ELY- The Ely for Ely Conference, held Nov. 18 at the Grand Ely Lodge, brought over 70 Ely-area community leaders together at the Grand Ely Lodge to network and build connections to help make Ely an even more successful community.
The event organizer, Lacey Squier, manager of Boundary Waters Connect, is an old hand at building community and creating connections between people and groups. Last year, she observed that many of the groups and nonprofits in the Ely area had the same needs and problems that could be better solved through collaboration and networking.
“We’re a well-networked community, but there are still silos that groups fall into. I realized that Ely’s nonprofits and businesses could profit by breaking across those silos to discover ways to collaborate, thus carving out capacity to achieve untapped potential.” Having identified the need, Squier started a working group a year ago about how to break down those silos. The Ely for Ely conference was one of the results of that effort.
“There are so many different strategies we could adopt for improving our economy or strengthening our community, but all of them require us to work together,” said Squier. “My hope was that we’d get 60 people in the room who would be willing to engage with one another. I am thrilled that we had more like 70 people and I’m really proud of how dynamic the engagement level was.”
The conference program led the participants through a series of activities designed to break the ice, even for the introverts in the room.
“It’s hard to build a movement if you don’t know who is in it,” said Squier, “which is the point of the (conference) exercises … No matter what strategy we choose to adopt to improve our economy or strengthen our community,” Squier said, “having a stronger social network will be the benefit of that strategy. So yes, networking was the primary emphasis of the day.”
The conference also included sessions to discuss hot topics for the Ely area and to wrestle with the issue of calendaring the area’s many events. The hot topics included items like community engagement and housing.
“If people have a positive experience,” Squier concluded, “that is the strategy to help us grow this event next year.”
Looking forward
Given a productive day of building connections, the conference organizers have plans to follow up on their success, including another event like the Ely for Ely Conference next year. As a separate follow-up program to the conference, Boundary Waters Connect and the Entrepreneur Fund will host a monthly networking and professional development series starting in January. The program will host meetings on the second Tuesday of every month from 7:30-9 a.m. Meeting locations will change monthly.
The target audience of the program will be Ely-area entrepreneurs, nonprofit and business leaders, and engaged community members. The meetings will begin with a continental breakfast, facilitated networking, and community announcements at 7:30 a.m. The educational portion will start at 8 a.m. These events will be free and do not require pre-registration to attend.
The first meeting will be on Jan. 14, 2025, at the Ely Folk School. The topic will be on Ely-specific marketing tactics at the Ely Folk School. The Feb. 11 meeting will be on how to finance a business.
The new networking group is being led by Squier, Abby Dare of the Meadows Gallery, professional life coach Thea Sheldon, Dorothy Molter Museum Director Jess Edberg, Save the Boundary Waters administrative coordinator Jessica Kulik, Entrepreneur Fund Business Advisor Emily Roose, and Ely Chamber of Commerce Business Manager Kristen Switajewski.