Oregon Creative Industries Blog » Origins

Stronger Together

Steve Gehlen — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:57:33 +0000

The diagram below represents the vision that OCI co-founders have for what it will take for Portland and Oregon to reach the full potential of our creative economy and its role in the global marketplace.

In the diagram, “Structured Networks” are industry associations, guilds, etc. “Unstructured Networks” are groups of people who have come together informally around shared disciplines, such as technical user groups, graphic designer email lists and marketing-related Facebook groups. In the context below, “Technical” refers primarily to software (writing good code is an art form), including Web apps, games, etc.

As a next step, we will be hosting a series of roundtable discussions (starting next week) with leaders representing all four of the quadrants below.

OCI Legal Structure Discussion

Steve Gehlen — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:22:38 +0000

This week we met with attorney Don Krahmer and two of his colleagues at Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt. Don is a master at helping to create and foster economic development-related initiatives in Oregon, and fortunately for me is also a long-time and valued friend. He is very community-minded and a valuable asset for our state.

I wanted to talk to Don about the best legal structure for the public-private partnership that we plan to create with Oregon Creative Industries. It was a great discussion, with lots of questions thrown at us and some input on how we might proceed.

The meeting helped to confirm what I had been thinking: that OCI should be structured as a 501(c)(6) tax-exempt entity. I have already formed two previous tax-exempt organizations–the Internet Strategy Forum is a 501(c)(6) and Keeping the Beat is a 501(c)(3)–so I’m getting comfortable with the process.

We plan to start on the paperwork after the first of the year and in the meantime have launched the domain name “oregoncreative.org” for the entity.

Oregon Creative Industries Emerges

Steve Gehlen — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:35:00 +0000

The roots of what is now called Oregon Creative Industries trace back several years when Tad Lukasik and Phil Donovan introduced the topic of reorganizing the voice for Oregon’s Creative Industries to some of our established industry opinion leaders. Most of these early discussions were centered around filling the gap left behind by the dissolution of the Oregon Creative Services Alliance and what our creative community could do to continue to grow, develop and be heard.

Oregon Creative Industries was officially formed in August of 2008 due largely in part to the momentum generated as a result of Cre8Camp Portland held in July 2008. A special thanks goes out to the Cre8Camp co-founders and the efforts of all the volunteers, sponsors and participants involved in birthing Cre8Camp in Portland. The topic of re-organizing our creative economy was very well received at that event and since then we have been seeking crucial feedback from some of our established community opinion leaders. Momentum was gained at Cre8Con (Portland Creative Conference) where preliminary discussions with several creative community organizations took place. Since then several additional conversations have taken place, with many more discussions on the way.

The interest and response from our creative community about this topic has been phenomenal. Thank you to all that have contributed thus far in bringing the ideas of Oregon Creative Industries to our Creative Community. We have much to look forward to.