Business Workshops & Events
Council regularly shares details about upcoming business workshops available online and across the Colac Otway Shire.
These sessions are led by industry experts and are designed to help you grow your skills, knowledge and business capability.
To promote a business event, you can create a listing through our My City web portal or email our team.
Business Victoria Learning and Advice
Business Victoria’s Learning & Advice website portal has information about workshops, courses and webinars. To fit in with the busy schedule of local businesses both self-paced online courses and live webinars options are often available.
The portal also provides information about the Small Business Bus visits and how local businesses can access one-on-one online advice from business mentors. The business mentors represent a range of different sectors and local businesses can access one free business mentoring session each year.
The Business Victoria newsletter is a valuable resource for local businesses as it has details about training, resources, grants and programs. Subscribe to Business Victoria's newsletter here.
Victorian Small Business Commission Events
The Victorian Small Business Commission (VSBC) delivers free public webinars for farmers, small business owners, retail tenants and landlords. For the VSBCs next webinar, please see their events portal link below:
Victorian Small Business Commission Events
The Victorian Small Business Commission also offers low-cost dispute resolution services, including mediation, and champions the rights of small businesses. They empower Victorian small businesses with the right tools to avoid or resolve disputes quickly, so business owners can focus on building and growing their businesses.
For more information, please see their website - Victorian Small Business Commission.
Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism
Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism (GORRT) has a Visitor Economy Partnership with the local government areas of Surf Coast Shire, Colac Otway Shire, Corangamite Shire, Warrnambool City, Moyne Shire and Glenelg Shire Councils. GORRT works closely with the Victorian state government and is the peak tourism body supporting tourism businesses throughout the region in advocacy, regional and destination marketing, visitor management, and product and industry development.
One of GORRTs key roles is also to deliver tourism industry training. GORRT provides industry-based training via their Cooperate website partner portal.
For tourism businesses GORRTs base marketing package is fully subsidised through the Colac Otway Shire annual GORRT membership investment. To access the partner portal, tourism businesses need to register for a GORRT partnership at this link.
Recent event - Small Business Bus in Gellibrand
Business Victoria brought the Small Business Bus to Gellibrand on Monday 20 July 2026.
The Small Business Bus travels across Victoria providing advice and support for small businesses. The bus offered a Business Recovery Adviser with focused help for businesses impacted by bushfires and floods to navigate the available supports and plan for long-term recovery. General advice for small business also was available.
Council's Economic Development and Bushfire Recovery teams were on-site and available to discuss support local businesses.