Times to Sponsor October Small-Business Conference

Small-business owners will have direct access to some of the nation’s most successful entrepreneurs and small-business leaders at the Los Angeles Times’ first Small Business Strategies Conference, Oct. 17 and 18 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Nearly 40 panels will feature successful small-business owners, financial and technology consultants, expert marketers and Times Business Section reporters and editors.

Keynote speakers include Jan Davidson, a former teacher who founded an educational software company in her garage and later sold it for $1.15 billion; Earl G. Graves, chairman and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine; Nell Newman, co-owner of Newman’s Own Organics; Paul Orfalea, president and founder of Kinko’s; and Jack Trout, a marketing strategist and co-author of “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing� and “The New Positioning.�

The conference will address a wide range of topics crucial to entrepreneurial success: technology, financing, planning for growth, managing people and marketing and advertising. In addition, a series of panels labeled Entrepreneurship 101 will cover business basics such as how to decide what business to start and how to set up a company.

A networking center and a program on networking will give business owners the opportunity to meet and make the most of their contacts with other business owners. Free counseling sessions will offer legal, accounting, marketing and finance advice from financial and business experts.

Companies with products and services geared to small businesses and nonprofit associations that serve the small-business community will staff booths in an accompanying exhibit hall.

Registration is $99 for both days, $70 for one day and $10 for admission to the exhibit hall alone.

For more information, call (800) 350-3211 beginning Thursday, or go to http://ukobiw.net/sbsc.