AL.com
Small businesses can learn about opportunities with the Missile Defense Agency next week during a two-day conference set to attract about 500 people to downtown Huntsville.
The annual MDA Small Business Programs Conference will be held Aug. 13-14 at the Von Braun Center North Hall. MDA Executive Director John James will be one of several speakers to discuss the small business community and its role in the Ballistic Missile Defense Mission.
Attendees will also learn about contracting and participate in one-on-one matchmaking sessions with large prime contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
This year’s MDA event will immediately follow the 18th-annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium at the VBC.
“Small businesses have limited resources, so we thought they could get the biggest bang for the buck if they could come down here and go to both conferences,” said Lee Rosenberg, director of the MDA’s Office of Small Business Programs.
Rosenberg said the event is geared toward small businesses, but large companies are also welcome. Although participants can sign up at the door, Rosenberg recommends pre-registering online as the conference is expected to fill up quickly.
The MDA Small Business Programs Conference has been held in Huntsville since 2007, but was canceled in 2013 because of sequestration. The event resumed last year and exceeded its goals to help small businesses compete for and win contracts.
“I think people got a good insight into what was going on,” Rosenberg said. “Hopefully, it fostered folks wanting to come in and do business with us.”
The majority of attendees will be from the Tennessee Valley, but Rosenberg said they’re also expecting visitors from across the U.S. Huntsville-area hotels, rental car services and restaurants will see an influx of customers next week…
