Greetings and welcome to Friday!
Leslie is on a short vacation this week to Puerto Vallarta (for a destination bridal shower!), so the update is from just Sarah and myself. This was one of those crazy weeks… with nearly something going on after-hours every day this week.
Also, did you see the News-Times today? We’ve got a half-page ad in there for Fail Fest, plus some of Susan’s pals (I had nothing to do with it, I swear!) put in a large color ad to help celebrate her birthday – too cool!
Here’s our weekly staff update:
Blue Economy::
This week, Sarah and I reviewed the project descriptions we received from RAIN for both their EDA grant (in partnership with Hatfield) and their Lemelson Foundation grant. They have some extra funding left over and our goal was to see if some of our “blue priorities” align with their intended deliverables. Sarah and I identified about five potential project areas where we feel we could be of assistance (some will require a little more research to assess final viability). We pulled together our thoughts and got them off to Robert Killen, RAIN’s Deputy Director. – Paul
Communication/Marketing::
I did the final review of the Spring newsletter and sent it out Wednesday morning! I also posted on the EDALC Facebook page this week about the Creativity Boot Camp Paul is teaching, a Google Business Listing class presented by the Oregon Coast SBDC, and the CO.STARTERS graduation. – Sarah
Creative Economies::
For ART Toledo this week, I updated the ART Toledo website and attended a Chalk the Block subcommittee meeting Thursday morning. In addition, on Friday I sent out the call for vendors at the Art, Oyster & Brews events to the manager of the Newport Farmer’s Market to send to his contact list. – Sarah
Entrepreneurship Events::
I continued work this week to recruit some additional entrepreneurial speakers to our Fail Fest event on May 11. It looks like we’re pulling together an exciting lineup that we hope to have locked in next week. We’re also going to be joined by Kate Schwarzler, who runs Indy Commons (and also does her own Fail Fest events) in Independence. She’s helped us plan the event as was also a speaker at our Economic Summit last October. – Paul
On Monday, I put together all the contact information for each of the Chamber directors in the county and sent them the advertisement for the Fail Fest event asking them to attend and send the information to their members. I printed out the ad as well and brought it to share with my Leadership Lincoln classmates on Wednesday. I also created the Facebook event for the Fail Fest and helped develop the event ad for the Newport News Times. In addition, I put together a list of failure quotes and worked on adding them onto an International Economic Development Week ad to include in our event video. Lastly, I did some research on merchandise pricing for the event and found some graphics for the selfie station. – Sarah
Organizational Development::
I let our new board members (Jason Holland, Gregory Price and Majalise Tolan) know of our BoD action last meeting and also shared with them our BoD Resource Page on the website. When I receive headshots and short bios, I’ll add them to the About Us page. So excited to have some new team members on our EDALC BoD Dream Team! – Paul
Paul, Leslie and I had our team meeting Tuesday morning. On Monday, I prepared for my Leadership Lincoln class that I attended at the OCCC Lincoln City campus on Wednesday. – Sarah
Project Work::
I continued to work on the Board meeting minutes on Monday. I updated the entrepreneur slider and added the major employers report to the EDALC website on Tuesday. On Thursday, a local gallery owner contacted me about listing her commercial property on Oregon Prospector and I sent her some resources on average pricing. On Friday, I updated Oregon Prospector listings. – Sarah
Rural Opportunity Initiative::
This Wednesday evening, Sarah and I attended the graduation of the third cohort of CO.STARTERS business students that we funded through our ROI grant monies. The 10 week program was held in the public library in Toledo with the graduation ceremony held at the Elks club there. A dozen students went through the course, and as part of the ceremony, those in attendance gave their two minute business pitches to the other attendees. So wonderful to be able to support another cohort of potential Lincoln County businesses! – Paul & Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Northwest Coastal Housing – – I met with NWCH Executive Director Sheila Stiley in their offices on Monday. We spent about 90 minutes talking about their previous strategic plans and their goals for the plan going forward. I then “interrogated” her about NWCH, trying to learn as much as possible about the organization. Next steps next week is to put together a draft proposal to help move the planning process forward.
Newport Airport – This morning, Paula and I attended the quarterly airport meeting in Spencer’s office in City Hall. We continued our conversation on bringing in commercial air service into the airport (one large motivator is to service NOAA and remove a reason for them to consider a move away from Newport). I was able to present the draft business survey questions that Sarah and I put together. Next week, we’ll pull the edited questions into an online Survey Monkey survey and get it out to the team for review before we get it out to the business community (the survey will be branded as EDALC’s work). – Paul
Newport Chamber – This week, we held four interviews for the Newport Chamber Executive Director position. There were well over 20 applicants and these were the top four. They’ll get narrowed down to a final two for in person interviews, assessments and a meet and greet in the coming weeks. – Paul
Waldport – This week, I recorded two looping blues instrumentals for Tom Fullmer (Waldport Chamber Director) to use in radio ads for the Beach, Bike and Blues Festival on May 6th. I also put together a short video promo for the event as well. – Paul
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Have wonderful weekend! Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all. Have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂