Protocol Chief Breaks the Ice for Businesses : Commerce: Mary Bonino Jones is responsible for getting foreign dignitaries together with local industries seeking to expand their trade opportunities.

Reg Dorrett stood surrounded by the future.

Mock decompression chambers, robotic arms, high-tech hardware--all confronted the Canadian emissary here last week as he shook his head in wonder at a model of a space station that is to be launched in 1995.

“It really is fascinating, I must say,” Dorrett, Canada’s consul general to the western United States, said during a tour of the McDonnell Douglas space facility here. “We’re just not getting enough Canadians involved in this.”

Mary Bonino Jones could only smile. As Orange County’s chief of protocol, she is responsible for arranging visits such as this to “sell” the county. Dorrett’s words were the kind she loves to hear.

With increasing frequency, the oohs and aahs of foreign dignitaries to the county have been directed not at Disneyland or even at the county’s postcard coastline, but rather at laboratories and computer centers and their sophisticated gadgets with high price tags and hard-to-pronounce names.

The reactions reflect the changing role of the county’s Office of Protocol, a 7-year-old public agency that relies on private money to welcome visitors and put the county’s best face on international display.

Once a place to hold teas and teach locals how to greet foreign dignitaries, the office is trying to open new doors for local industries. The aim is to give local business people the introductions and opportunities needed to flex their muscles in the growing world marketplace.

Recent events have spurred the trend. New trade agreements, the opening of free markets in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the advent of a single marketplace in the European Community and a shrinking demand at home in some industries because of the recession--all have prompted local business people to broaden their sights.

“We want to see an increase in international business,” said Jack Stranberg of Corona del Mar, a marketing consultant who is vice chairman of the Protocol Commission, which sets policy for the office.

“We have a global marketplace now . . . and people like myself want to have a proper balance” in the office between economic efforts and more cultural and ceremonial activities, he said.

“Orange County is starting to get a (business) reputation around the world, and we want to focus on the fact that we’re a high-tech community,” Stranberg added.

Indeed, high tech have been the buzzwords in the office of late.

Last year more than a dozen consuls general from countries around the world made official visits to the county, but most had to find their own way to Disneyland, Mission San Juan Capistrano, Huntington Beach’s Municipal Pier and other landmarks.

The protocol tours included stops at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, but otherwise it was “business as usual” as the diplomats visited such local sites as the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic at UC Irvine; pharmaceutical maker Allergan Inc.; construction giant Fluor Corp.; computer maker AST Research Inc., and McDonnell Douglas.

With a paid staff of just two, the office also arranges dinners, meetings and tours for scores of non-diplomatic foreign visitors and business people each year--all in a bid, Chief of Protocol Jones said, “to show what we have to offer.”

While the office gets free phones and office space in the Hall of Administration from the county, its $133,540 budget this year is covered entirely by private donations through the Protocol Foundation.

Even Jones--a former Disneyland executive who last year made 18 courtesy calls on foreign dignitaries in Los Angeles and attended 32 receptions--volunteers her time.

“I stay with it because I know how it important it is for Orange County to have its own identity,” she said.

Since it was created in late 1984, the office’s identity has been chiefly tied to the International Protocol Ball, a glitzy, black-tie event that draws dignitaries from dozens of countries and raises about $35,000 each winter to help run the office.

But as the direction of the office changes, more attention is being paid to another annual event: the office’s International Trade and Investment Exchange. This year organizers are expecting their biggest turnout yet, with up to 400 participants from 40 countries for the May 1 economic briefing.

Protocol Commission Chairwoman Eva Schneider said the office’s growing role as a player in international business relations “was a long time coming.”

But she said protocol officials were forced to focus in the early going on dinners, ceremonies and cultural events, just to attract local interest.

“That was the only way we could see getting off the ground,” she said.

“We are no longer just an adjunct to Los Angeles,” Schneider said. “And culturally we are no longer the wasteland that we supposedly were 20 years ago. . . . We want to be seen as a force to be reckoned with.”

“It certainly has helped us,” said Michael Berns, director and co-founder of the Beckman Institute.

County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who first persuaded her colleagues on the board to create the office, said the office now “is a receiving station for international visitors--everything from schoolteachers to business people. . . . What it can and should be is a way to involve those business people overseas in saying, ‘This is available in Orange County.’ That’s our goal.”