The inaugural occasion was such a big success that the Southern Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce (SLCCC) will host its second annual Professional Development Conference.

The event will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 22, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at DoubleTree Resort Lancaster, 2400 Willow Street Pike.

Tickets for SLCCC members and people from the community are on sale through Friday, Oct. 3. Community members will receive a coupon to use on their membership if they decide to join the group.

Go to https://southernlancasterchamber.org/conference/ to purchase tickets.

SLCCC conference committee chair Jadan Willis said the event is designed for small business owners and nonprofit organizations.

"It's a two for one," said Willis. "It's education and networking built into one event, and it's affordable, and it's efficient because you can cram a lot of value into a six-hour day. It's customized to you in the sense that you can pick your own classes and then also meet new people, whether they're members of our chamber or are other guests, because we will have a lot of networking time between the breakfast and the lunch and then in between sessions as well."

SLCCC president Kristen Phipps added, "The networking is a big thing, bringing in a variety of business members and also professionals. It's not necessarily only geared towards business owners, but also if you're a professional and you work for a larger company. You will be able to network with other folks in the area and learn something applicable that you can walk away with. We want people to be able to go back to their business or back to their company and have some tactics that they can start working in their business right away."

Attendees will be able to choose three of the five one-hour workshops. "We did come up with some topics, had people vote, and then we did the same thing this year, and we also took feedback from last year to incorporate to this year," said Willis. "We wanted to make sure that the content was tailored to our membership, even though the conference is open to people outside of our membership as well, so that we were on point in delivering content that people want to see. We also want to provide a variety because this isn't specifically just a marketing conference, so not all of it is marketing related. We want it to be applicable to businesses of all sizes, whether you're a solopreneur or you have 10 employees."

The workshops are "Avoiding HR Nightmares" with speaker Leslie Wireback of Wireback Works, "Budgeting" with speaker Kyle Beltle of Proactive CPA, "Customer Experience: Deliver 5-Star Service That Keeps People Talking & Sending You Referrals!" by Cody Helm of Helm Construction Company, "Decode & Deliver: Selling to Every Personality Style With Confidence" with speaker Sheila Jones of Whicked Results, and "Step Back to Move Forward: Planning with Clarity & Intent" by Matt Musser with Rooted Growth Strategies.

"We wanted to focus on having expert-led workshops," Willis said. "The people that we have speaking are professionals in that field that they're speaking on."

After the workshops, there will be a panel discussion about artificial intelligence.

"It's affordable, buffet lunch, and it's local," Willis said of the conference. "We've found that with a lot of conferences, you are going to Philly or Baltimore, big cities, and you are traveling. We wanted to make something hyperlocal, so that it's accessible to everyone, both location-wise and pricing-wise."

The SLCCC chose to host a professional development conference after receiving a grant. "We applied to a grant from the Lancaster County Community Foundation, and we got a grant for $5,000," Phipps said. "One of the things we said with was that we would love to have a professional development conference right here in Lancaster. It could be costly to travel to Philly, travel to Harrisburg, some of these bigger cities, and we really wanted to bring something close to home geared towards small businesses and something very affordable. A lot of the times attending conferences can be in the thousands of dollars just to get tickets, not including travel when staying overnight. With the Lancaster County Community Foundation grant, we were able to do that, and it was such a success we want to keep it going."

There are no geographic restrictions. "We like to say that our primary area is south of Route 30, but we have members from all over," Phipps said. "We do have some crossover folks that are in the northern end of the county. We have some from the neighboring counties. We've had guests come up from like the Maryland area, so it's not only geared towards the southern net, but that's primarily where we focus our marketing, and are the school districts that we support with our scholarships are south of Route 30 line."

The conference is an ideal fit for the group's goals. "We revamped our mission and our core values this year, which is really exciting," said Phipps. "We really want to create affordable opportunities. I think that affordability fits in with our entrepreneurial spirit. We want to be approachable. We know that a lot of businesses just starting out don't always have several hundred dollars to invest in being a part of a chamber, so keeping our membership dues low is really important to us, and then keeping our events free or low cost is incredibly important to us as well, without sacrificing quality of course."