Greetings and welcome to Friday (and a sunny one, at that)! It’s that weird time of the year when the holidays are almost upon us and some folks go “radio silent” until the new year and others scramble to get in that one last meeting before the holidays.
Speaking of holidays, next week we’ll be doing a little informal staff get-together on Thursday at The Wilds (formerly known as Wolf Tree). Sarah, Leslie and I will be gathering there at 3pm – if you’re able, please join us for a cup of good cheer (or is that “good beer”?)!
Here’s our staff update for the week:
Blue Economy::
Sarah and I were invited by Business Oregon to participate in a presentation on a potential Aquaculture and Seafood Innovation Center. The presentation was given by John Moehl and Gil Silva, reporting on planning work just completed through a USDA grant. This would be focused primarily on freshwater aquaculture, with some saltwater demonstration areas. It would serve the entire west coast and could be constructed in any of the western coastal states. It was a pretty impressive piece of work, but also a little unclear on what the direct next steps would be. – Paul
We wrapped up our “generic” O2IH subgrant agreement verbiage. We signed an initial agreement with the Central Coast Food Web for equipment funding as one of our five coastal incubator sites. – Sarah
Broadband::
This week, I had a meeting with Rachael Maddock-Hughes and Joe Franell of Rural Prosperity Partners. The final BTAP (Broadband Technical Assistance Program) grant rules will drop next week and applications will open up on January 2nd. RPP will be writing a grant (with EDALC as the applicant) to provide additional Broadband Action Team support, funds for grant writing for broadband infrastructure projects and potential pre-project engineering and planning work. – Paul
Communication/Marketing::
This week I continued to work on the holiday newsletter and posted on the EDALC Facebook page about an SDBC resource for starting a business online and the Central Coast Food Web’s new holiday market. – Sarah
Community and Economic Development Grant Program::
As of today, we’ve got 7 applications submitted and a few others anticipated to come in over the weekend or on Monday. Earlier this week, I met with Pioneer Telephone Cooperative about a potential broadband Impact grant submission that would be part of a larger infrastructure deployment project on the eastern side of Lincoln County. – Paul
I sent out a deadline reminder email to all the organizations that attended the workshop and were awarded the grant two years ago. – Sarah
Creative Economies::
I attended the ART Toledo meeting Thursday morning and the board meeting afterwards. – Sarah
Entrepreneurship::
On Monday, I met with Russel and Rheama Koonce. They have a “third career” startup called Red Fawn Studios. They use the Unreal 5 game engine to develop digital assets and short videos for marketing and branding. They are looking to create a mobile game in partnership with a Sri Lankan conservation group to use gameplay to teach and explore the interaction of jungle crop farming and wild Asian elephants. – Paul
Newsletter::
We’ll be sending out our holiday newsletter next week. As part of the newsletter, we will also be launching our “Business Airport Usage” survey that we developed in partnership with the City, the airport and the Port of Newport. – Paul
Project Work::
This week I worked on the drinking water workshop DEQ videos, updated Oregon Prospector listings, and updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider. – Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
SBDC – Earlier this week, Sarah and I met with Gregory Price (and Kelliane Parker) about the Youth Entrepreneurship Program that is launching for LCSD high school students in January. We’ll be providing some video content for the course (entrepreneurial stories and interviews) as well as running the final pitch competition event. We also talked through an awareness video project (to be crafted by Richard Wright) to help spread the word that there is “no wrong place to start” for businesses seeking technical assistance. – Paul
CWCOG/CWEDD – Next Monday, I’ll be traveling to Albany to be part of a finalist interview panel for the CW COG Community and Economic Development Director position. Hopefully, the third time is a charm for them, and we’ll be working closely with this individual on economic development district projects and management. – Paul
City of Newport – Last night, I met with Spencer to catch up on all things Newport. One great outcome of our conversation was Spencer’s conviction that it is now time for EDALC funding support to be baked into their city budget, rather than as contract-based project work. He said EDALC is certainly heading in the right direction and Newport should improve their support (woo hoo!). We also discussed our “big, hairy, audacious” idea of creating a flexible business incubator in Newport, potentially at the municipal airport (Spencer said “that’s exactly something that EDALC should be doing!”). – Paul
Leadership Lincoln – On Wednesday morning, I was honored to be part of a panel on the Blue Economy for the LL class. We were the second blue panel of the morning and I shared the table with Aaron Huang of Oonee Ranch (wild harvested sea urchin uni) and Chuck Tombs of Oregon Seaweed. – Paul
OCCC – At the Wednesday Board of Education meeting, the board passed the resolution and verbiage for the ballot measure to seek a bond for the new trades building (and many other campus improvements) and appointed Bub Shoemake to the board for Zone 4. Here we go! – Paul
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
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 🙂