The Crossfield Chamber of Commerce hosted a first of it's kind event in the town yesterday (May 31).

87 business women registered for the first ever Rural Women In Business Conference at the Crossfield Community Centre.  The conference aimed to connect and celebrate women entrepreneurs and leaders from central Alberta.  The featured guest speaker was Monica Kretschmer, the founder and CEO of Canadian Business Chicks who spoke on "3 Myths About Influence and How Anyone Can Be Influential In Business and Life."

Executive Director of the Crossfield Chamber of Commerce and conference organizer Nicole Vandenberghe says, from the comments she received, the women who attended the event were happy with it.  "I've had a lot of people tell me I did really good because they saw how nervous I was trying to speak," Vandenberghe laughs, "A lot of people saying they really enjoyed it, it's been a great day.  I've had a few comments about how this is one of the best received events that Crossfield has had, so that was really nice to know."

The conference was sponsored in part by the Town of Crossfield and the Airdrie Chamber of Commerce as well as a number of businesses.  Vandenbergh says they tried to encompass as many types of business as possible as well as at any stage in their business life, and the workshops were also designed that way.

"If you were a business looking at more business planning or more starting up we had a workshop for that.  If you were a business that needed to grow in terms of social media we had that workshop.  We had a workshop geared around telling your own story, what is your story and why that marketing matters.  We also had a de-clutter workshop, which is a big one for most businesses.  The workshops were really well received."

Now, Vandenberghe says, the organizing committee plans to follow up the conference and start planning next year's event.  "We really tried to connect and celebrate women and make sure they have avenues that they know are available to them in business.  We'll have some newsletters going out for our wrap up as well and we'll really start looking at planning next year's right away because we found out about our grant rather late and it was a very  quick throw together.  It worked out, but we'll definitely be able to go forward and know what avenues women in business will want next year."  

Questions, comments or story ideas? Email us at news@discoverairdrie.com