Greetings and welcome to Friday!
It’s a three day holiday weekend with lots of events going on around the county. So far, the weather looks like it might cooperate! It’s also the kick-off of the summer season – here we go!
Here’s our weekly staff update:
Blue Economy::
Yesterday, Sarah and I met with the RAIN “StartUpBlue” team to review our small scope of work on Blue Economy projects June through mid-September. Leslie, Sarah and I also had a working lunch with Fletcher Conn of Norpac Consulting yesterday. He’s working with OCVA on their Ocean Cluster Initiative grant project (tagline: “Keeping local seafood local”), and we discussed his work, ways we can provide resources and potential ways he might add some value to our own upcoming blue projects. – Paul
Broadband::
Today, a had a great meeting with Casey Miller, getting him up to speed with what’s been going on with the Solarity EDA planning grant and their first deliverable (a “state of broadband” report for Lincoln, Linn and Benton counties) as well as the Broadband Action Team. Next week, I’ll be meeting with Lisa Norton (CTSI) to see how we can assist in their broadband planning work and if any of the Solarity deliverables (such as the upcoming rapid design study) would be helpful to them. Most of the initial broadband infrastructure funding will be focused on the lowest served areas, and those are largely in the unincorporated areas of the county (and those types of projects conform more to topographical challenges and not governmental boundaries). I’ll keep you posted! – Paul
Community Connecting::
(an excerpt from Leslie’s update)
On Wednesday I learned a valuable lesson about preparing for online presentations: if on a limited timeframe, prioritize preparing talking points over creating a long and fancy slideshow. And make that slideshow a PDF file before sharing it over zoom. It was my turn to share what’s going on in Lincoln County’s Rural Community Building efforts with this network, and my picture and animation-filled slideshow turned slow and glitchy. Fortunately, my cohort of Rural Community Builders (RCB) was an empathetic audience, as we’ve been on this RCB networking adventure together with The Ford Family Foundation for years.
My slide show presentation was a first draft for my transition planning and feedback sharing as I’m quickly approaching the end of this Community Connector Pilot Position – one month to go! I’m glad I have some fine-tuning opportunities now before I share my lessons learned and recommendations for moving forward with you all and the Lincoln County community.
Leslie’s full, detailed and fascinating report is linked here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q7y4LjaGL2t9ji_Htngn_cJUEGBqjXWUe8Xroceic4I/edit?usp=sharing
Communications/Marketing::
I posted on Facebook this week about Reinventing Rural’s business courses in Depoe Bay and Yachats. – Sarah
Creative Economies::
I updated the Chalk the Block event page on the ART Toledo website on Wednesday. – Sarah
Organizational Development::
This week, Sarah and I, and then the whole team, got together to explore priorities, projects and possibilities for the next fiscal year in a massive white board session with Post-It(tm) notes (see the attached pic). Next week, we’ll use our Tuesday meeting to prioritize and organize our “controlled chaos”. – Paul
I attended the Travel Oregon Visitors Profile Webinar Tuesday morning. – Sarah
Project Work::
I worked on the board meeting minutes from May’s meeting and the major employers report throughout the week. I worked on the team presentation for Leadership Lincoln. On Friday, I updated Oregon Prospector entries and updated the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website. -Sarah
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Newport Chamber – This week, we had the last finalist interview for the Executive Director position. After the weekend, we’ll do the final evaluations and see if we can “herd the cats” enough to pull off a meet and greet. I do know that a job offer is forthcoming. – Paul
Samaritan – On Tuesday, Jalene Case and I facilitated a leadership retreat for the North Lincoln County team. I assisted Jalene for the first part of the day and then wrapped it up with a condensed Creativity Boot Camp. What a wonderful, engaged and dedicated team – it was a wonderful and productive event! – Paul
Upcoming::
June 1st EDALC Board of Directors meeting (via Zoom – a super-short meeting):
Topic: June Short BoD Meeting
Time: Jun 1, 2023 03:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9178104987?pwd=bVJDN0VlUEM3aG9EaFhJQUZjcDJHUT09
Meeting ID: 917 810 4987
Passcode: 0NyksK
YBEF/EDALC Annual Meeting and Celebration (SAVE THE DATE!):
Friday, June 30th (probably 5:30pm start time) – *new* Port of Newport office building. Formal invites will go out next week for this fun event!
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
We hope everybody has a wonderful and safe Memorial Day weekend, full of great smells wafting off of that grill! We’ve got wings, brats and ribs on our grill menu for the weekend! On Monday, I’ll be running the sound for the Fleet of Flowers event in Depoe Bay – always an inspirational celebration.
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 🙂