Greetings and welcome to the first Friday in February! A little shorter update this week, since I was out on Monday (Susan and I were hiking the red rocks of Sedona) and we had a Board of Directors meeting.
Thanks so much for all of you who could attend yesterday’s Board meeting – we had some great discussions, and I think we’ve got an exciting roadmap ahead of us in 2022.
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Project Associate Search – We’re at over 22 applicants for the position, and I’ve paused the application on Indeed. I think I’m done with interviews (I’ve had five) and I have two top contenders. I’m waiting on a few reference checks to come in and hopefully we can reel in an excellent new teammate next week.
Rural Opportunity Initiative – Still waiting on the initial $30,000 payment. Should be wired into our account any day now.
O2IH – I had a great 90-minute meeting with Mark Farley at Hatfield this morning, and we discussed an upcoming application for a Regional Innovation Hub planning grant. OSU will be the lead applicant, but it will focus on our O2IH hub work. We’ll “get the band back together” next week and begin work on pulling together that grant. There will be some solid work needed by both myself and our new Project Associate to pull that together (along with our other partners). I also had a chance to see some amazing new laboratory Zoom cameras – articulated arm cameras that are both the camera AND the computer to either run or participate in a Zoom meeting as an independent entity – I can see how it could really up the quality of virtual lab-based teaching.
EDALC Leave Behind – I once again wanted to call your attention to the leave-behind PDF I put together this week – I’ve attached another copy to this update. I’d love your feedback on the document – what I’m missing and what I should cut? The audience for this document are municipal officials (when we do our formal funding asks) as well as potential business sponsors of EDALC.
Regional Economic Developers – This week was the inaugural “blended” meeting of regional economic development practitioners in Lane, Lincoln, Linn and Benton counties, plus workforce folks and Sarah Means MCSV Regional Solutions team, plus Business Oregon and other state and federal partners – we’re experimenting with combining four-five separate meetings into one larger, more regional meeting for sharing challenges, opportunities and best practices.
OCCC – Since we have the green light from the board, I’ll be looking forward to working with Birgitte to come up with a scope of work and rolling up my sleeves and helping out with their strategic planning process.
Lincoln City – I spoke with Ed at Explore Lincoln City. After Pelican Brewery finishes renting their culinary center, they are going to open it up with an RFP to get a new business in there to take over the former culinary center and restaurant. He wants me to be on the selection committee, not only to help them vet the applicants, but also to possibly work with some of the applicants if they might be a better fit as a business elsewhere in Lincoln City.
Economic Report Update – We talked yesterday at the Board meeting about working to make an update to the 2014 Economic Report happen. I heard back from Shannon Reed, whose firm did the initial report. He went over some of the details of the data gathering and will be reaching out to me early next week with a preliminary budget and timeline.
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 🙂