Most Successful Local Enterprise Week

LEO Mayo is thrilled to have delivered its most successful Local Enterprise Week to date, with over 200 aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners attending various events throughout the week, which ran from the 5th to the 9th of March.

The aim of the week itself is to provide informative events that facilitates the business community to learn, debate and discuss the existing and future business opportunities, as well as the challenges that Mayo businesses face.

One such challenge that businesses nationally have identified is the impending changes to Data Protection law in Europe, which seeks to strengthen the rights of individuals and increase the obligations on organisations who hold data on individuals. Delivering an interactive workshop to help inform organisations of their increased requirements was a key achievement of the week for LEO Mayo.

Fintan Swanton, Senior Data Protection Consultant and Managing Director of Cygnus Consulting was on hand to talk through these new requirements with the 100 + attendees at the workshop and fielded as any questions as possible from businesses attending.

Other key topics of importance to businesses that were explored in further detail during the week were maximising the opportunities that social media offered, as well as how to go about increasing productivity and profitability in a business. 

Local Enterprise Office Mayo also partnered with various Chambers of Commerce in Ballina, Westport and Claremorris to relaunch their Business Advisory Clinics throughout the county during Local Enterprise Week. The aim of the clinics is to ensure that the services and supports of LEO Mayo are as accessible as possible to all aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners by providing one-to-one advisory meetings in towns throughout the county.

The week ended on a high with the announcement of Fergal O’Connor of Buymedia winning the Local Enterprise Awards and he will now go on to represent the county at the National Enterprise Awards on May 24th in the Mansion House, Dublin.

The competition, celebrating its 20th year this year, is organised by the national network of Local Enterprise Offices, and celebrates the achievements of Ireland’s micro-enterprise sector. A previous Mayo winner and LEO Mayo client, Donal Byrne of Big Red Barn Ltd also had a busy March through securing important breakthroughs in the US market with the announcement of the company having entered into a public private partnership with the City of Warwick, Rhode Island to provide a Big Red Barn modular home for a low-income family, which has the potential to demonstrate that the structure is a cost-effective way to bring additional housing to the city.