This was in the Letters section of Scuttlebutt this morning.  A very good indication of the kind of shop the Abbott’s ran:

“From John Horsch: Man, it was sad to read about the fire at Abbott
Boat Works. In 1995, the Abbotts built us a new Soling, and I had the
unique and memorable opportunity to witness the boat shop in all its
glory. Among the highlights were hockey games on the radio, breaks in
production so that the employees could put the finishing touches on
Chief’s new fiberglass ice-fishing hut, and constant stories about
Bill’s kids’ exploits on the rink. The topper was when we got set to
leave, new boat in tow, Bill gave us a license plate for the new
trailer, saying: “Now this is the license plate off of the moose hunting
trailer. And moose hunting season is coming up. So make sure you mail
this back right away when you get home.” The Abbotts are great people
and they build fast boats. Here’s hoping we’ll see a phoenix rise from
those ashes.”

Well we’ve had some set backs but we’re still trucking along with our bid for the Worlds.  With the demise of Bill Abbott’s shop in Sarnia, there is no hope of getting Heavy Fuel ready for the next two big regattas.  We were lucky in one sense, that we just lost the keel and not the whole boat in the fire.

We’ve managed to secure a boat for the Canadians and a boat for the Worlds, but we still have a pile of work to do.  Hal sounds like he’s giving our first loaner a small refit in his driveway, and we’re still assembling parts that will be suitable for the three of us.  (I believe you can step onto a full on mediocre boat and do well, but there are a few key elements that make it all work smoothly.)  Luckily for us our loaners are anything but mediocre, and Hal has the time to tweak things so they are a little more logical.

Paul has been playing with sail designs and he has never disappointed me yet with his rags.  I have to say it’s really nice sailing for a sailmaker. 

I must admit that I wish we had some more boat time together.  At Trillium, our crew work was OK, but not as tight as I would like.  This is the one disadvantage of having crew spread out across the province, no time to practice.  That said, we’ve all been sailing a lot individually, and that goes a long way.  I feel really good about my sailing progress this year and Paul and Hal have already forgotten more than I ever knew about sailng.  We’ll be fine.

We’re a little less than two weeks to the Canadians, and we have all the elements together, we just need to visualize it all coming together.  That’s always the hardest part for me.

This story has been circulating around the net in the last day or two. 

This is really scary.

There is an article today on the BBC website about a sport that is emerging in the UK called Parkour.  The “field of play” is the urban landscape, and it is a mix of running, climbing, and gymnastic movement.  I checked out a couple of the links in the article and found that the culture arount Parkour is very similar to climbing, and the various aspects of training are very similar.

Back when I was a full time climber, I had a healthy appreciation for movement.  Everywhere we went we were practicing our art.  Whether we were at the gym, buildering around Kingston or out on the rock, we were obsessed with movement. 

My brother Eric and I, trained and trained and trained, and the more we trained the more we came to the realization that if you were strong enough you just had to figure out the moves and you could get through almost any problem.  Parkour seams to be similar in this respect.  Practice, mental training, and physical conditioning were the keys to success. 

I miss this type of movement.  Sailing has some of these moves; rolling the boat through tacks and gybes, moving weight to react to the wind, and occasionally monkeying around in the rig have the same sort of feeling.  But it lacks the dynamic movement and body tension of climbing and Parkour.

There is something very zen about it.  When you first start these sports you think too much, put too much effort into things.  When you slow down your brain, visualize how it is going to work, and then allow yourself to totally concentrate on what you are doing, you find the groove.  Sometimes you do a move and go “holy crap, did I just pull that off!?!”

If you are a techie hippie like me you owe it to your self to check out this track.  Was on the Daily Source Code yesterday. 

Too cool.

Shel Holtz, of For Immediate Release, wrote a great post on the perception of PR in a municipal/ public works setting. 

So many city or provincial projects run into serious misunderstandings with constituents that are effected by the work.  As I work for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, I regularly see projects that have developed resistance from locals who don’t really understand the project that is underway.  FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) seem to have such a grip on people when it comes to public infrastructure projects.  People have such a deep seeded mistrust of the government that they take an oppositional stance immediately.

MTO has been fairly progressive in this respect.  We regularly host Government Information Sessions when in the planning stages for a new project.  These sessions give people a chance to sit down with planning and design people as well as the lead engineer, to have their questions about particular problems and personal circumstances in the context of the project.  It makes people feel better to know that their concerns have been addressed and planned for, we just need to let them know that we have been thinking about their needs.

But the main point of Shel’s post is that often municipal politicians find it hard to justify the money it costs to do those things.  I’m sure that many American cities are in the same cash strapped situation that Canadian cities are.  When your city is operating with deficits and can’t afford to do all of the infrastructure projects that it would like to do, it is really hard to justify that Communications/ PR budget line.

The other point that Shel makes is about the “good” projects that a well constructed communications effort can initiate.  I totally agree, when you would like to mobilize citizens to participate in community driven event or initiatives, getting people jazzed about it is the only way to get them going.  To get them jazzed you must let them know the end game and the vision of the successful project.  Unfortuately self-interest motivates people, and letting them know they will benefit in the end will get them engaged.

Finally, with all due respect to Shel, I would respectfully submit that PR pros should take the emphasis away from the negative preception of PR and focusing on the good stuff.  I’m not a PR pro, but I follow the PR blogosphere/ podosphere and there is a huge emphasis on trying to turn around the perception of the industry.  I would say that pointing out the positive and economically beneficitial aspects of PR would let executives, politicians and business leaders learn about the positive value of PR.  Constantly coming back to the “unethical behavior” of the few gives legitimacy to the concerns of sceptics. 

I know that PR people are doing good work.  Tell us more about that.

– Cross posted to nathanbaron.worpress.com –

A little while back I alluded to a “Surprise to Come”.  Well the time has come my friends. 

I’ll be moving my digital house to a new spot with a new address.  I purchased two new URLs www.withoutletters.com and www.nathanbaron.com, both of which will take you to my new home.

For those of you that are subscribed to the RSS feed, you will need to change it to the new one.  http://withoutletters.com/feed/  Sorry, I could figure out a way to post to both simultaneously.

If you make the crossing, you’ll see that there is still work to be done, and I hope to get some more graphics set up and sort out some things in my side bar.  I have been able to import all of my past posts but unfortunately I wasn’t able to bring comments across to the new blog.  I will keep this space open  for as long as Wordpress.com will let me, so if you are in dire need of view past comments you can check back here.

This also seems like a good time to thank all of you.  I’ve really enjoyed watching the traffic go up and hearing feedback from people.  I must admit that I would probobly keep doing this even if no one decided to read, but I am so happy that people find what I have to say interesting enough to keep coming back.

So thank you my friends.  I hope you will keep on reading the thoughts of this man without letters.

I’m so sorry to be writing this post.  I will be cross posting on my other blog. 

I just heard from Paul Davis that Abbott Boats in Sarnia has been completely destroyed. Here is an article from the local paper.  A fire tore through the entire complex destroying finished boats, molds, tools, everything basically.   It also destroyed the soling that he was building for the next olympics. 

I don’t know Bill or his family that well, but anyone who has sailing in Canada for any amount of time has either met one of the Abbotts or sailing in one of there boats. 

This is a very serious loss for yachting in Canada and athletes around the world.  My deepest sympathies go the family.

Since I started blogging, I’ve been using the free hosted services at Blogger, Wordpress, and Livejournal.  These solutions are great but the customization leaves a lot to be desired.  So switching to the installed version of wordpress seemed like a good move.  It allows me to use my own domain names and customize to my hearts content.

It is a little intimidating at first.  I know a tiny bit off html, and I have modified CSS before, but I am way not that geek.  Not yet anyway. 

I’m not sure when I’ll be moving shop yet though.  I would like to do some more work on my theme and side bars, and populate some data before I go live.  It would be great if I could import all my wordpress.com posts here.  I’m going to look into that.

Anyway, just my first thougts.  I’m sure that there will be more on this new blogging platform.

I’ve been a big fan of the mac for a few years now.  I’ve never been an Apple fanboy, and I am the first to admit that I have my fair share of problems with my macs over the years.  But recently Apple have begun to grate my ethical nerves for a couple of reasons.

Blogging and Social Media

Apple have been developing applications that allow people to blog and podcast with their mac right out of the box.  (Granted the apps aren’t all that great, but whatever.)  Apple customers, and this is a great big generalization here, have been at the forefront of social media.  It’s easier to do audio and video work on a mac, and corporate culture of “Think Different” lends its self to these digital hippies that are creating content for free. 

However, Apple have not adopted these technologies into their own corporate culture which makes a lot of people think that Apple are being very hypocritical.  Bloggers have been bashing Apple’s PR practices for months now and there has been no response at all.  Command and control messaging that has been used by companies to build their brand is no longer effective.  Consumers are skeptical when they hear the lattest tagline, and it is getting harder and harder to buy into corporate messages.  Social media advocates will tell you that the only way to get out of this type of messaging is to engage with your customers.  Listen to them, talk to them. 

Apple was perfectly positioned to do that.  Mac fans are just that: fanatics.  There would be so much good feed back coming from their customers.  But sadly Apple have decided to close the door and continue to bombard us with lifestyle ads.

One last rant on the Apple’s relationship with its customers.  As I mentioned earlier, mac people are fanatics and are constantly waiting for the next product release.  There are several websites that write about rumoured products and services that will be appearing from Apple in the near future. A little while ago, Apple tried to force one of these sites to reveal the source of a leak that revealed a new product.  Apple argued that the blogger is not a journalist and thus was not covered by the first amendment.  Apple recently lost the case, thus granting bloggers the same rights as journalists.  (At least in California anyway.) 

There is a huge irony in the fact that Apple was the company to get everyone all excited about creating new media, these same bloggers are somehow less credible than other journalists, and finally reinforced blogger’s rights by losing a court battle.  Damn, there’s some weird Karma going on there.

Production Practices:

The other thing that bugs me about Apple is that they have positioned themselves to be the ethical company that enables people to change the world.  (Search google video> “Apple ads” to see what I mean.)  They invoke Ghandi and other labour leaders to make their point in their advertising.  How dare they?

Wired ran an article yesterday on how Apple products are manufactured in China.  Apple assembles all of their products in China and their labour practices, although not terrible, have been called into question.  As the article points out, politically propressive Apple should be way above the minimun labour standards.  This is yet another missed opportunity by the Apple PR department.

Another thing about the Apple’s production that bothers me is the quality.  Just a few years ago the aluminum powerbook was a the epitome of production quality.  Recently bloggers and websites have been reporting more and more defects and shody quality standards on their flagship products.  Several class-action suits have been launched against the company and again their has been no public response from the company.

Conclusions:

Will I stop buy macs?  We’ll see.  Although i like to be an ethical consumer, almost every hi-tech product in NA has passed through an asian factory with relatively low paid workers.  As for the PR gaffs and non-communicative nature of the company, we can only hope that Apple will eventually drink the kool-aid and start talking to it’s customers.  We’ll see what happens when people start to get really pissed off.  They are already making comparisons to the “old” evil-empire Mirosoft.

I’ll leave you with some questions:  How important are these things to you?  Is the contradictory corporate culture a deterent to you as a consumer?  Do you care if your products are produced in sweat shops by a company that markets to the politically progessive?