Tech zone makes deal for conference series

| 16/08/2016 | 1 Comment
CNS Business

Premier Alden McLaughlin at the Impact16 conference

(CNS Business): Cayman Enterprise City (CEC) has announced a five-year deal with the Internet Marketing Association to host annual Impact Cayman conferences on the islands over the next five years, and is expected to attract overseas delegates and boost visitor numbers. The first conference was held in April after Premier Alden McLaughlin attended the IMA’s Las Vegas conference in 2014. “I saw the potential to attract tech and other businesses to the Cayman Islands,” he said. “We have now hosted two successful Impact Cayman conferences over the past two years and are pleased that the IMA has committed to bringing a larger conference to Cayman over the next five years.”

The conference next year, Impact17 Cayman, will be at the new Kimpton resort. CEC and the IMA aim to attract over 300 people and to launch a new mentoring element with a youth symposium, as officials said there was a lot of interest from students and young people in last year’s conference.

CEC’s CEO Charlie Kirkconnell said that from “humble beginnings, this has grown into something extraordinary” and aligned with CEC’s commitment to connect Caymanians with opportunities being created by the special economic zone (SEZ).

Cayman Enterprise City is a Special Economic Zone designed to attract knowledge-based industries, technology companies and specialised services businesses. The idea was that CEC would develop a specialist campus and generate local jobs for the specialist zone. But some six years after the deal was signed to create the project, CEC has still not broken ground on the long-awaited development.

It continues to announce plans to do so on an intermittent basis but in the meantime rents space around Grand Cayman for its tenants. However, because of the SEZ legislation, it is able to offer packages to offshore and overseas businesses that include outstanding concessions not available to other commercial landlords or business sectors.

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Category: Local Business, Marketing

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Good, very good.. Then we can expect to have Apple, Microsoft and other Fortune 500 companies set up offices here. It will be just like 35 – 25 years ago Cayman rolling in dollars again.

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