 Welcome to City Talk. My name is Melissa Lindler. I'm the Director for the Office of Business Opportunities with the City of Columbia. Today we're excited to talk about the City of Columbia's 2019 Small Business Week Conference that will be held on Friday, May 10th at the Columbia Convention Center from 8 until 3 o'clock p.m. We're excited about this year's conference. We have a number of great speakers lined up. Christa Burnett, the inventor, founder, and CEO of Bootland will be visiting us. She's going to be our keynote speaker and she's going to talk about the audacity of innovation, vision, power, and purpose. So we're excited to have her. She brings a wealth of information and knowledge about how she was actually able to balance work, life, integration, taking her product, being able to promote her product, and also maintain her family at the same time. So we're excited about that. We also have our local business owner and Executive Director of the Rosewood Market Merchants Association, Mr. Dave Brett. He's going to talk to us about how he has used creative, collaborative marketing opportunities for small businesses to be involved in different activities and festivals that go on across the city. So we're excited to have him. We're excited about our speakers and we're also excited about the local presenters that will be doing our breakout sessions. We have a number of different breakouts that will be offered throughout the day. And one of our featured guests is now a local here. He has a national presence. That's cookies and conversation with Mr. Wally, famous Amos. So he's going to talk about the different brands that he was able to take on a national level. He's going to talk about his struggles that he actually encountered along the way, but he's really excited to be with us. And now he's locally, he's here in Columbia. If you're a small business, you really need to attend. If you're looking at ways to network with other small businesses that may provide a similar product that you have, if you're looking at ways to grow your product or to grow your brand, develop your brand, there will be a number of opportunities to attend different breakout sessions to talk about how do you market, how do you build your brand, how do you showcase your product in the most effective, efficient way based on the target market that you're looking at targeting. This is a great opportunity. Again, we'll have different resources there, not only from the networking with small businesses that may have a similar product that you do have, that you have, but also resources available through other partnering agencies, the Small Business Development Center, the Small Business Administration will be there, the Governor's Office for the Division of Small Minority Business Certification. So we're excited. Hopefully you can come out and join us, the City of Columbia again, our city manager, our mayor, our city council, we all are here to help our small businesses grow. And we want to see you thrive, we want to see you to be successful. So come out to the conference, make sure you register. You can actually visit our website, www.columbiasc.gov. The event is actually listed on our landing page, or you can call our office and we can help you register. 803-545-3950. We do have a very limited number of scholarships for new or existing business owners, and if you would like to attend and receive one of those scholarships, just let us know. Call us again at 803-545-3950. We look forward to seeing you. Hopefully you can come out and join us on the 10th.