Tuesday 20 October 2009

Joining the Dots with our Economic Diaspora

"I believe strongly that, you know, we have an opportunity every time there is a challenge. And being smart and creative, flexible, agile, in today's economic conditions is an absolute necessity."

These were the words of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a meeting in Belfast last week with business leaders.

It has never been more important for our economy to be smart,creative, flexible and agile. We are facing an economic situation that sees 53,800 people be without jobs in Northern Ireland. Despite the great news from the New York Stock Exchange a lot more innovative paths to investment will have to be sought before we will be out of the woods.

In response to this The President's Club in Belfast, an organisation dedicated to developing and enhancing crossborder and cross Atlantic business relationships has organised an event that will start us on a path to engage with our economic diaspora.

The event which takes place tomorrow morning is part of the 'Silicon Valley comes to Ireland' Initiative organised by the Irish Technology Leadership Group. The discussions will be chaired by economist and journalist John Simpson and will be addressed by Dr. Graham Gudgin one of the authors of the Independent Review of the Economy (IREP - www.irep.org.uk)as well as representatives from InvestNI, Enterprise Ireland and a host of business people from across the island and the USA.

I hope to twitter and at some stages blog on the event. If you have any questions please send them to me and I will do my best to raise them.

Please send your questions to terry@chambrepa.com
or to my facebook or this blog.

The event runs from 8am - 11.45am althought there are a range of other ITLG events happening in Belfast.
www.itlg.org

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