Greetings and welcome to Friday and the END of September!
A couple of team-wide notes…
First, we’re working on improving the readability and flow of this team update, riffing off of some excellent suggestions we had from Curt when he visited our office this week. We’ll start rolling out those changes next week – stay tuned.
Second, October is shaping up to be a BEAST of a month, work-wise. We’ve got multiple projects and events all happening this month. We could sure use some Board help in spreading the word about the October 20th Economic Summit (and hopefully attending!) and we’d love to see as many of you as possible at the Waldport Chamber breakfast and ribbon cutting on October 25th.
Here’s our EDALC update for the week:
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Sarah’s Update:
This was an exciting first week in the Waldport office! I began my day Tuesday with figuring out how to work my new Mac book, I’ve been a PC user forever, so it took me awhile to understand the interface and keyboard. Afterwards, I downloaded some apps that I needed, updated my email signature, and did all that fun new laptop stuff. Next, I wrote some promotions for the economic summit and a google business class. I ordered our team a new round of business cards since we moved offices and have new phone numbers! Later in the day, I wrote an ad for the CO.STARTERS class being held in Spanish and added more opportunities to the entrepreneurs slider on the EDALC website. At the end of the day, I unpacked more of the office, hung up some pictures, and updated the ART Toledo website.
On Wednesday, I updated Oregon Prospector and began the economic summit press release. Later, I called the two businesses left on the major employers list. Finally got ahold of one of them! Only one more to go. Next, I read up on the community and economic development grant and last year’s criteria. I also read a chapter in “Grant Writing for Dummies” to prepare for the grant workshop. Afterwards, I posted on Facebook about the Google class and made a marketing plan for the weeks leading up to the economic summit. At the end of the day, I read more about the community grant program and listened to the first part of Paul’s radio interview with the county about the grant.
I started off Thursday by talking to the Greater Newport Chamber about materials for the economic summit and adding tasks to Monday to manage our prep work for that event. Next, I finished the radio interview and worked on the press release. Afterwards, I researched retractable banners and called pacific digital to get some details about those. Later, I continued to work on the press release and talked to Mr. Lawson about Oregon Prospector. At the end of the day, I worked on the press release, some economic summit promotions, and took the Faster Internet Oregon test!
On Friday, I finished the press release that will be sent out next week. Afterwards, I tried to get some more information on retractable banners and played around on Slack and learned more about how that website works. Afterwards, Mr. Lawson called me again and talked to me about Oregon Prospector for a while. Later, I created a MailChimp newsletter for the economic summit and posted on Facebook for the event. At the end of the day, I updated the average rent for commercial spaces in Lincoln County, updated the ART Toledo website, and worked on the newsletter.
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Leslie’s Update:
This week, Leslie’s update is also her monthly update to the City of Newport, and it deserves a full read (rather than just a short digest here). Check out her report here (Go Leslie, Go!):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AivO84rMspPCxpbb-EFoZIatsQtusCsUpsDspultytw/edit?usp=sharing
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Paul’s Update:
Blue Economy – This week, more planning meetings and conversations. Mark and I met with Melissa Murphy (BizOR) to talk about the state-funded sector survey. Proposals are in (they were due on the 22nd), so soon we’ll learn who got that contract. I also met with Rachael and Sherry of Sequoia Consulting – they are starting the process of setting up the O2IH 501c3, as well as planning out grant prospecting over the next several months. Finally, Mark and I met with Caroline Cummings and Robert Killen of Oregon RAIN to discuss their Blue Economy Lemelson grant and how we can best dovetail our efforts.
Economic Summit – We decided (with Curt’s encouragement – thanks Curt!) to blast ahead with the Economic Summit even though we’ll have to do nearly all of the heavy lifting (due to the Chamber staffer in charge of the event leaving). It’ll be a great high-profile event that should provide some exciting insights for our business and community leaders. You can see the registration info in the “Upcoming” section below.
Community and Economic Development Grant Program – I spent a good deal of time this week looking at the past two years of online grant applications and the technology used to power them. It looks like we’ll go back to using SmartSheet (used in 2020), but creating a new application that will riff off of what worked well last year. It was a bit of a struggle, but after a call with Casey Miller, I was finally granted full admin access to the County’s SmartSheet portal, which will allow me to build, edit and manage the online application for this grant cycle.
Waldport Office – This week, we officially started EDALC’s residency in Waldport! We’ll be in the office from 9-4 Monday through Thursday and working remotely on Friday. We’ve got our phones set up, new business cards printed, Dave Price put together a great bit of sandwich board signage and we’re working on the larger business center room (and still unpacking). We finished cleaning up our old office and shutting down those utilities. I had the walkthrough with our old landlord on Wednesday, and we passed muster and will be getting our full deposit back.
COG/CWEDD – I met with Anne Whitington (of the COG) in Newport this week to discuss projects and grant programs. We also had our full Economic Development District board meeting on Thursday. During that meeting, staff reported out on the grants they awarded to agencies within member counties as part of the CARES funding they received. I’ve attached the Lincoln County sheet to this email. It’s pretty cool to note that out of the six Lincoln County grants awarded, we wrote three of them (the bottom three on the sheet) and assisted with a fourth (Toledo mural) and the Port of Newport grant was awarded to an EDALC board member – not too shabby!
Upcoming (there’s a ton!) –
Oregon Aquaculture Investment Conference: October 3-6th, Salem. Paul will be attending on October 5th to participate in a business planning panel.
October Board of Directors Meting: October 6th, 3:30pm, Via Zoom. Zoom details:
Time: Oct 6, 2022 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
OEDA Annual Conference: October 9-11th, North Bend. Paul will be attending and will be presenting as part of the High Impact Projects panel.
The People’s Coast Summit: October 11-13th, Yachats. Sarah will be attending at least one day.
Broadband Planning Kick-Off: October 13th, via Zoom, reps from Linn, Benton and Lincoln will meet with Solarity to officially kick off the EDA-funded broadband planning project.
Creativity Boot Camp: October 19, Lincoln City. October 20th, Newport. Paul will be teaching his creativity in the workplace (and life) professional development class for the OCCC’s Community Ed program.
Economic Summit: October 20th, 10am-3pm, Best Western Agate Beach. Full event info and registration: https://business.newportchamber.org/events/details/2022-economic-summit-october-20-2022-11651?calendarMonth=2022-10-01
Waldport Chamber Breakfast and Ribbon Cutting: October 25th, 7:30am-9:30am, OCCC Waldport Campus
As a reminder – your Board of Directors resource page is here:
Thanks for ALL that you are doing out there! Please reach out to me if you need anything at all.
Have a wonderful weekend! For us, we’ll be enjoying the calm before the storm!
Cheers,
-Paul 🙂