Greetings and happy Friday! Also a nod to recognize the significance of Juneteenth as the ending of the institution of slavery in the United States in 1865.

Here’s our update from a rather busy week. I think I broke some kind of technology-use record this week with meetings held via FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, WebEx, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and a good old fashioned cell phone call. Whew!

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Suzan’s week:

* Messages (staff, former director’s email & phone)
* Clean/disinfect office
* Staff meetings w/director
* Bank – deposits memberships, enter in QuickBooks
* Post office/sort mail/mail checks
* Reconcile petty cash and cut checks
* Provide documents, information, answers and research for director
* Work w/Curt Abbott on setting up computer dongle & software check
Budget
* Sent out W-9’s
* Contact accountant re: quarterly reconciliation meeting
* Contact Columbia Bank re : EDA credit card & pick up papers
* Work w/Paul on budget and staff tasks/priorities document for Webex meeting w/Michael Smith
* Webex meeting w/Michael Smith and Paul
* Friday list

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Paul’s week:

Oregon RAIN – I met with Caroline Cummings of Oregon RAIN this week to learn more about their organization and potential opportunities to grow our local entrepreneurial ecosystem. I also learned that there are funds already committed by both Newport and Toledo (to be matched by the county) to help launch a part time Venture Catalyst in the county (put on hold, obviously, from the outbreak). We’ll be meeting again soon to start layout out a more concrete plan on moving forward. I was also asked, and agreed, to be a business mentor for their RAINmaker sales & marketing accelerator course which starts next month. I reached out to the local chambers to ask for help in marketing that course to our local businesses (it’s free and COVID-19 focused).

Meet and Greets – I’ve been continuing to have meet and greet with folks all week. Commissioner Hall had to reschedule our Monday call, but will follow up on Monday. I’m scheduled for a Zoom call with Commissioner Jacobson next week and am still working to schedule a call with Commissioner Hunt.

Chambers – I had Zoom calls with both the Lincoln City and Newport Chambers this week (Laura of Depoe Bay/Waldport is next week). I also attended last night’s Newport Chamber Business After Hours (via Zoom) and had some great conversations with their staff and other business folks. Looks like they’ll be having me as a luncheon speaker once those events are happening again.

Rogue Enterprise Zone Application – This morning, we had our required consultive conference with Rick at Rogue and CJ at the Assessor’s Office. I’ve got a few more questions to ask Business Oregon next week, since this is my first Oregon application (I want to make sure I don’t miss anything), and then I should be signing it and getting it back to the Assessor’s Office well before the July 1 deadline. I’ll also be inquiring about the EZ extension process in my call with the state – since it looks like it will expire in 2021.

Blue Economies – I was on a couple of Blue Economy-focused calls and several folks (Birgitte, Melissa Murphy and Heather DeSart) are giving me some guidance so I can study more on this important industry sector.

2020-21 Budget – Suzan and I met to work through a draft budget which we finished on Wednesday. We had a call with Michael to discuss the budget on Thursday and pending just a few open questions, I think we can get it to the Executive Committee next week for review and their thoughts.

Lincoln County Recovery Plan – I submitted a short document today (it’s also attached to this email) to Wiley Thompson outlining some projects that I feel will fit well within the Economic Vitally pillar of the recovery plan and also our upcoming work on an organizational strategic vision. I’ll circle back to Wiley for his thoughts next week.

Facebook – Since we’re still a ways away from getting a new website launched, it seems like Facebook is a great interim (as well as long term) vehicle to get information out there. The EDALC does indeed have a Facebook page, but it’s been dormant for at least three years. I’m guessing that the previous director was the page administrator, but I can’t seem to find her on Facebook (FB pages do a good job of obscuring their administrator). Can someone from the board reach out to her to see if that’s the case (or pass along contact info)? It’s so much easier to change administrators than to try to create a new page to replace an existing one.

Press Release – We’re planning on writing a press release next week about the EDALC bringing me on as director – not to toot my own horn, but to get our organizational name out there and front of mind again. I’ll do the draft and then share with the Executive Committee for their feedback.

Game Design – Not 100% about work, but a cool little aside. Back when I was in the computer game industry, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the Game Designers’ Workshop – an informal group of the world’s best game designers – we’d collaborate online and come together once a year for a small, intense roundtable conference that was all under NDA (so we could talk about current work). I haven’t been able to attend the conferences for the past few years, but tomorrow, the group is doing a Zoom conference, hosted by some GDW designers in Sweden, and even though I’m an economic developer, they are kind enough to let me participate. I’ll be running a short session on how the act of designing a game around an economic development problem helps me better understand the system and how the variables play out. So far, I’ve designed three games over the years focused on aspects of economic development and have a list of 11 ideas relating to issues with Oregon and Lincoln County economic development – it’ll be cool to get back into that thinking process once again!

Don’t forget that it’s Father’s Day this weekend! I hope to have at least a text from my kids (when did it become okay to send a text instead of a card?). Have a great weekend and stay safe and wear those masks!

Cheers,

-Paul 🙂