Philanthropic

After taking issue with the lackluster capability of my hometown's then-website emichigancity.com (via Wayback Machine), I decided to speak up about it. Here's a young, awkward, and naive me complaining about a local government website looking in 2009 how websites were built in the 1990's. This would be the kickoff point for my life of civic engagement. While I wasn't able to change the City's website at that time, I did get a personal invitation from then-Mayor Chuck Oberlie (seated behind me in the video) to join the Michigan City Summer Festival Committee.

Interview: La Porte County Life

A La Porte County Life In The Spotlight: Mike Hale

Following the City Council appearance and many hours of volunteer work later, it only took a few years to be recognized for my community leadership. For this, I was interviewed in 2013 by the La Porte County Life local news publication for my work in the Michigan City area.

During my hometown volunteering journey, I was also interviewed multiple times by the local radio station WEFM for civic and personal projects.

Going Forward, 2025 And Beyond

Volunteering and community service can take a lot out of you. Non-profits usually have more ambition than they have help available, so you're constantly getting pulled in to do more. Though if they don't have that ambition, then they're probably not worth joining anyway. After my run with the Greater South Loop Association ended in 2023, I decided to take an extended break from the non-profit world having squeezed nearly 25 concurrent volunteer-years into a 13 year span. Since then, it's been all about focusing on my career and personal life.

I'm not sure what the future holds, but I do know that when I'm ready for the next philanthropic endeavor, its impact will reach far beyond the limited geography of a neighborhood or small town.

This organization was based around the greater South Loop neighborhood of Chicago, IL. Like previous efforts with non-profit organizations, I would help modernize the team by digitizing processes and increasing the volume of information online. Our website would implement memberships, e-commerce, donations, event management, and a sort of micro-social network that would encourage neighbors to connect. As a lesson from previous nonprofit work, to ensure the workload wouldn't fall entirely on me and the website could live on in my absence, I would train other board members on various operations.

In addition to the IT work, I would also participate in neighborhood networking (the IRL kind) events, outreach to other relevant organizations, beautification projects, and examining proposals for new real estate developments to provide feedback to the Alderman.

Vision Zero

An interesting project within this was liaising with the City of Chicago and other city leaders to implement the Vision Zero initiative brought on by former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The goal of Vision Zero is to reduce the amount of traffic-related deaths to zero. This would include regular meetings at City Hall with transportation officials, aldermen, advocacy groups, and others to discuss issues and workshop solutions to make our roads safer. Since then, the City has made great strides to increase its bike lane mileage, reinforce existing mileage with protected lanes, implement other pedestrian safety measures such as "don't block the box", and reduced speed limits in key areas.

At the time of joining, the Michigan City Summer Festival Committee was an over 40-year-old non-profit organization dedicated to organizing a variety of events within Michigan City. It was the official steward of the annual 4th of July Fireworks and parade, Oktoberfest, and Great Lakes Grand Prix boat races on Lake Michigan, among many others. At its peak, we organized over 30 events each year, with most occurring between May-August.

My role as Secretary on the Board of Directors involved organizing meetings, taking minutes, and maintaining records. I would also liaise with the public, sponsors, vendors, entertainers, and other organizations such as the Michigan City Mainstreet Association. For the city, I worked with the Mayor's office, City Council, or specific city departments such as police and fire to ensure safety, maintenance, or legal matters were handled.

Since that wasn't enough, I took over creative and marketing duties, designing all of our material (see the Design page) during my tenure, including a custom website which I also administered and maintained, logos, t-shirts, flyers, ads, and our yearly brochure. I also handled social media, and produced some promotional videos.

Southern Shore Music Festival

Producer, Director

Music on the Lakefront: The Southern Shore Music Festival (laportecounty.life)
Southern Shore Music Festival (wbez.org)

Conceived and directed a first-of-its-kind music festival for the Michigan City area. The festival spanned genres from bluegrass to hip-hop. Special guest DJs from Chicago radio's WBEZ sister-station Vocalo would serve as rotating hosts through the day. While I had complete responsibility for the event, I did have a great team of volunteers to help execute the vision. The major areas that I handled myself included marketing (website, socials, print), talent booking, sponsorship outreach, logistics (permits, insurance, city liaison), and on-site event management.

While the event was short-lived, it did serve as a catalyst for future eccentric events such as the Swale Music Fest which emphasized regional and national acts. One of the important things to me was showing that Michigan City could support original artists. After a few years with the Summer Festival Committee and being a lifelong Michigan City resident, I was dead-bored of the same classic rock, country, and polka cover bands. There was a burning sense that Millenials and future generations needed their own unique voice.

Save The Fireworks

Group Hopes To Save The Fireworks Through Fundraising (laportecounty.life)

This was an independent, grassroots campaign to ensure Michigan City's beloved fireworks display continued after the then-current mayor Ron Meer cut all funding. Despite the independent nature, I still used my clout with the Summer Festival Committee to liaise and provide connections with the community. I created an Indiegogo campaign (precurser to the now-ubiquitous GoFundMe) and social media blitz to raise funds. When that wasn't enough, I helped secure key last-minute fundraising to get us over the line by facilitating a major donation from a local car dealership.

As part of the IT Committee, would help modernize the organization by digitizing processes and increasing the volume of information online. We went from old-school methodologies to having membership, event, and project management systems in place. The team created a brand new website and social media presence, and were successful at spreading awareness, increasing membership, and attracting new businesses to the area.

In addition to IT Committee duties, I would also periodically volunteer at events such as the Shelf Ice Brew Fest and Taste of Michigan City. While attending Board meetings, I would use my position as Secretary on the Board of Directors with the Michigan City Summer Festival Committee to coordinate the organizations and cross promote events.

Videography

During this period, as South Shore Media I was able to afford a Canon XA10 camcorder - the first "prosumer" model able to record in full 1080p resolution at 60fps. This allowed me to expand into video production that natively targeted an online viewing experience. Just like I did with web development, I quickly started outshining the established players in local video production services who were still using tape-based workflows, outdated graphics, and legacy editing techniques.

Uptown Arts District - Promotional Introduction

For this video, I created a brand intro clip for the Uptown Arts District in a 2.5D style using Adobe After Effects, which was then used for all future videos. The goal of this video was to introduce the newly re-branded Uptown Arts District to the public and create awareness of the First Fridays event. This was promoted on the Uptown Arts District website and social media.

2014 Flame + Flair Event

This video was created to promote the annual Flame + Flare Halloween event. One of the main elements was a re-enactment of the zombie dance scene in Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video. There was also trick-or-treating, a costume contest, bed races, parade, and other family activities.

Joomla Chicago

Joomla was the first content management system (CMS) I learned, and was so thrilled to have such a development platform and rich plugin ecosystem at my fingertips, I could't wait to get involved with like-minded individuals. It was also my earliest attempt to get serious about plugging into the Chicago market - one much bigger than my hometown. While Michigan City is officially part of the Chicago Metropolitan Area (aka "Chicagoland"), as a small town it still felt separate from "true" Chicago. With the developer capability Joomla granted and its open nature, I could easily find ways to grow South Shore Media through being a more productive developer instead of hand-coding every project. At Joomla Chicago, I wanted to get involved with fellow nerds to share experiences and knowledge. Below is one of my contributions - a presentation on running a HIPAA-compliant Joomla site on AWS. The experience gained was from a then-recent project I had completed for a client in the mental health treatment space.

City Lakers Baseball

Around 2010 I was introduced to the City Lakers which served as a local feeder baseball team to larger organizations. This was a non-profit, independently-operated college-level baseball team which had agreements around the country to send their players for further development when they were ready. Success stories included players getting promoted to the Gary Railcats, and a minor-league Arizona affiliate of the Chicago Cubs.

During this time, I handled the digital media side of the organization. Designing and programming a custom website, collecting player information and statistics, and creating sizzle reels for the organization and players.

Misc. Sponsorships

As a local business owner, it's important to stay plugged in to the community. As part of that outreach, South Shore Media had sponsored various organizations and events over the years. Contributions included a local adult softball team, and sending an underprivileged student to a gala ball, among others.