Courtesy of Tyler Maddox of Maddox Visual

A Brief Grapevine History from Ron Fox, Committee Chair

When I came on board as SOREDI’s Executive Director in 2006, it seemed that our region was in need for a network to promote and encourage entrepreneurial business development as the nature balance to the region’s existing efforts to encourage growth by our established businesses and to attract new businesses to Southern Oregon.  Our initial meeting brought together representatives of SCORE, Small Business Development Centers, Rogue Community College, and Southern Oregon University. 

Our first “pub talk” was held in June 2007 at one of the only Southern Oregon brew pubs with sufficient room to host 50-to-60 invited members to the event!  We had three presenters at this first event, a successful entrepreneur from the region, a presentation on the basics of angel or early stage equity investing, and an aspiring entrepreneur from the Southern Oregon area.  From that humble event, the committee formally began to meet and plan for events every other month beginning September 2007. 

During the first year of our events, we received a sponsorship from Bank of the Cascades that assisted in offsetting the cost for hosting the event.  Around that same time, the committee decided to call our entrepreneurial network effort Jefferson Grapevine rather than the “pubtalk” as used by other communities in Oregon.  First, we have very few pubs in our region; however, we do have many excellent wineries!  Jefferson – taken from the “state of Jefferson” model seem to fit our region’s area of reach. 

The Jefferson Grapevine Committee formed four sub committees; event planning; publication/marketing; screening/vetting and angel/early stage investors.  Ron Fox was elected as Jefferson Grapevine Committee chair, Russ Kennedy was elected chair of the vetting/screening committee; Jack Vitacco was elected chair of the event planning committee; Linda Ballasy was elected chair of the publication/marketing committee and Steve Vincent was elected chair of the angel/early stage investor committee. 

For this current fiscal year (July 2008 to June 2009), we have received sponsorships from Bank of the Cascades, Pacific Power, US Bank, Phyllis Norris – CPA, and Rogue Regency Inn.  The financial support from these sponsors has made it possible to continue the Grapevine efforts by supporting six business networking events.