Gateway: Open Floor ran on Monday, September 28, 2026. Thirty people built the agenda and spent the afternoon on it. This is the record of the day — and every topic they chose is now a session at the Gateway Business Summit on November 17.
Gateway : Open Floor — September 28, 2026
We didn’t announce the speakers.The room was the speakers.
There was no agenda, because there wasn’t one yet. Thirty small-business owners, corporate buyers and partners built it on a wall in about twenty-five minutes, and spent the rest of the afternoon on what they wrote.
Why we did it
Fifty-three years, and the ground keeps moving.
The last six years have probably been the most challenging in the Council’s history. We worked through a pandemic. We absorbed the shock of inflation. We watched how small businesses are classified, counted, and given a fair shot change underneath us, in a funding environment that keeps rewriting itself.
We adapted, because the alternative was to stop being useful to the people we exist for. But adapting is not the same as being certain you got it right. So instead of working it out in a meeting room, we asked the people living inside the gaps: no thought leaders, no agenda, nothing to sell, just one wall and an afternoon of plain conversation about what is working, what is not, and what would genuinely help.
What came out of it
Four of five topics were already in our plan. The useful half is where they weren’t.
Everything the room raised has been measured against the Council’s Sustainability Strategic Plan 2026–2029, including where the room disagreed with it.
The plan is built on the right problems.
Opportunity forecasts, teaming toolkits, RFP readiness, capital partnerships and AI tools all map to commitments the Council had already made. Thirty people with no agenda landed where the strategy already pointed.
A community investment and support model.
Small businesses lending to each other for payroll gaps and bid bonds goes further than the plan does. The plan treats alternative capital as something to refer people to, not something the Council helps build. Five more ideas cut against choices the plan deliberately made. We are not burying those.
What the Council is doing about it
Seven initiatives, with dates.
Four we can start alone
An RFP readiness series · financial literacy training · a single front door for events and opportunities · a corporate readiness verification service that tells a buyer whether a firm can actually carry the contract.
Three that need partners at the table
An access-to-capital panel spanning debt, private equity, venture and angel investment · procurement forecasts shared ahead of time · advocacy for faster payment terms.
Where it goes next
From the wall to the program.
Gateway: Open Floor
Held · SRMSDC, 400 PoydrasThirty people, a blank wall, three rounds of conversation, and a Back Room running twenty-minute meetings with buyers and lenders.
WE Summit — Powering Possibilities
Held · WBEC SouthOpen Floor ran the afternoon before, hosted in support of WBEC South’s WE Summit.
Gateway Business Summit
SRMSDC · 9:00 AM – 5:30 PMBundling projects, getting bid ready, AI, the resource ecosystem, and Open Doors, a capital and opportunities matchmaker. See the program →
For everyone who was there
toward Gateway
Your seat comes back to you. The full $35 you paid for Open Floor is credited against your Gateway ticket on November 17. We’ll email you the link and the Open Floor rate. There’s no code to remember.
How it worked
An un-conference has no program. It has a method.
- The format is Open Space, run for forty years in boardrooms, union halls and disaster response centers.
- Anyone could open a topic in one sentence. In twenty-five minutes the wall was full.
- Two circles ran at once, three rounds, and people moved between them freely.
- A Back Room ran twenty-minute meetings with a buyer, a lender or a Council staffer all afternoon.
- Every circle reported back, and the notes became the one-page summary above.
September 28, 2026 · what came of it
They came with questions. Here is what we did with them.
Five topics came off that board, and every one of them is now a session at the Gateway Business Summit on Tuesday, November 17. Ask first, publish what we heard, and say plainly where it disagrees with us. That is how we intend to keep working.
Our mark is a bridge. That was never decoration — it is the job.