The province of Prince Edward Island and the City of Summerside are in Atlanta this week for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference. That’s our client Mike Thususka, Director of Economic Development for the City of Summerside, in the picture below standing next to the latest addition to the “Health IT Brick Campaign” collateral. So far, Mike reports that he continues to get great feedback about the campaign and it’s opening doors at this year’s conference with the same momentum it did in 2009. Click here for the backstory.

PEI was ranked 4th worldwide by KPMG for Advanced Software Development. They have been aggressively pursuing new Health IT companies with the “Brick Campaign” to create a world-class cluster in Summerside. You can learn more about the Health IT attraction initiative here.

IEDC members can read the whole article here, but a few highlights that we liked are below.

Move from research, data provision and incentives to business advisory services and adding value to the whole process. “We were the folks with the information; that was our value-added,” said Phil Phillips. “Now a lot of the information is free, so how do we look beyond that?”

Be the person in town with more friends than anyone else. The role of the economic development professional is as a connector, said Jorgenson, and McEnroe agreed. Yes, there is automated and data-oriented work that economic developers have to do, but the most valuable work is meeting people and connecting consultants and prospects to social networks and to private-sector people who can help close a deal. “You promote your community best when the words don’t come out of your mouth,” she said.

A new study looks at economic development website content from the perspective of site selectors. Chabin Concepts, Austin Consulting, and First Energy conducted the study in 2007/2008 with participants who were site selectors or those who had worked on business location projects. Although based on users and economic development websites from the U.S., the results are of interest to Canadian Economic Developers as well. Some highlights:

Top 4 frustrations on ED websites:

1. Out of date (25%)
2. Lack of contact info (16%)
3. Incomplete information (16%)
4. Navigational issues (16%)

Top Content

• Top-ranked content tends to corre­late with site selection factors.
• 60% or more were also interested in business activity, regional advan­tages, business resources, and cost comparisons.
• Housing and K-12 education were important to at least 50% of the audience.
• 78% were somewhat or very likely to visit a GIS map linking property to demographic data.
• 85% were somewhat or very likely to visit a “Site Selectors” page.
• 80% were somewhat or very likely to use an incentives calculator.

You can see the executive summary of the study here.

Found via Economic Development Marketing