NMU entrepreneur expo
Northern Michigan University’s College of Business holds a business competition for students every year. But as ABC 10 senior reporter Mike Hoey reports, the U.P. has so much entrepreneur spirit that the college wants to celebrate them this spring.
The NMU College of Business is getting ready for a first–ever Celebration of Entrepreneurship and Business. The conference will take place on April 10th in conjunction with NMU’s New Business Venture Competition, but organizers want to hear now from businesspeople interested in making presentations during the day-long conference.
“The response has just been phenomenal, so there’s a void here that’s waiting to be filled,” College of Business interim dean Dr. David Rayome said. “Marquette County and the entire Upper Peninsula is just basically populated with entrepreneurs.”
“We’re hoping to have high school students, college students as well as community members attend the event,” assistant dean Jody Lindberg said. “I think it’d be a good cross-variation of the different groups.”
Potential presenters are being asked to contact NMU by February 7th, which is a week from Friday. The College of Business wants to use the expo to show that success in the U.P. is possible.
“I don’t have them all (the presenters) memorized, and if I omit anybody, it’s not intentional,” Rayome said. “But at this point, we have Dennis West, who’s the president of Northern Initiatives. We have Bob Jacquart from Jacquart Enterprises that make the Stormy Kromers. We have Jason Schneider, who’s a part of the Innovation Accelerator.”
“They’ll be able to share their successes (and) their failures,” Lindberg said. “The conference attendees will be able to take away information that, hopefully, they can use in their business and inspire a lot of new entrepreneurs in the area.”
Organizers would like the new conference to become an annual event.
Anyone wanting to submit a presentation idea can call (906) 227-2900 or contact Dr. Rayome by email at drayome@nmu.edu . The presentations must be 45 minutes long, including time for questions and answers.