Greetings! Welcome to what looks to be a mostly wet weekend – a great time for me to try to nail down that blues tune I’ve been working on (Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues” in Open D, for those who are keeping score).

Here’s our update for the week –

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Suzan’s week:

* Daily/ weekly routine tasks
* Proofread website and report – all pages twice
* Research, study discrepancies in Bill Pay, QB & bank
* Verify Bill Pay rent check was received
* Research Peak invoice w/past due balance
* Research lottery payments, invoices, report to Paul

 

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Paul’s week:

EDALC Website – So out of the gates, perhaps a round of high-fives! As of early Tuesday morning, our new website at businesslincolncounty.com went live! I’m calling this a soft-launch, because there is a little more refinement and a few steps I want to take before I’m willing to call it a full launch (plus making sure it’s good to go on mobile and various screen resolutions).

Suzan spent a good deal of time this week combing through every line of text and catching those errors that I just can’t see any more. I also shared it out to some respected folks for their initial impressions, and the feedback has been great. It’s important to note that a website like this will never be done – it’ll always be under development. I’ve got to say I’m pretty proud of it and it was one heckuva large project. Welcome to the new era of a website we can all be proud of! And since this was done 100% in-house, we can easily control any changes, additions and deletions with no extra costs incurred. Huzzah!

Testing Digital Marketing – This week, I had our one-on-one digital marketing consultation with Anvil Media out of Portland. We were able to deep dive into our Google Ads account, our Google Analytics account and also review the new website. With their help, we were able to set up an initial digital marketing campaign and create a landing page (remember that I won $500 of marketing dollars from OregonRAIN). I’ve got a little more work to do on keywords and ad locations and then we’ll launch a one-month test campaign focused on remote worker recruitment. That should launch next week.

Member Engagement – I know one of our key next steps is member engagement, and we were looking at a virtual event. Given our schedules and general holiday craziness, it seems unrealistic that we can do that before year’s end. I have been reaching out to some potential virtual speakers and have some good ideas – I think we’ll plan on pulling that together in Q1 next year. BUT we need to engage our members now, so priority one next week will be getting our first MailChimp newsletter out to our members – we’ll give them a sneak peak at the website (after the newsletter goes out I plan on doing a news release) and some positive info on what we’ve been up to. We’ll also use it to send out some holiday cheer from the EDALC. Tracy – would you be willing to pen a short holiday “from the president” message for the newsletter?

Business Assistance – This week, I helped several businesses answer some questions and get their information together for the county business support grant that was announced on Tuesday (with funds coming from the governor). I also worked with a business that’s looking to set up a temporary assembly facility for dried herbs (looking to employ women, minorities and tribal workers). Another business from Coos County is looking to expand into Lincoln County – I’m helping them with some site location support and employee network support. I’m also meeting with Sharyn Jasmer of the Lincoln City Outlets next week to continue our discussions on their new retail concept out there.

Community and Economic Development Grant – Thanks to all for the lively discussion at the board meeting last week. Curt pulled the recommendations and scores together and got those off to me. I sent those off to Kristi at the county and we’ll make our recommendations at the 12/21 meeting of the County Commissioners. I’ve also got a Zoom set up with Kristi next week to discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of the new SmartSheet application process.

Toledo Work – We had a couple of meetings this week on the various Toledo projects the City is pushing forward (Rod Cross and I are getting to know each other pretty well!), including an actual in-person meeting at the Toledo City Hall. It’s pretty exciting to see my Phantom Gallery idea get some traction and now has a support team working on making it a reality – hopefully in ten vacant storefronts on Toledo’s Main Street.

Professional Development – Last week, we had our continued DEI training – always intense, challenging and rewarding. We also had an interesting discussion (though no consensus yet) on how the concept of a “third place” can exist in a COVID and post-COVID world. Wednesday was Leadership Lincoln and this month’s topic was government and we had two awesome sessions featuring Senator-Elect Anderson, Councilperson Botello, Mayor Cross, Representative Gomberg, Commissioner Hunt and Mayor Sawyer. We’re also moving along with our class projects and I’m leading a team of seven to develop a series of short videos focusing on what’s positive and amazing here in Lincoln County.

 

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 🙂