Phantoms on Main Street

I have long believed in the economic power of the arts and the creativity economy. When I learned of the formation of ART Toledo, I knew I had to get involved. The City of Toledo decided to look to the arts as a way to revitalize their historic Main Street. As we brainstormed in the first few meetings, I remembered a successful project I spearheaded back in Illinois: Phantom Galleries. The idea is to turn vacant storefront into vibrant, temporary art galleries. These galleries feature the work of local artists and also are a forum to showcase the business opportunities in those buildings. Together, we crafted the ART Toledo Phantom Gallery project and are currently showcasing the third round of regional artists and are also seeing new business startups as a result.

Herding the Sponsorship Cats

Enterprise Zones provide a powerful business incentive to invest in growth that create jobs. Our Lincoln County Enterprise Zone was due to sunset in 2021. I have the privilege to serve as the Zone Manager and took on the task of getting our zone re-designated. Our zone is one of the most complex in Oregon, with eight co-sponsoring governmental units. I wrote the resolutions, educated the boards, commissions and city councils (many who were unfamiliar with this incentive in their own backyard), held public meetings and worked with the county's GIS team. In the end, we had all resolutions unanimously passed and also were able to expand our zone to include some vital property ripe for development.

Upping the Game

One of our key strategic initiatives in Iron County was to grow our tourism industry. We had the outdoor recreation assets, but marketing outside of the region was spotty and unprofessional. Our first effort was to dust off a borrowed ten-year-old trade show display and head for an outdoor recreation trade show in Milwaukee in early 2018. While we made a decent showing, the real magic of the show was studying the other location vendors. What was working? What wasn’t? How could we up our game? After that show, we developed a plan - it became a three year county-wide tourism marketing plan. We focused on professional printed materials (Visitors Guide and brochures), all created in-house. We linked those printed materials to our newly redesigned website at iron.org via QR codes. Then we created an amazing trade show booth - and worked on our presentation skills - human interaction, quality video, interest-specific slideshows on an iPad. In 2019, we hit shows in Chicago and also the world’s largest paddling expo called Canoecopia. Our floor presence was top shelf - one of the best of the shows - and we took folks from discovering Iron County to making the decision to visit, making the 2019 summer tourism season the best we had ever seen.

One Part Professionalism, One Part Fun

When I started working for the ICECA in Iron County, Michigan (in the beautiful Upper Peninsula), I realized that job one was creating a plan. Six months of research later, and we had a five-year strategic plan towards economic vitality. From that came the realization that tourism, specifically, outdoor recreation tourism, was an essential aspect of our work. That lead to a three year, county-wide plan focusing on tourism marketing. That research made me realize that our digital image needed refinement - we needed to add both professionalism and fun into our online presence and marketing materials. That lead to a wholesale redesign of our annual Visitors Guide (and website at iron.org) as well as the creation of a series of memorable "Live, Work, Play" badges focusing on the recreation and professional opportunities in Iron County. And boy do those badges (printed as stickers) fly out the door at the trade shows we attend!

America's Best Communities

In 2015, we learned about the national competition hosted by Frontier Communications, Dish Network, CoBank and the Weather Channel. I sharpened my pencil and told the story of Monmouth. The contest was judged by a team of nationally-recognized economic developers, and in May of 2015, we were named one of the 50 national quarterfinalists - and one of only three communities named in the State of Illinois.

Going Against the Collar Counties

In 2014, the State of Illinois threw a wrench on one of our few powerful economic development tools: our Enterprise Zone. All expiring zones would no longer be allowed to be extended. Instead, it was to be a free-for-all competition for just 49 new EZs in the State that would be activated on January 1, 2016. And this time, instead of just downstate communities applying, the competition was now open to the affluent suburbs of Chicago. Communities hired consultants left and right - we decided to go it alone. I drafted our application (150+ pages of narrative and planning) and worked with our City Administrator and Mayor to get all taxing bodies on board. And on December 17, 2015, the Director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity announced that we were recipients of one of the 49 prized new Enterprise Zones. Our grassroots effort trumped the consultants.

Third Place and Crucible

When I took the economic development job in Monmouth, I knew a large focus of my efforts would be on retail entrepreneurship downtown. I had business experience, but not retail experience, and I felt like I needed a laboratory to explore real world data. My wife, Susan, was interested in starting a new business, so we decided that a retail wine shop in downtown Monmouth was the perfect fit: bottled wine, wine by the glass and gifts - hitting all areas of retail. Market Alley Wines (marketalleywines.com) opened in 2011 to an astonished community - they had never seen such a beautiful shop in a small farm town. Now, eight years later, Market Alley Wines is still a fixture in the community (my wife sold the business in 2017) - a “third place” for friends across all economic and educational levels come together to talk, laugh and enjoy the ritual of fine wine. And along the way, I had access to priceless real-world data on how retail works in Monmouth, and we’ve used that data to help new businesses start, grow and thrive.

Game Your Way Forward

In 2012, Western Illinois University economist John Gruidl and I began to explore the potential of a community development teaching game. We’d both worked with teaching games (often called “serious games”) for several years, and found that the ones that focused on economic and community development often had rather obvious biases in their message. What we wanted was an open game that simulated genuine community-level decision making and strategic thinking. 

In early 2013, we had our conceptual breakthrough and Up and Out: the Community Development Game was born. In the years that followed, we developed a hybrid board and web-based game experience that simulated multiple communities trying to grow within a county. The game was featured at several Midwest Community Development Institutes, as part of the Community and Economic Development Initiative of Kentucky (run by the University of Kentucky) and was adopted by Southeastern Missouri State University’s Extension program.

Deep Blue Innovators Blues Festival

Anyone who knows me knows I love the blues - both old-school Depression-era blues (which I love to play!) and new innovative blues. In 2007, I created the Deep Blue Innovators Blues Festival that brought world class blues acts to our little corner of the cornfields (in the historic old Rivoli Theatre). Throughout the years, the festival has brought in over 28 amazing acts - including both the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the legendary Bobby Rush - both right before they each won a grammy.

Words on Pages

Over the years, I've done a lot of writing - both fiction and technical. When I started Magic Lantern Playware (my game development company), we bootstrapped that company by writing strategy guides on how to play the latest games (back then, titles like Quake 2, Dungeon Keeper 2, Septerra Core and Star Wars Episode One Racer, to name a few).

As I became a more experienced software developer, I started writing more technical books, including Game Development with Lua (with my then-technical director Mark Manyen) and Game Design: a Practical Approach.

I've been lucky that my technical books are still selling (it's a small royalty check each quarter, but folks are still buying them!), and they've been adopted as text books at several colleges. The two books mentioned above have also been translated into Portuguese, Korean and Chinese.

BaconFest!

I tend to lean towards crazy, audacious ideas and then try to make them a reality. So far, it's worked pretty well. A case in point is Monmouth's BaconFest (I bet you didn't know that Monmouth, IL is the bacon capital of the world? Yes, more bacon is produced there than anywhere else). 

I brought together a team of volunteers, we raised some cash and hosted an amazing bacon party featuring food vendors crafting insane bacon treats (Bacon cupcakes? Bacon apple pie? A bacon-wrapped turducken? Take my money!), a bacon eating contest (shown at right) and some killer bands - and sure enough - thousands descended on our town Square to pay homage to that delicious porky treat! The event is now on its fifth year and going strong.

Covert Ops and Tom Clancy's Shorts

One of the coolest projects we got to do at Magic Lantern Playware (it was really the gig that launched our company) was to develop Covert Ops for Red Storm Entertainment. It was the third Rainbow Six title and the premise was simple: what if you were already a member of the Rainbow Six team - what would you need to learn to become the commander?

This title was heavy on infotainment - it had tactical missions, but you also got to learn all about weapons, terrorism and counter-terrorism. At the time, our included background material was one of the largest repositories of counter-terrorist info anywhere. And we got to meet Tom Clancy. At his house. He showed up in shorts (way too short shorts!). And we drank a bottle of scotch together (Tom, myself and our head writer Pete). He even ignored a call from Orin Hatch as we drank!

What Was I Thinking?

Several years back, we had a crazy idea: to take our Magic Lantern game engine (J5 - named after the Jackson 5) and use it to teach kids how to code games. We partnered with the local Extension folks and set up a 48-hour code-a-thon for high school kids. It was insane! The kids just mainlined Mountain Dew and donuts and I was a shambling wreck after 40+ hours and 20,000 questions about why this or that didn't work.

But some kids created genuine magic, and it lead directly to the creation of GameSmart, an "on rails" environment to teach game design and programming. It first ran on J5 and this Spring I converted it to Javascript using html5 canvas. I've had the pleasure to teach GameSmart to College for Kids students, in after-school clubs for high-achievers and also to autistic kids in junior high and high school. Who knew?