 Hi my name is Melissa Lindler. I'm with the City of Columbia. I'm the Director for the Office of Business Opportunities. Today we're going to talk about OBO and some services that we provide through our office. We have training, technical assistance, we have commercial loans that we provide as well as supplier diversity initiatives that we oversee in our office. Tonight we're having a North Columbia Business Forum. The host are Councilman Ed McDowell and Councilman Sam Davis. We're going to talk about all the great resources that we provide as well as some of our community partners, the Small Business Administration, the Small Business Development Center, as well as other partners in the community. Good evening. This is Ed McDowell, Councilperson for District 2. I'm here tonight in the midst of other entrepreneurs and other future business owners to come and and be resourceful and of course have resources to give to people to further expand their endeavors. It is an exciting time in District 2 and particularly unfair rules for them to come and to have resources for them to talk about the various things that's very, very possible for entrepreneurship and starting up a business. Councilman McDowell and I, we've been sort of trying to meet with the businesses on the far old corridor in particular to talk about some of the assistance and help they need. We've been really trying to make sure that the corridor is not left out and all that's being planned in terms of business development, relationships with the neighborhoods that are contiguous to the corridor. We've been working with the OBO Office of Business Opportunity. They're here tonight also. They will be talking about resources that are available and also the type of assistance that they can provide and also share with them some ideas and concepts that they may want to take a look at and work towards as a group, as an organized group and we will be available when they need us but we don't want to tell them what they ought to do. We want to make sure that we help assist them in the kinds of things they want to do, what they think ought to be happening and also take a look at some of the strategies that we might want to share with them but it's going to be up to them and we just don't want to leave them behind.