Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Mississippi Business Journal

EXPO 2004 features food, fun and good company: Con Maloney, Andy Taggart, Ann Cashion keynoting special events.

Article Excerpt
About 4,000 people are expected later this week at the state's largest business-to-business networking event. The 21st annual Mississippi Business and Technology EXPO begins Wednesday, Jan. 21, at the Mississippi Trademart in Jackson with a kick-off breakfast saluting business and industry and ends Thursday, Jan. 22, shortly after the Mississippi Business Woman of the Year of 2003 is named.

"We're enjoying our 21st year of producing the Mississippi Business EXPO," said Mississippi Business Journal publisher Joe D. Jones, CPA. "During the eight years I have been involved with EXPO, I have seen a little trade show grow into a significant business-to-business event. This year's budget is about 20% higher than last year's, and last year was a record! For the exhibitors, the show offers a crowd of qualified buyers all in one place that would require a year to call on individually. Alternatively, the attendees get access to a vast array of products and services in one group that would take an immense amount of time to visit at their places of business."

Robbie L. Bell, director of special projects for MBJ, said event organizers realize that people don't have time to waste when trying to gather information to make business decisions.

"What better way to save time and consolidate efforts than to go to one place and find solutions as diverse as Internet, telecommunications, real estate and construction, insurance, staffing, financial, interiors, events and tourism, media and advertising, higher education, government agencies that assist businesses, nonprofit organizations that offer opportunities for community service and many other office operations services? It's all at the Mississippi Business EXPO," she said.

Bell said there's "an invigorating new hum in the air" this year because "we have many new exhibitors joining the "regulars' and believe that attendees will catch that enthusiasm, too." The EXPO expanded this year to include more technology exhibitors, and this is reflected in the EXPO's new name.

Mississippi Technology Alliance (MTA) president and CEO Andy Taggart said the science and technology economic development organization plans to continue expanding its EXPO role.

"The EXPO has always been the biggest business showcase in the State of Mississippi," he said. "As long-time admirers of both the EXPO and the Mississippi Business Journal, we at the Mississippi Technology Alliance wanted to be a part of shining a spotlight at this year's EXPO on the tech- and knowledge-based enterprises in Mississippi."

Because MTA is a non-profit enterprise, and its job is to serve the people of Mississippi by enhancing the environment for knowledge-based business creation and the commercialization of research and...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!