Heritage conference

Attended the Oregon Heritage Conference in Astoria. Lectures were held at the Maritime Museum, and the Liberty Theater, plus a few other locations around town.

We started with a session Customer Service. This was presented by Paul Paz who has worked in restaurant biz for 2o+ years. His message was easliy transferrable to public serving heritage organizations, like museums or other orgs that have in person or on the phone service. When someone gets good customer service, they'll tell 9-12 people. When it's bad, they'll tell 20 people. He articulated and showed specific skills in greeting, acknowledging, serving.

We grabbed lunch at the Blue Scorcher, and shopped at the Pier 11 Boutique Fairtrade Imports which features LeiLotus handcrafted items from Nepal.

In the afternoon, we had a lecture on Creating Successful Promotional Events. This was led by Sheri Stuart who leads the Oregon Main Street Program. Excellent information. Plan, plan, plan. Get volunteers. Market. Do. Evaluate. This fails to do justice to the session - we received a great 20 page handout filled with lessons learned and best practices Sheri has gained from her many years of experience.

In the evening, we joined the Oregon At The Movies presentation at the Columbian Theater which is now set up to serve pizza, popcorn, pop, beer and wine while you watch the movie. We had a special presentation of The Making of the Goonies, a cult classic filmed in Astoria; and 2nd graders interviewing the crew of Kindergarten Cop, filmed in Astoria; and historic footage of the demolition of the Astoria Flouring Mills - took 12 days to implode the structure instead of the one blast the contractor planned for - of course the demolition wasn't something historic minded folks approved of. Demo'd to make space for logs, now there are no logs, and emptiness.

Morning plenary at the Liberty Theater. And then a lecture on historic cemeteries, and an event the Tombstone Trail that the presenter organized in Indiana where 4-6 cemeteries combined forces and planned weekend tours with selected presentations on bio's of some of the significant folks in their cemeteries. Also, in October they had candlelight tours around Hallowe'en. Much to learn about the care of historic cemeteries that we need to apply to Brookside, such as take a pix of each tombstone for an inventory. Not sure we have ever done that.

We had a luncheon and speaker, Dan Shilling, who is big on Civic Tourism, and helps towns figure out how to use tourism as a means to economic development and community livability, rather than tourism for toursim sake. His message aligns with things we've discussed, which is if our residents enjoy the things we develop, then visitors will want to have some of the same.

A lecture on regional collaboration around Willamette Falls at Oregon City. It was interesting to hear from these big collaboration projects, and also the tie into Grand Ronde Tribe whose tribal members fished and gathered eels at the falls in historical times.

And last was a lecture on creating jobs with preservation, and a unique venture in Clatsop County with a new Heritage Preservation Certificate through the Community College, workshops, and a Craftsman Guild they've created. None of these ideas would have come to fruition if it hadn't of been for community refusing to pass a levy to build a new community college; and locals advocating to keep using the old high school the college was in, and rehab it, and use it as a learning program. Great examples, lessons learned, and success during and because of these hard times.

Liberty Theater Astoria