Friday, April 07, 2006

Global Heroes

I was delighted to be asked again this year to emcee the Ontario Global Traders awards luncheons. These are the “Ontario export awards” for small and medium-sized businesses, taking place in four cities across Ontario this month (Barrie, Cambridge, Kingston and North Bay).

We launched the 2006 program in Barrie yesterday. It was a great day. Four dynamic speakers on exporting, followed by a lively networking session, then lunch, and then the awards presentation. I knew some of the winners, and they're very deserving, but it was great to meet so many entrepreneurs I didn’t know who are doing innovative things that are building the economy of this province.

It’s a very inspiring event, especially when we can get the winning entrepreneurs to share some of their secrets of success. So I will try harder as MC to pry more of those secrets out of the winners at the next three events.

If you're interested in attending an upcoming event, click here for more information. But hurry! The next luncheon is April 12 in Kingston.

And congratulations to yesterday's Gold Award winners for the Central region of Ontario:

Innovation: Aecometric Corporation, Richmond Hill
Market Expansion - Product: ViEX Inc., Newmarket
Market Expansion - Service: G.A.P. Adventures, Toronto
Partnership: The Pressure Pipe Inspection Company, Mississauga; WRc Group, Wiltshire, U.K.
Leadership: Dennis Parass, Handling Specialty, Grimsby
Student Achievement: Misagh Tabrizi, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa

1 comment:

don_george said...

Great to see small businesses thriving. It really is the engine that keeps going when the big companies go through the ups and downs.