Participants begin work in 2017 SBA Emerging Leaders class

UTICA — The Greater Utica Chamber of Commerce’s showcase business event has a new name and format.

Formerly known as the Community Business Expo, it will now be dubbed the Best in Business Showcase. The event will have an increased focus on business-to-business networking in a “more intimate setting,” the chamber said in a news release.

It’s set for Sept. 27, from 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., at the Radisson Hotel-Utica Centre at 200 Genesee St. in Utica.

The Utica Chamber is branding the newly re-named and “re-focused” Best in Business Showcase as the “biggest business after hours of the year.”

The organization contends the new format will allow the area’s “best” businesses to “showcase what they have to offer” to the business community, and the community-at-large.

The event is still open to the community, the chamber said. Chamber members, non-members, nonprofits, and restaurants can participate.

The chamber will produce the event in partnership with Poland, New York–based Kessler Promotions, Inc. Poland is located in Herkimer County.

“We are really excited to announce this newly formatted business showcase, putting emphasis on the importance of networking within the business community,” Meghan Fraser McGrogan, executive director of the Greater Utica Chamber of Commerce, said in the release. “We are hoping this new, intimate, business after hours-like format will help attendees conduct commerce that evening, and beyond. In order to encourage more attendance, we have also changed the hours from the afternoon to the evening, so it will be less likely to interfere with work schedules.”

Under the new format, the chamber says booth space is “limited.”