Greetings and welcome to Friday and welcome to Summer!! So the optimist is excited about sunny days and gorgeous weather and opportunities to explore, grill out and enjoy those awesome local and regional beer gardens… the pessimist points out that every day from today until December, the days get shorter and it gets darker earlier… which one are you?
This was one of those crazy “whirlwind weeks” where SO much was going on and so much was happening after hours – I think we’re all looking forward to the weekend so we can catch out breath!
Here’s our weekly staff update:
Blue Economy::
On Thursday, Sarah and I travelled up to Astoria to help Start Up Blue (the “blue” spin on RAIN) put on a blue economy and maritime stakeholder meet up at the Fort George Brewery taproom – the event was called “Harboring Success: A Gathering of the North Coast Maritime Community”. It was a surprisingly well attended event, and we both made some great connections and did some essential north coast networking. Sarah also gave us some great “street cred” with her knowledge of the ins and out of crewing a commercial fishing vessel! The drive was also gorgeous! I also had a call with Wesley Cochran (of the EDA) and Sequoia Consulting to explore some potential EDA funding opportunities for future coastal Blue Economy work.- Paul & Sarah
Community Connecting::
(an excerpt from Leslie’s update)
On the topic of long-term grassroots efforts to acquire and protect forests, land, and water sources in Lincoln County, I joined my dear friend and community building powerhouse, Joanne Kittel, on a tour of “Yachats Ridge.” Our group included Joanne’s fellow View the Future (a ComEcDev grant award recipient) board member and artist, Michael Guerriero, Lincoln County Parks’ Kelly Perry, Lincoln County Surveyor Eli Adam (and Neel, his longtime friend from college), Temenos Rising’s Irene Bailey, and Physical Therapist extraordinaire, Claire Barton.
Joanne and View the Future have been actively making improvements in and around Yachats for almost 20 years, and true to the nonprofits’ name, they don’t plan on resting on laurels anytime soon.
Leslie’s full, detailed and fascinating report is linked here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cuUZMcEsRfyH6nM9nVkQxO4yw-ptT7vpR8-GQ9EUTls/edit?usp=sharing
Creative Economies::
For ART Toledo this week, I reached out to some more artists about being vendors at Art, Oysters & Brews. I also sent out a press release, a poster, and some pictures to all our media contacts advertising the July 1st Art, Oysters & Brews event and posted on the EDALC Facebook page about the AOB event. – Sarah
Events::
For the YBEF and EDALC event this week, I requested some stickers from Pacific Digital, reached out to the Port about some tech questions, and worked on my short speech for the event. – Sarah
Organizational Development::
On Wednesday morning, Bob and I met for about 90 minutes to discuss EDALC and our priorities and approaches for the FY2023-243 fiscal year. We had a great, wide-ranging conversation and shared some exciting ideas. I’ll be putting my notes together and getting those off as a draft to Bob so we can formulate a battle plan for the upcoming year. – Paul
Leslie and I met Tuesday morning, talked about the YBEF & EDALC event, and brainstormed some projects. On Wednesday, I cleaned up our office building for an OCCC on the spot admissions event, I also got a subscription to a QR code generator for future advertising. – Sarah
Project Work::
I worked on the major employers report throughout the week, I also called Business Oregon multiple times to try to get some more data on our past Oregon Prospector entries. I updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider and the “Blue Economy” page on the EDALC website. On Friday, I updated Oregon Prospector entries and attended the Rural Opportunity Initiative Concluding event. – Sarah
Supporting Our Partners::
SBDC – Leslie and I attended the SBDC event on Tuesday evening at Pelican in Lincoln City (in their newly opened second floor event space). It was a packed event with great networking and great conversation – the event focused on artificial intelligence in small business and it was a wonderful group conversation on how different tools were used and also raising some series concerns on this new technology approach. Hats off to Gregory and his team for a wonderful, informative event! Read Leslie’s updates for more thoughts from that event. – Paul
I also participated in several interviews today at the Newport OCCC campus for candidates for the full time SBDC business advisor and SBM manager position. It’s great when partners can come together and help build an awesome local team! – Paul
Leadership Lincoln – On Wednesday night, Leadership Lincoln had their graduation ceremony celebrating the 2022-23 graduates – I was there to cheer Sarah on (and so many other wonderful community-minded individuals). A high five and Huzzah to Sarah – that’s a LONG class, and I know she learned a ton! – Paul
Upcoming Events::
YBEF/EDALC Annual Meeting and Celebration:
Thursday, June 29th (5:30pm start time) – *new* Port of Newport office building. The event will have tasty apps from Sorella’s, some custom mixed Italian cocktails, acoustic blues instrumental music (wonder who’ll be playing?) and an interesting program. Hope to see all of you there! So far, we’ve got a total of 45 RSVPs – should be an awesome, informational and fun event!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
I’ll be out of the office on Monday – mostly continuing to catch my breath and doing some much needed lawn work while Susan is off in the Midwest.
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 🙂