The Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District held its 2022 Industry Outlook Forum from the Kenai Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center on Thursday, January 6th. The all-day event offered a variety of topics and speakers discussing the economic outlook for the Kenai Peninsula and the state of Alaska. The presentations ranged from several topics including regional real estate, tourism, the Alaska Marine Highway System, mariculture, manufacturing and the oil and gas industry.
Tim Dillon, KPEDD’s Executive Director spoke with KSRM after the event saying:
“I think it went outstanding, better than I could have expected as far as the participation. We knew we had excellent speakers. We had to adjust a little bit because of the travel and people not being able to make it back into the state of Alaska and we were able to juggle those things. We had 100 and some people here at the Visitor Center plus another 75-to-100 online. I think it was extremely successful.”
Dillon expounds on what he hopes to achieve by organizing these industry forums:
“More than anything else, spreading the information out, making sure that people met each other. It really works well when people have an opportunity to not just see somebody’s name somewhere, but actually meet them and get a chance to pass a business card from one person to another and just say, ‘hey, call me, let’s have coffee. I’ve got some questions. I didn’t think about mariculture that way. How do we do this.’ Gas and oil, same thing, what are some of the things we can do to help each other?”
Moving forward, Dillon says:
“Well first of all, we have our mariculture project that we are working on right now that we have to have finished by March 15th, plus a variety of other applications that we’ve got in the hopper for different people. We’ve already started working on not only speakers for our Native Economic Forum, which will be in April.”
The next KPEDD Industry Outlook Forum has been scheduled for January 2023 in Homer.
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This feature is the first in a continuing series by KSRM News highlighting KPEDD’s 2022 Industry Outlook Forum.
