The “Try Local First” theme of the 10th annual East County Economic Summit manifested itself in more ways than one.

In addition to holding the event — sponsored this year by the Boeing Company — at East Hill Church in the heart of downtown Gresham, a voucher system allowed participants to get a taste, literally, of what the area is all about.

For lunch, the approximately 150 participants of this year’s event were given $10 vouchers they could redeem at their choice of several downtown restaurants. This marked a shift away from the banquet-lunch format of previous years, when the event was held at Persimmon Country Club.

Carol Nielsen-Hood, executive director of the Gresham Area Chamber of Commerce, says she’s pleased with the changes that refocused the summit on the local business community.

“Our emphasis was try local first,” she says, “and we did that by having local people as speakers and emphasizing the importance of using (locally based) merchants and businesses.

“The other part was having lunch vouchers for downtown restaurants, and about 80 percent of the people who attended took advantage of that.”

Based on a preliminary review of participant surveys, she says, those who attended liked the altered format that highlighted individual workshop sessions in addition to key presentations by Mike Hallgrimson and Don Hendrickson of the Boeing Company.

Most presentations were from local merchants and officials, including Gresham Mayor Shane T. Bemis and Janet Young, the city’s economic development services director, who presented an overview of the city’s strategic vision for job growth. Other speakers included Bess Wills of Gresham Ford and Jim Riegelmann of the long-running downtown business Riegelmann’s Appliances. Heidi Olson of Olson & Associates and Leah McMahon, founder of Silk Espresso, discussed developments in social networking opportunities — including online sites such as Facebook and MySpace — that can assist business communications and community building.

Sandi Stretch of Univision, a Spanish-speaking media company, delivered a presentation on “Multicultural Marketing,” Jon Nicolazzo of American Funds spoke on “The Economic Crisis and the Recovery Ahead,” and Robert Brown of WorkSource Oregon and Antonio Paez of the Small Business Development Center discussed ways to apply community resources to enhance local businesses.

Nielsen-Hood says she was particularly impressed with the “breakout session” format that inspired lively and informative post-presentation question-and-answer sessions.

“People had options,” she says. “It was a very diverse community. Participants could go to any session that suited where they are today in business. I think we had well-rounded breakout sessions.”

Travis Stovall, whose The Stovall Group has sponsored the summit before, says he liked the changes in this year’s event.

“I thought the switch to East Hill was an excellent switch,” he says. “It got into the heart of downtown and showed people some nice things about downtown Gresham.”

Despite the successes, Nielsen-Hood says it’s too early to say whether the downtown location and lunch voucher concepts will be repeated for the 11th summit in 2010. The idea, she stresses, is to remain open and reflect what’s going on in the larger as well as smaller economic and business worlds.

“I would hope” we’d keep it downtown, she says. “Every year we try to go in a different direction. We try to address the economy and be with the times.”