Looking to grow your business? Maine Startup & Create Week is for you, organizer says
Photo / Courtesy of Maine Startup & Create Week
If your company wants to “grow at a fast enough rate where you’re creating new jobs,” Jess Knox has a message for you: go to Maine Startup & Create Week.
That’s part of the pitch from Knox, founder and chief organizer of the second annual conference that runs from June 22-28 in downtown Portland. Whether you’re a nonprofit employee or starting a food truck business of your own, Knox said the conference will have something for you.
Knox said the conference is especially meant for people who might wonder how they can use innovative processes to improve their own business.
“What I’m trying to explain to people is that this is everyone,” Knox said. “If you're not really trying to at least think about [innovation] a little bit, the world is moving really quickly."
To that end, here are a few other reasons you should check out the conference:
Three different tracks for panels
The conference, which is expected to attract people from at least 21 states and two other countries, touts more than 75 events over seven days, but don’t let that overwhelm you, Knox said. A majority of those events have been divided into three tracks — small business, food innovation and scale and growth — so attendees can decide how to best spent their time.
“We heard from small business owners that said, ‘I don't identify as a startup,’” Knox said, explaining how the small business track was conceived. “Instead of getting in a debate about the language, we said, “OK, why don't we create a track that is for small business owners that want to take more risk?’ and that's what we've done.”
One of the small business panels includes Shipyard Brewing Co. President Fred Forsley and will look at how businesses like his have been able to grow in Maine. One of the food innovation panels includes Rising Tide Brewery co-founder Heather Sanborn and will look at how companies can prepare their food product for retail. And one of the panels on scale and growth includes Eric Sherman, digital marketing lead at Boston-based marketing company Hubspot, and will look at how companies can acquire their next 10,000 customers.
A way to meet people from different walks of life
One of Knox’s big goals for Maine Startup & Create Week is to engineer connections between people who might not cross paths in other situations. And maybe, just maybe, those connections will lead to even greater things, Knox suggests.
Beyond the conference’s few networking events, Knox and other organizers have designed the conference to optimize these kinds of connections. “There is some attempted strategy every day in how we try to engineer people,” Knox said.
One of the conference’s new features, called “collision lunches,” aims to achieve just that. Instead of trying to figure out where to go to lunch each day, Knox said, attendees can sign up to be randomly placed in one of three locations: Slab, Piccolo and the Portland Hunt & Alpine Club. The idea, he said, is that this random placement will allow attendees to meet other people they might not run into while going to different events across the week.
The conference will also have keynotes, another new feature this year, that gives an opportunity for attendees from different tracks to come together. Keynote speakers include Donato Tramuto, founder of Massachusetts-based Physicians Interactive; Cheryl Heller, founding chair of the Design for Social Innovation Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City; and Steven Kotler, co-founder and director of research for the Flow Genome Project.
The conference’s events have also been more spaced out than last year, Knox said, leaving more opportunity for “hall talk” before and after panels.
Last but not least, there are a number of partner events including an opportunity to meet the Maine Angels, a SCORE luncheon and a street fair held by Allagash Brewing Co.
Less barriers to attend
Knox said he’s trying to open the conference up to people who may not attend otherwise, whether it’s because they’re three hours away or they just can’t afford it.
For the first time, Maine Startup & Create Week is offering a free, round-trip bus trip for up to 40 people from Bangor to Portland. Knox said people interested in getting a free ride down to the conference should contact Jesse Moriarty at the University of Maine’s Foster Center for Innovation, which is organizing the trip with Blackstone Accelerates Growth.
The conference is also offering “scholarships” to people who might not be able to afford the $500 week pass or the $150 daily pass. Knox said those interested in applying should send a short paragraph introducing themselves and explaining why they should get a “scholarship” to scholarshipsforMSCW@gmail.com. In addition, the conference is letting people pay $35 to attend individual sessions and $40 for each keynote.
“The thing I remind people is we're a city of 66,000,” Knox said. “We are by far and above the smallest city that does this. And we should just be proud of that.”
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