Thursday, October 7th at the Corbin Center is all about ideas you can take home and put to work.
At the Corbin Center, attendees can choose from two different session experiences: FOCUS Breakout Sessions, designed for deeper conversations around the opportunities and challenges facing Eastern Kentucky, and TenTalks, featuring focused presentations from leaders and changemakers with ideas worth sharing.
Choose the conversations most relevant to your work, your community, and the future you want to help build.
TenTalks bring together leaders, innovators, and changemakers to share ideas, experiences, and lessons from work happening across Eastern Kentucky and beyond. Get inspired by what’s possible, discover ideas worth bringing home, and leave ready to turn inspiration into action in your own community.
Hear What’s Possible
Discover ideas, successes, and new approaches from people doing the work.
Bring Ideas Home
Find inspiration and practical takeaways you can adapt to your organization or community.
Become a Changemaker
Turn what you hear into action that creates new opportunities and moves your community forward.
FOCUS Sessions bring leaders, practitioners, and community partners together to explore some of Eastern Kentucky’s biggest opportunities. Sessions are organized around four themes:
Building Competitive Communities
How communities become places people choose to invest, work, and live.
Growing the Economy
Practical strategies to strengthen local businesses, entrepreneurs, and investment.
Preparing for Tomorrow
Emerging industries and technologies shaping Appalachia’s future.
People & Place
Building healthier, stronger, and more connected communities.
The Housing Opportunity: Rethinking Growth in Eastern Kentucky
Housing is more than a place to live; it’s essential infrastructure for economic growth. Join leaders who are rethinking housing as a catalyst for attracting talent, supporting employers, and building stronger communities.
Beyond Recruitment: Growing Businesses from Within
Some of the greatest opportunities for economic growth already exist within your community. Explore how communities can help existing businesses innovate, expand, and create quality jobs.
Beyond the Tool: AI as a Strategic Collaborator for Community Leadership
Explore practical ways AI can strengthen planning, communication, problem-solving, and collaboration while keeping human judgment at the center.
Building Access to Quality Childcare through Public-Private Partnerships
Explore how employers, local governments, child care providers, nonprofits, and other partners can work together to identify local needs and build solutions that help more parents participate in the workforce.
Kentucky’s Rural Health Transformation Plan represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve access to care while strengthening workforce participation, supporting economic growth, and enhancing quality of life across rural communities.
Explore how communities are building recovery ecosystems that move people from crisis toward stability, employment, and community engagement.
Discover how connecting workforce services with transportation, housing, recovery, education, and other supports can turn barriers into pathways to meaningful employment.
Explore how an entrepreneurial mindset — agency, adaptability, resilience, and the drive to create value — can help people enter the workforce, navigate career changes, and become stronger employees.
Beyond Broadband: Turning Infrastructure into Opportunity
Learn what’s coming with broadband investment, what communities should be doing now, and how to position your community to maximize this historic opportunity.
1 Clay County Launch + Leap: What Happens When a County Invests in Its Own People
Learn how One Clay County and SOAR Innovation partnered to build a county-based accelerator supporting local entrepreneurs with coaching, funding, and resources.
EKY Remote: Meet Those Who Made the Move
Hear firsthand why remote workers chose Eastern Kentucky, how they’re becoming part of our communities, and what their experiences reveal about attracting talent and growing our population.
Making Work Work: Removing Barriers, Building Opportunity
Explore how employers, workforce organizations, and community partners can address barriers like transportation, childcare, and the benefits cliff to help people build lasting careers.
Discover how innovative, affordable lending can help Eastern Kentucky entrepreneurs and small businesses invest, grow, and succeed.
Explore how relationship-building and a global perspective can connect Appalachia’s unique strengths with markets, people, and opportunities beyond the region.
Explore financing tools, programs, partnerships, and practical resources that can help communities move downtown redevelopment projects forward.
Explore how intentional storytelling can attract talent, strengthen communities, support business growth, and inspire investment.
Discover how communities can prepare for opportunities in advanced manufacturing, workforce development, nuclear supply chains, and research partnerships.
Bring your laptop for a hands-on introduction to using AI for emails, meetings, marketing, data, brainstorming, policies, and everyday organizational tasks.
FOCUS Sessions and TenTalks are designed to give you options. Follow the conversations most relevant to your work, discover something outside your usual lane, or build your own path through the morning.