Business conference canceled by governor

BANGOR – For the last five years, Gov. Angus King has been telling statewide small business owners at an annual conference to follow his advice and their companies will flourish.

Some people in attendance were listening, and they weren’t necessarily King’s target audience.

The annual Blaine House Conference and Exposition for Small Business will not be held this year, which would have been the sixth consecutive gathering. One of the reasons for the cancellation is that community developers, impressed by King’s conference, now are holding similar ones in their regions.

There are too many conferences and there’s too little time to attend all of them, said Henry Bourgeois, director of the Maine Development Foundation, which organized the Blaine House conference at King’s direction.

In its early years, the Blaine House conference was considered the place to be for small business owners to network with vendors and get advice from experts, including King, who would present a “Top 10” list of business tips. At one point, there were 62 workshops over two days, and attendance was close to 2,000 people.

Last year, however, attendance was down to about 1,100 people. Enthusiasm for the conference was down because of the draw generated by the regional programs, Bourgeois said.

“It’s a big drop [in attendance] but it’s understandable given the excellence in regional programs,” he said.

The Blaine House conference also was affected by a difficulty in attracting sponsorship dollars from major statewide companies. With many major businesses facing tight budgets because of the recession, some of them had to pick and choose which programs to fund, Bourgeois said.

“Generally speaking, because we’re in a recession, because everything is tight, they’re going to spend money more prudently,” he said.