Greetings and welcome to Friday! SO much going on around Lincoln County this weekend – I hope the weather cooperates a bit and allows us all to get outside and enjoy the many activities (Cinco de Mayo! Loyalty Days! Beach, Bike & Blues Festival! Blessing of the Fleet!)!
Thanks to all who could make our May Board of Directors meeting – as always, a lively and energized discussion and it was great to welcome Jason and Gregory to the conversation!
A quick recap of some key points… we’ll do our June 1st EDALC Board of Directors meeting via Zoom at the regular time. It’s be a SHORT business meeting (10-15 minutes) to approve the budget and the re-up of a few directors terms. Our plan is to combine the YBEF annual meeting with ours on June 30th at the new port offices. Paula and I will confirm with the YBEF board and then we’ll get info out to everyone ASAP.
Here’s our weekly staff update:
Blue Economy::
Challenger Biosciences completed their report on an initial look at the commercial viability of coastal green methanol (a project funded by our CDS award). Sarah and I will be reviewing that report next week, and Mark and I will be meeting with the researcher on Friday. Today, I met with Rachael and Sherry of Sequoia Consulting to talk next steps O2IH 501c3 creation, future grant prospecting and some future work plan coordination across multiple stakeholders. – Paul
Broadband::
We did some coordinating this week with Solarity around upcoming technical assistance grants and awareness building. Next Tuesday is a webinar (some of you received invites – please feel free to share) on thinking through the upcoming federal broadband funding programs and what local matches will look like. – Paul
Communications/Marketing:
This week I posted on Facebook for National Small Business Week, the Oregon Coast SBDC’s newsletter, and the Fail Fest event. – Sarah
Community Connecting::
Leslie is putting in some long hours this week, especially over the weekend! Check out her full report for information on many of the awesome events going on around Lincoln County this weekend. Go Leslie!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kVVaL1Ppu6H0QBHMww1auAZ2wVqCeeMV_EYGy1f4ZEc/edit?usp=sharing
Creative Economies::
For ART Toledo this week, I handed out Art, Oysters & Brews event flyers to potential vendors at the Waldport Farmer’s Market. Paul and I also attended the meeting Thursday morning in Toledo. – Sarah
Entrepreneurship Events::
This week for the Fail Fest event I looked into name tag ribbons, started the Fail Fest MailChimp newsletter that will be going out early next week, and put together a page on building an entrepreneurial ecosystem from the Kauffman Foundation. I also asked the SBDC for some business resources to hand out, put together all the graphics for the selfie station and sent some printing requests to Pacific Digital. I put together the agenda for the event and sent it off to our speakers asking them for some information for their introduction as well. I resent the invites and added some new people to the list, I worked on the Fail Fest playlist for the event and on the introduction speech. Lastly, I made the signs for each of the activities we will have at the event and got together all the event stuff we have at the EDALC office. – Sarah
Organizational Development::
Paul, Leslie and I had our team meeting Tuesday morning, and I attended the board meeting Thursday afternoon. – Sarah
Project Work::
On Monday, I finished the board meeting minutes and updated the average rent of commercial buildings in Lincoln County. On Thursday and Friday, I updated Oregon Prospector entries and the opportunities for entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website. -Sarah
Rural Opportunity Initiative::
This week, I spoke with ROI project director Brian Plinski about future funding for the program (looks solid unless the revenue report is dire). We also did some reach out to Laura Anderson and Gregory Price on some way we can allocate some of the remaining funds that were slated for entrepreneurial kitchen and childcare education efforts that we had in our radar in 2021, and we think we’ve got some neat solutions. – Paul
Supporting and Connecting with Partners::
Depoe Bay – I met this week with the Fleet of Flowers organizational team to go over their “podium book” – I’ll be running sound for the event on Memorial Day. I still need a little training from Brady at the City and then need to decide if we’re using their sound equipment our ours. – Paul
Lincoln City – Just a quick upcoming note – I’ll be attending Monday’s Lincoln City city council meeting and presenting an economic development update with Alison Robertson and Seth Lenearts.
Lincoln County – First off – as a former (and still semi-practicing) web developer – a super high five and HUZZAH! for the county’s new website! Awesome work! Check it out here:
https://www.co.lincoln.or.us/
Also, Kaety has been working with me on getting the verbiage “contract ready” for the internal ARPA grant approved last summer for the re-up of the Lincoln County Economic Report project. This is such a vital tool for local data used by so many organizations that it’ll be awesome to get it rolling. Kaety informed me that it’s in the lawyers hands. There might need to be a few more bids required due to the type of funding, but if any organization besides TRG (the group we’re planning to work with on the report update – and original authors) looks to do it, it’ll be tough for them to match the price. I’ll keep you posted on that. – Paul
OCCC/SBDC – I met this week with Alberto Flores to talk about a possible Shark Tank type event. It’s very similar to what Gregory and I were talking about… the next step looks to be getting all players together to develop a single effort forward. Gregory and I will keep the board posted. – Paul
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
If anyone is in Newport for the Loyalty Days parade tomorrow, be sure to wave at Susan. If you are in Waldport, stop by the Beach, Bike and Blues festival – I’ll be doing the opening set of blues music at 12:15 (and breaking out my new guitar if the weather behaves!).
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 