to augment their sales strategy with SellingHive.

Applied Sciences Group is a software engineering firm that provides services to technology companies and advanced manufacturing firms.  Many companies sell products that can be described with color, weight, size and material, but ASG's custom solutions are project specific.  Their clients have them design systems, write code, develop test procedures, provide human machine interfaces, and provide database integration services.  Even further, their target clients are in a wide range of industries including medical devices, defense contracts, and ceramics... and even food and dairy!

We all know of companies trying to do more with less, and Applied Sciences Group is helping their customers do just that, but finding sales partners who understands their sales cycle is challenging.  With a sales force of two people, and a heavy reliance on referrals to generate new business, ASG’s ability to reach new markets and secure new clients was limited without “feet on the street” in a new territory.  

Enter SellingHive. Kim Grant, ASG's Business Development Manager, sees SellingHive as a means to get introduced to qualified prospects.  SellingHive will let her spend more time scoping out new projects and less time hunting down decision makers.

In a tough economy where prospects are busy, we all need to be creative and find new ways to hit our results.  Count Applied Sciences Group as one local employer taking steps to ensure they'll continue to grow.

Recruiting Young Engineers To Buffalo Niagara

Praxair invited me up to Tonawanda this morning to talk to several dozen young recruits they are looking to bring to our region.  Most of these folks were undergrads, with a few grad students in the mix, and from all over the country.  They were all chemical and mechanical engineers (read: smarter than yours truly).

The recruits had spent most of the morning learning about their potential employer, and my job was to help them understand what their lives would be like here as young professionals.  Many of my colleagues at the Partnership got quite the kick out of the idea that meeting me might convince someone to move here, and have enjoyed yanking my chain about it. 

I spoke for about 30 minutes, opening with the Million Reasons video which was produced by our friends at Buffalo Niagara Enterprise.  Their mission is to recruit companies to our region, and I used their video as background about what it's like to work here:

I then spoke about four main things:

1. We are not a suburb of New York City; we are a bi-national region.  We're closer to Cleveland, Detroit, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto than NYC.  We're connected to the world and value our location right along the Great Lakes and Canadian border.  They were intrigued. 
2. Buffalo doesn't have wings.  I did, however, show them pictures of some.  Also beef on weck, Loganberry, sponge candy, and chicken finger subs.  They were hungry. 
3. I talked about our history- the Erie Canal, invention, innovation, being an industrial hub, and how involved we all are in our communities.  This isn't a place where you'll commute an hour and a half each way every day (like I did in Chicago), struggle to meet people (like I did in Boston), feel bored (like I did in Indiana), or write rent checks that make you want to cry (like I did in New York City).  They were interested.
4. Yes, it snows (just like everywhere else I've been), and we make the best of it.  We have Powder Keg in the winter, the Sabres to get us through the sometimes-dreary Spring, festivals all summer, and beautiful Autumns.  They were seeing the possibilities.

I also told them about Buffalo Niagara 360, our young professionals program we launched at the request of our members to ensure that young people new to town are able to build networks of friends and partners.  

To finish, I used the For Real video which was produced by our friends at Visit Buffalo Niagara to show them about life here:

Their eyes seemed to open as they saw some examples of what life here looks like, and I felt like I'd made an impact.  This is what I signed up for when I decided to join the Partnership.  

What would you present if you were in front of a room full of talented young folks with no roots here?