Greetings and welcome to Friday! Got some VERY positive news to report today!
So – let’s kick this off with a bang. On Wednesday afternoon, we learned that our blue economy congressionally-directed spending “earmark” was in the final bill at the full amount ($1 million). On Wednesday night, the House voted in favor of the spending bill. Last night, the Senate voted in favor, so it’s happening! Huzzah! The funds will come to EDALC through the SBA, probably within three months, which will give the O2IH team time to dial-in the path to the deliverables and us an opportunity to set ourselves up (working with Bryan’s team) to handle the incoming funds and the subsequent granting out. Things are getting real – real fast!
Here’s the rest of our EDALC update for the week:
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Sarah’s Update:
At the start of this week, I created a post on our Facebook page for international women’s day! After I helped with all the finishing details and proofreading of the March Newsletter that was released Wednesday. In addition, I finished up the entrepreneurial education flier that is scheduled to go out to local artists early next week. On Wednesday I completed writing up the minutes from the March board meeting to be ready for approval in the April meeting. I also posted about the entrepreneurial ecosystem survey on our Facebook page, got an introduction into website design from Paul, and got my account set up to work on updating the website.
At the end of my week, I reviewed the Oregon Prospector grant application and took notes on the specifics of that project so I can begin working on that. I started researching commercial property listings in the county and created a list of all the realtors in each of the towns in Lincoln County so I can begin reaching out to each of them in the next few weeks to get their involvement in the project and ask about any commercial properties they know are available and would like added to Oregon Prospector. I also posted on Facebook about some job opportunities at Pelican Brewing Company in Lincoln City, created a newsletter archive on the website, and updated all the necessary statistics and links on our “county profile” section of the website.
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Paul’s Update:
In other O2IH news – It looks like the Oregon short-session did not approve the funds for multiple sector workforce surveys, so it looks like EDALC will work with the county and a subset of the original funders (we’re already having conversations with BizOR) to get the blue sector survey study rolling.
Given that the “earmark” funding is coming, there have been some discussions with partners along the coast if applying for the Regional Innovation Hub is actually the best way forward – more news on this as it evolves.
Finally, last week, I attended the soft-opening of “The Lab,” Local Ocean’s seafood incubators space, in an event hosted by OCVA as part of their USDA “keeping local seafood local” grant. What a great crowd and an even more impressive space!
Newsletter – We sent our March newsletter out this week to about 200 recipients – I think it was another good “signal to noise ratio” effort and Sarah did some awesome work on it (and got to dive into the weeds with MailChimp). It’s garnered some great feedback and Representative Gomberg said he’s going to plug it in his next newsletter.
ROI – We’re pulling together email addresses of local “creative economy” solopreneurs to promote the upcoming CO.STARTERS class and the SBDC’s Startup Success class – we hope to have that go out early next week via MailChimp.
Also, Independence (one of the ROI communities) just launched an excellent video this week that showcases some wonderful rural coronation and ecosystem building – check it out here:
Presentation – I was a guest at the Toledo Rotary on (EARLY!) Wednesday morning to talk EDALC and Lincoln County economic development. It was a very well-attended meeting and we had a great roundtable discussion. I also had a nice short meeting with the Toledo city attorney after the meeting to drill down on some Toledo-specific challenges and opportunities.
Local Economic Summit – I’ll be heading out a touch early today to head over to WolfTree for a meeting on the upcoming economic summit. It’s always a great way to end a productive week: a hoppy IPA and planning a great local event. It’s a triple win since WolfTree has a Level 2 EV charger, so I can charge the car for the weekend!
Homework Completed! I put together presentation notes and sent off a PowerPoint PDF to Majalise Tolan to help her better understand a youth entrepreneurship program that I’ve delivered in the past that might provide some interest and inspiration for LCSD students.
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Hope you all saw this week in the OCCC Waves that my upcoming Creativity Boot Camp is happening in April – very excited to get that back up and rolling again locally, and thanks so much to the OCCC for giving me the opportunity. FYI, I’ll also be doing an abbreviated version of that class with Leadership Lincoln the week before.
For those of you into the blues, this week I put a Spotify playlist together featuring nearly all of the 38 bands we brought to rural Illinois for the Deep Blue Innovators Blues festival that I ran from 2007 until 2015 – enjoy:
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Have a wonderful weekend! It might just be time to have that toast of 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle bourbon after all!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂