June 13, 2024
Hello everyone -
Welcome to the first official post to the Bar Ranch Strategy Partners website blog. My name is Sam, and I am the founder and president of Bar Ranch Strategy Partners.
This post is going to a brief introduction to Bar Ranch, our purpose, mission, and vision, and will set the stage for future content and many more good things to come.
In essence, Bar Ranch is a multimedia services company that focuses on production, publishing, consulting, policy, and research - with much more planned in the future.
Bar Ranch will launch a number of offerings in the coming months, including a podcast, a video series, and essays, in addition to all the administrative work that goes into establishing a new venture.
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Our mission and purpose is the revitalization of the American Midwest. We were born here, we were raised here, we live here, and we will die here. Nothing is more important than the long-term development and success of our community.
This is a big objective, of course, but that is fine - Bar Ranch will be a platform and vehicle to develop the new ideas, plans, and policies that can help to achieve these goals.
In particular, the areas that we will focus on - especially in the early stages - will be rural development, strategic leadership, entrepreneurial ecosystems, global economics, crisis management, policy analysis, and new venture creation.
We’ll also be utilizing an ethnographic field work approach to our research, getting out into the world and seeing what’s going on. In addition to these bigger topics, we also hope to feature the fun and exciting things that go along with living in our beautiful land, along with its history, people, and culture.
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Especially in the beginning, we will be learning a lot about the process as we go along - hence, quality will continue to improve and the content will be built in stages as time goes on. In other words, I appreciate your patience as we figure things out in the early stages!
Much of the initial content will be a type of “field notes,” progressing through different streams of research and literature to determine what is most useful for our purposes.
Overall, we are taking a “pipeline strategy” to content development, that will start with more straightforward media forms, which can then be refined and refashioned into more sophisticated projects as we progress.
Starting out with audio podcasts and short essays, we will build on that foundation to develop videos, books, research reports, policy recommendations, and more, informed by literature reviews, field trips, visual ethnography, and mixed methods research.
In the early stages, Bar Ranch is fully funded through our own bootstrapped finances. This does limit some of our abilities, but also gives us full editorial control.
We are certainly open to collaborations and investment in the future, and will likely pursue them down the road, but I believe that - especially as our identity takes shape - it’s important to maintain an operational independence that provides a clear perspective and willingness to investigate a variety of topics.
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There is much more to be said, of course, but I just wanted to provide an initial introduction and “hello” to world, especially as we start to set everything up.
In the near future, we will establish our digital presence, and begin developing some of the initial content. We will also have news on our upcoming field trips and research projects, and all the other exciting things that are on the horizon.
I certainly look forward to having you and everyone along on this journey.
For now, this is Sam writing from Bar Ranch, and I’ll see you again real soon.
- Sam
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