Vancouver Island’s business leaders will gather in Nanaimo to talk about the current state of the Island, and what the future could hold.

The Vancouver Island Economic Alliance’s annual State of the Island Economic Summit will be held at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre next Tuesday through Thursday, Oct. 28-30.

Approximately 550 delegates are expected at the conference centre, where they will hear from four keynote speakers: economist Susan Mowbray, entrepreneur Mike Fata, business consultant Paul Healy and pollster Shachi Kurl.

“We talk about GDP all the time, but what does that actually mean for our region and how does that translate to outcomes on Vancouver Island?”

Mowbray’s address this year will include a look back to 2000 and a look ahead to 2050.

“She’s going to talk about how we may not have been as active participants as we could have been in between 2000 to 2025 to help navigate where we got to, and that call to action will be that now’s the time for us to be participatory in where we want to get to in the next 25 years,” Sperber said.

“Expanding it into the ballroom with all 500-plus people doing the workshop together will be organized chaos, but beautiful things will come out of that at the same time,” Sperber said.

Vision 2050 is a regional economic strategy that will be co-created over the next two years, and this week’s workshops will discuss how to advance Island economic priorities, who should be involved, and what the next steps should be.

The three days will be packed with a mix of panel sessions and more informal ‘fireside chats.’ Sperber said some of the talks she’s looking forward to include panels on the short supply of industrial land and on housing as economic infrastructure, and a chat about Indigenous ways of knowing applied to economics.

“Those conversations at the summit are going to be, I think, really enlightening and help inform the complexity of those issues for the audience, so we have a better understanding of how we potentially move forward,” she said.

“It’s just a really great opportunity for the region to come together,” she said.

Read full story here: https://www.ladysmithchronicle.com/news/business-leaders-will-envision-islands-future-at-economic-summit-in-nanaimo-8319647