1.  The evening reception was at Casa Feliz, a beautifully restored 1920's era Florida home. Welcoming remarks from Dr. Tom O'Neal VP for Research and Commercialization at UCF and Cari Coates, executive director of the Rollins College Center for Advanced Entrepreneurship.  Rollins is the oldest college in the state and not far from Casa Feliz.  The Center focuses on stage II entrepreneurs.

2.  Many of us finished the evening on Park Avenue which is the historic retail district of Winter Park. On a Thurs night in May, the restaurants and bars were hopping.

3.  We got excellent rates from the 5-star Shingle Creek resort which is a short hop from the conference site at the Rosen School of Hospitality Management.  Those of us from the west got up at 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. body time......ugh.

4.  Key players in the Florida project discussed the 3 year long effort to get the state to fund the pilot project.  Important points:  having a great "partnership" university as the lead, partner ED agencies around the state, good grounding in EG ahead of time, careful coaching of the transition staff, sophisticated political leadership from heavyweights in the state.  Players from the High Tech Corridor, the Florida Economic Development Council, UCF, and the single mindedness of Steve Quello (plus support from Mark Lange at the Edward Lowe Foundation) were essential.

5.  There were presentations about how the national team and the staff worked, how the backend software worked, how the forums and round tables worked, how program certification worked.  Those interested in program certification can contact me at chrisgibb...@q.com.  We will post more later.The Florida program is certified at Level III (full fidelity).

6.  The afternoon was dedicated to entrepreneurial culture, the local partner perspective, marketing and outreach and how the program is run in other states.

7.  As always the conversation decible levels were high during the reception, the breaks, lunch and after hours.  The conference size allows people to quickly strikeup friendships and conversations.

8.  There were representatives from several other states there discussing  potential projects.  Announcements were also made about new state pilot projects starting in Arizona, Louisiana and Minnesota.

Much of the focus was on high fidelity projects and Florida is the national model.  They have done a lot of things right:  relationship building, training, staff coaching,CEO round tables and forums, ED partners, publicity, software, budget, political sophistication, leadership, passionate people.

I took a post conference tour of the Kennedy Space Center.  The last space shuttle mission is a couple of months away and then about 7,000 space engineers will be laid off.  Coincidently that's the number of Martin Marietta space engineers who were laid off in Littleton at the end of the cold war causing the creation of the Economic Gardening program.  If you are an entrepreneur in the area, there is going to be talent for the taking.

Chris Gibbons