August 2018 ERDA Newsletter
Everything seems to be more automated these days.
You can click a button and purchase almost everything you need from Amazon.
You can check a website and get almost all of your news from anywhere around the world and from almost any source.
You can pick up the phone and facetime a friend or a grandchild without even leaving your home.
But there are some things that still require you getting up out of bed and leaving the home or office in order to get it done.
Economic Development is one of those things.
In August, the staff of the Enid Regional Development Alliance attended the annual Oshkosh, Wisconsin EAA Airventure Fly-In. We have a booth where we interact with some of the 600,000 pilots and business leaders from all around the world who are in attendance, and we also meet with companies that are interested in locating in Oklahoma. This year, we met with 17 different companies throughout the week. At the end of the week, Senator Jim Inhofe attended the event and made personal visits to some of the best contacts we had made and helped us encourage them to move here.
One company in particular is located in southern California and is looking to relocate. They had narrowed their search down to three sites…none of which were in Oklahoma. The CEO of the company told me after a robust meeting with us and Senator Inhofe that he had no idea Oklahoma was this aggressive and that we were as pro aviation as we are. He told us that Oklahoma was now on his list of potential sites and he would entertain a proposal from us to relocate.
You never know if a company like this will actually end up in your community and you never know whether a company like this will end up growing into a multinational corporation with thousands of employees.
But we do know that you don’t win in Economic Development by clicking a mouse button or making a call. There are still some things in life that require a personal touch.
Brent Kisling
Executive Director
