Greetings – and happy Friday the 13th – don’t walk under any ladders and beware the neighborhood black cat! Quite a storm last night! Our dog nearly leapt up to the ceiling at 3am when the wind tore the metal roof off of our neighbor’s shed. Susan and I hope to do some storm and wave watching this weekend!
Here’s our update for the week –
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Suzan’s week:
* Daily/ weekly routine tasks
* Prepare/email document for Bryan
* Update db & emails
* QBO verifying
* Search for files for Paul
* Move boxes/furniture to accommodate new configuration
* Organize/consolidate/incorporate files and items from old desks to mine
* Read documents and sort
* Minutes
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Paul’s week:
Stakeholder Listening Sessions – We held four regional economic development listening sessions this week, three yesterday and one this morning. Frank Burris from OSU Extension facilitated the sessions – with introductions and closing remarks from Commissioner Hunt (providing context and information on next steps). I stepped in as needed, but also documented the projects and priorities and built the polls real-time that we used at the end of each session. Many of the priorities were as expected (housing, childcare, broadband, diversifying the economy, etc.), but a number of new ideas and opportunities surfaced. The discussions were lively and quite a bit of subtlety and nuance between the different regions came through. Frank will put together a report from both of our notes to present to the commissioners, and I’ll also be pulling together my assessment on priorities and potential positive steps forward. All in all, four great sessions that take us one step further to an effective battle plan for the years to come.
Toledo Projects – I spent some time this week working with Rod Cross on the small project to reach out to commercial landlords in the downtown business district. I also put together a preliminary plan on the phantom gallery project and got that out to the team. Rod had a nice complement for me in today’s call, saying that he sees things at 10,000 feet, but I help him see things at a ten-foot level and what needs to be done next.
Organizational Goals and Projects – I pulled together a little more audacious attempt at our organizational goals and have that out for a little review and feedback – I’m thinking I may edit and tweak that a bit after our listening sessions and hope to have an updated draft out to you all soon.
Taft Sizzle Sheet – We wrapped up the statistics for the sizzle sheet this week and Ed was able to pull together some amazing photos for the publication. Hopefully we’ll have a working draft ready to review sometime next week.
Professional Development – This week was both Leadership Lincoln and OCVA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training. Having those back to back was pretty intense (and I had to burn some extra hours on homework), but it also allowed for some interesting mental cross-pollination, getting me to think of equitable economic development through a new lens. Also, I’ll be leading a project for LL over the next few months – we put together a team of six and will be working on a series of short positive videos for the county (somewhat riffing off of David’s Byrne’s “Reasons to be Cheerful” work) – utilizing the media rooms at both the OCCC campuses. This project will also get us some awesome content for our website and for general business and remote worker attraction.
Office Updating – It looks like we’ve got Suzan’s new office area nearly set up (we still need to deal with cables and such), and I’ve got a taker for the second desk we’re moving out. A few more hours of work on Monday and we should be close to good for a much more open, professional and socially-distanct space.
New Website – In the craziness of the last few weeks, I’ve had precious little bandwidth to take our new website down the home stretch, but the few weeks before Turkey Day look flexible, time wise, so I’m blocking off hours to roll up my sleeves and live a web developer geek for a while. We’re close and should be much closer with next week’s update!
I’m sure you are all up to speed with the new freeze limitations from the Governor from 11/18-12/2 that came out of her press conference today. It’ll be tough, but I also fully understand – please let me know if there’s anything I can do to get information out there or assist with any businesses that might need it in the coming weeks. We’ll get through this latest 2020 obstacle together.
Thanks for all that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Have a great weekend!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂