Engage 2020 is the very first, Inside St Helena Business Conference, being organised for businesses & non-government Profile Account members on the App.
The Bank of St Helena is sponsoring Engage 2020, a one-day event which is being held at the Blue Hill Community Centre on 19 February, 2020.
Engage 2020: It’s A No-Brainer
The idea to hold a business conference took root early in May, 2019, during a series of meetings with island businesses and organisations.
Nearly everyone across the different sectors were feeling the negative impacts of St Helena’s struggling economy, but it quickly became apparent that many people were dealing with the challenges alone, or in isolation.
Bringing the island’s businessmen and women together to share common problems, and in turn, try to identify solutions and opportunities to work together, just seemed like a logical, common sense way to improve the situation.
‘Conversation’ had been an under-used, free resource for problem-solving for far too long.
Hatching A Plan
How do you plan a business conference on an island that doesn’t hold business conferences?
Daunting as the task might seem, we were driven on by the excitement of the benefits this event could bring for a lot of people.
We scribbled down a list of priorities that looked a bit like this:
- Venue
- Date
- Funding
- Name for the event
- Programme of events
- Food & refreshments
- Guest speakers
- Marketing, logo, branding
Bringing People Together
One by one, we ticked off the priority list items.
Blue Hill Community Centre had the size, but it also allowed us to ‘get away’ from it all. If we took the conference out into the country, the fresh air might help with fresh ideas.
We wanted a minimum, three-month lead time, to give business people plenty of advanced notice so they could arrange their schedules.
‘Engage 2020’ emerged as the favourite name after days of brain-storming. It aligned perfectly with the concept of bringing people together and starting conversations.
Of course, staging an exhibition would require a degree of funding. Luckily for us, the Bank of St Helena were instantly on board after learning about what we were trying to achieve.
In early November, 2019, and we had all the big boxes ticked. Engage 2020 was ready to go public.
Looking Forward
Shaping an exciting programme for the day is now our focus.
It’s an exciting time and we look forward to posting further updates as we go along.