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Pumping Sunshine: the Ord, NE way
February 23rd, 2010 by Mike Knutson
Have you been thinking about developing a blog as a part of your community development strategy? If so, I highly encourage you to check out Ord Pumping Sunshine, a blog published by Caleb Pollard, Executive Director of Valley County Economic Development & the Ord Area Chamber of Commerce.
I’ve never met Caleb in person, but I’ve been familiar with Ord, Nebraska since the late 1990s when both Ord and Howard were active with the Rural School and Community Trust. Since that time, I’ve been impressed with the community’s entrepreneur support system and continued investment in young people. There’s no doubt 
they are one of the rock stars in rural community development.
Caleb has been the executive director of the chamber and development group for about a year and one-half. He brings with him experience with sales and marketing in the technology and health care fields, which might explain his zeal for blogging. Caleb recently answered the following questions for me, which I hope will inspire more rural communities to recognize the value that blogging offers.
What’ the purpose of Ord Sunshine Pumping, and why use a blogging platform?
First, I love to write, especially about issues involving rural development. It’s my passion and I find blogging is a great way to share a story about rural issues. I feel we have a great story to share in Ord, because of the tremendous success we’ve had in the last 10 years and blogging is such a great social tool to share it with, like communities facing the same issues we’ve had. Since we’ve had this great success, blogging makes it easy to take those models, ideas, examples and overall rural economic philosophy and share it with the world.
More importantly, however, is the that the blog allows me a direct conversation with my community, in a dynamic and social way, to weave the “what” of what we are doing with the “why” of its importance. There is no filter, and with social media like a blog, you can connect it to a greater whole and then you begin to see why the work we accomplish in Ord is so important to all rural communities.
We often hear from community leaders who say they don’t have time for writing on a blog. How do you deal with time issues?
Everyone has time. Saying they don’t have time is a total cop-out. Many people don’t like to write, and that’s totally okay. But using the “I don’t have time” routine is just an easy way out. As for blogging, I find it is a great outlet for me to tell our story. But making time is about prioritizing my schedule to make it work. Plus, blogging cuts down on a ton of extra time I spend with press releases to local and statewide media, along with our monthly, quarterly and annual reporting. Blogging actually saves me time. Prioritizing my schedule means something has to lose or it’s delegated to one of my staff. I’m blessed to have great staff that gives me the ability to dedicate my time to blogging. Plus, I find when you’re passionate about something, getting it done isn’t too tough.
When did you start the blog and what have you learned about the process of operating a community blog since then?
I’ve been blogging on and off for about 6-7 years now, and our current blog has been in operation for a little over a year. What have I learned? First, building a robust conversation about *positive* things is much harder than talking about the negative. Second, finding local contributors that are willing to take on the workload of actually doing the writing is difficult. I’d love to have more contributors on our blog and we’re just starting to expand our efforts this year. I anticipate having 2 additional contributors by year’s end, but like you said above, it’s a time sink.
Finally, I think honesty is appreciated. While I’m the Chamber dude, and pumping sunshine is part of my modus operandi, being honest about my love for rural communities, especially in Nebraska, has won our blog a lot of fans. Authenticity counts BIG TIME.
Do you have any stories that exemplify the impact the blog has had on your work?
Yes, two specifically. First, in Spring of 2009 I wrote an innocuous post about wine tasting in Central Nebraska. While some of the wine aficionados may bat an eye at this, we really do have some fab wineries in Central Nebraska and their wine is pretty darn competitive to what I’ve had out of Chile or Napa. Seriously. This one post here earned us a lot of publicity. A writer from NPR happened to be driving through the Great Plains and picked up on the blog post and bam! We had national coverage. The piece ran on NPR here:
The other post I would say exemplifies our “what” and “why” would be this post on our 100 new business in Valley County (and Ord) since 2000. Of those 100, 78 are still in business, lending to the power of dedicated economic gardening. We spend a lot of time and effort grooming entrepreneurs and building supportive programs to keep their businesses in operation. To say we’ve seen 100 new businesses in a county of 4500 and a community of 2200 is straight amazing. That post can be found here.
Photo Description: The above photo show FFA students from Ord H.S. who participated in a project with the local economic development group and an ethanol plant. It’s an example of Ord’s continued commitment to engage the youth in their community.
Tags: Blogging, entrepreneurship, Nebraska, Ord NE, social media
Posted in Community Development, Community Engagement, Economic Development, Rural | Comments (
2 )
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:36 pm
[...] Center out of Howard, SD recognizes our efforts on pumping sunshine here at ReImagine Rural here. This is non-Nebraskan recognition, move love for the amazing 10 year run we’ve had in [...]
December 16th, 2010 at 10:32 am
[...] – Omaha World Herald: Encourage economic potential of rural entrepreneurs – ReImagine Rural – Pumping Sunshine: the Ord, NE way – NebraskaEntrepreneur.com: Valley County Sets New Paradigm for Growth – Center for Rural Affairs [...]