Screenshot from BWA online event: Lucci Mihet of BDC/EDC spoke about financial relief for manufacturers.
The Bluewater Wood Alliance is inviting everyone in the industry to take part in its second, open Online Roundtable COVID-19 Event scheduled for April 22. Details will be announced shortly.
The first open event was held April 15.
“The online roundtable events are essentially an extension of the connectivity the BWA wood manufacturing cluster has created with its members from the beginning,” says Mike Baker, BWA’s executive director.
“We’ve achieved this through our quarterly networking events, plant tour Kaizens, training, and collaborative projects, and export projects.
“Ramping up quickly to engage the companies online was a necessary transition when COVID-19 emerged. We had two very successful events back-to-back March 31, and April 6, and it occurred to us that it was important to extend whatever knowledge and expertise we were providing for our members to all non-members in our industry, including associations like the CKCA and AWMAC and other community partners and stakeholders.”
Following the success of this week’s event (April 15), Baker says they have decided to once again open up the next online roundtable event to the entire industry.
"We had 140 people register for that event and it was a great success with a lot of positive feedback," Baker says.
"So we've decided to do it all again next week."
Next week's event - scheduled for Wednesday April 22 - will be a follow up to yesterday's online roundtable that looked at employment law implications with COVID-19 and what it means to be an essential business and how you can make your case.
“The subject matter experts had very timely, up-to-date information and the Q&A features of the event allowed companies to ask specific questions and get answers,” Baker says.
“It was impossible to get all posted questions answered live, but we are following up with all of them to get their answers. We are also posting them and making these and our other COVID19 resources available to everyone, non-members included. We feel this is important in these difficult times. The link to these resources will available on the BWA landing page.”
“Please watch for further announcements of next steps as we keep pace with the fast-changing situation we are in.”
Baker says it is BWA’s goal to help as many people as they can and help everyone get through this together and be ready to ramp up quickly once the crisis subsides.
