I once asked my cousin-in-law what was the key factor to why his business seemed to thrive. He contemplated for a moment and said,
“Because I don’t promise more than I can deliver and what I do promise to accomplish I do so on time.”
To illustrate this point I share this sad yet true story about someone creating a totally impossible situation and causing a lot of people to suffer for it. Don’t let this be you.
A teacher in a private Salt Lake City school decided that all of his students needed to pass a series of proficiencies before they could pass his class. The theory being that the students needed to be able to do these tasks in real life, not just learn about them in a book. Sounds fair, right?
Each of the 25 students had the next two weeks to pass 40 proficiencies. Each proficiency took about a half hour to do, and could only be passed off by the teacher. Each student was supposed to schedule times with the teacher (outside of class) when they were ready to be tested.
Now let’s take a look at a very fundamental problem with this idea…
40 proficiencies X 30 minutes each = 1200 minutes of work
1200 minutes X 25 students = 30,000 minutes (500 hours) of the
teacher’s time (as he was the only one evaluating)
Working 24 hours a day, doing nothing but these proficiencies, the teacher would have to work 41.6 straight days with no breaks to allow all the students to pass.
As he only gave the students two weeks to pass all the proficiencies, this was clearly an impossible task.
The students were reasonably upset about the situation. The teacher (after one week had gone by) didn’t see the problem.
Moral of the story: Don’t plan (or promise) to do more than you can possibly accomplish.
It snowed again, so like any self respecting backcountry skier I put my bike away for a few days and went out to ski some powder which promptly turned into another fine corn harvest.
With the road to Wolf Creek Pass open for the summer, I took advantage of this easy access location just 20 minutes from Kamas. Besides the access, the other beautiful thing about Wolf Creek Pass is that I would have the area to myself – no skiers, no snowmobilers, and virtually no drive by traffic.
After one powder day with my friend Alex and a solo corn day I asked my eight year old son McKinley if he wanted to go backcountry skiing. He doesn’t have touring equipmentbut I reasoned that if we got there right at sunrise the surface would be firm enough to bootpack up the main slope. With his excitement and the green light from his mother (knowing that he would likely be late for school) we got our gear ready.
At 6:30 I woke McKinley and after a mandatory stop at the local Chevron station to entice our taste buds with some of the worlds finest doughnuts, we headed off to the pass. A quick ski across the flats and we were booting up the main slope.
Reaching the top we had spectacular views of the Uintas and the Wasatch Mountains. McKinley looked around and said,
“Dad, this is so awesome. It’s like our own private ski resort for just you and me.” I had to smile, responding, “Welcome to backcountry skiing.”
After some hydration we started down. The snow was buttery smooth as this main shot gets the first morning light. McKinley went first and although he skied a bit timid I couldn’t have been more proud. When I arrived at the bottom of the slope he asked if we could ski one more lap. But of course.
Once more we arrived on top and took some time to snap photos with my camera phone (my digi is broken) and spent some time chatting. Some father’s take thier son’s golfing, others play video games with them while some go fishing in order to have keen time to openly communicate. I take my son(s) to the mountains.
I could have never thought so much enjoyment could come from skiing a little 400′ shot but there was no place I’d rather have been nor anyone else that I would rather have been skiing with than my oldest boy.
The second run was smoother, both snow and McKinley’s skiing. After skiing that run we hiked up to the highway and then walked back to the car. I said to McKinley that we needed to get him to school to which he replied,
Dad, I could miss school today. I don’t care when we arrive.” I asked him why that was. “Because backcountry skiing with you is so much better than going to school,” he said.
Although I had never heard of this story (I’m in my sophmore season of cycling) I’m certainly anxious to watch this film that is based on the true story of Graeme Obree who broke the world one hour speed record on a bike that he designed himself. According to the film’s website, it opened this past weekend in select cities here in the United States.
Check out one of the many recent reviews on this film – Chicago Sun-Times
If you’ve seen it, chime in and let me know your take on it?
Well, perhaps it’s reason #4 or #7 but #2873 feels more substantial, more concrete. It’s strange though. I once said that “Google = BORG 2.0” but I still love it/them. Regardless of the count or my inner struggle to love the big G, here is the reason:
Google Alerts.
Do you have them? If not, why? These little gems land in my Gmail inbox each day and since I’m a blogger I have an alert for blogs that link to the place of my employment – Backcountry DOT com (If I wrote it properly with the . then I would show up in my own Google Alert) I opened up my alert this morning and at the end of the list was a blog called the “talus slope of the mind” by J Maxfield. Wait a second, I know J Maxfield. I don’t really “know” him but he’s the guy that I sent a tee shirt to after a blog post I wrote on BackcountryBlog.com that featured a photo by hIrSch who is traveling on a bike.
So I checked out J Maxfield and his talus slope. From there I caught a pretty fun web wave and I’ll recap here in case you want to ride the same wave: (the first link will open in a new window so you can a l t – t a b to read the map)
I had to click it cause hey, wouldn’t you want to be one of the first to get in on the Best. New. Website?! Once inside and after the fun I noticed a creative blog of sorts. I read until 10.03.06 which had a letter from khaela to mj and the following text and links in the editorial:
(I got this email yesterday, so she must be on tour now.) (In the meantime I read her journal and listen to her new album over and over again.)
“Huh, she listened over and over…must be good music,” I thought. So I clicked link number 3. “The Blow?” Yes, The Blow it was. “Scroll, scroll…that’s it? No player? Oooookay. Wait a second, they are on my s p a c e, bingo.” *click*:
Apparently I’m not the first to find The Blow. Check out how many times each song has been listened to. mj did say that she “listened to her new album over and over again”. After listening to the selection just once and poking around the my space I added them as a friend and the ride was over – I was at myself.
postscript wave – I went back to The Blow my space and found a link to TeamYacht which had a live schedule from VIRB.com and that place it cool. I recommend checking it out as a hip social network.
That’s what I told Cynthia “just one hour” as I pedaled away from our home in Kamas. Destination: Wolf Creek Pass.
I fell in love with Wolf Creek Pass last year after moving to Kamas and purchasing my first road bike, a Kona Zing Supreme. The climbs are a great challenge, the shoulder is good, the views reward those that climb and traffic is usually slim to none. But I think one of the things I like most about Wolf Creek Pass is that when I tell people where I’ve been riding they invariably question, “Where?”. Exactly.
Wolf Creek Pass occupies a sleepy part of the Uinta Mountains touching the southwest corner of the range and connecting the towns of Hanna/Tabiona to Woodland/Francis. Still confused? It’s okay, even Google Maps can’t show you the road when trying to map from Francis to Tabiona. Check out the map – do you see a 2 lane highway? Good, let’s keep it that way.
As I set out I soon became enveloped in the ride and the landmarks that I had become intimate with last season. Before I knew it my 30 minute turn around time had come and gone and I pressed on past the Forest Service boundary, past the Nobletts gate and up towards the start of the big climb just past the Mill Hollow Reservoir turn off. Surprisingly there was still some snow on the north facing slopes this low and it chilled the air. The road conditions were a little gritty but the lack of autos (perhaps a dozen at most passed me each direction) made up for that.
I turned around at the 15 mile marker, donned my leg and arm warmers and shot back down towards Woodland. A swift clean ride through Woodland, up the hill and back along Foothill Drive into Kamas and my ride was complete. I had fallen in love once again with Wolf Creek Pass.
Doug Coombs was an icon for me and many others that grew up skiing in the late 80’s and 90’s and for whom skiing steep terrain became a passion. I don’t really categorize what I do as “Big Mountain Skiing”, I just ski. A lot of the time I search out steep terrain, rock lined chutes and yes, I like to climb big mountains and then ski down as evidenced in the photo to the right.
Sadly, Doug died last year, doing what he loved – skiing steep terrain in one of his favorite places on earth, La Grave, France. I never had the opportunity to meet Doug Coombs. I saw him at Snowbird one time in passing and just missed a chance to interview him for a documentary that my friend was working on called “Teton Skiing: Legends of the Fall Line“. Perhaps it’s selfish for me to wish I had met him, to recount the moment that could have been but either way I’m left inspired and in awe of how he lived and what he loved.
I just watched this trailer about Doug Coombs and I was pulled in by what he says when skiing steep lines “you can almost get a feeling of flying”. I’m looking forward to watching this film “STEEP” when it comes out as this little teaser below leaves me wanting more. It’s a documentary by The Documentary Group which is associated with PJ Productions.
I hear that Seth Godin is a telemark skier. Really, my sources tell me so. But ski season has all but dwindled so he wouldn’t be coming to Utah to ski.
The Dip Tour is why he would come. What’s theDip Tour you ask? It’s simple, but so unconventional. Someone once said that when you see something and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?!?” then you’ve seen something that is genius. Let Seth explain.
Usually, when authors tour, they trudge from bookstore to bookstore. It’s grinding and a little demeaning (here’s a tip: if you see an author in a bookstore, don’t go near him unless you’re prepared to buy the book (or at least hide it somewhere in the store.)) The whole interaction isn’t very pleasant for the reader either.
Well, I love to do speaking gigs, but rarely get the chance to do events that are open to the public and relatively inexpensive. So I figured I’d combine both.
So here’s the deal Utah – we need to get another 350 people to sign up for this. You’ll pay $50 and get 5 copies of his book that you can keep for yourself or if you’re following me you can give out 4 copies to others and therefore spread the word.
As I was driving to work this morning there was a report on NPR (Listen to an older NPR report but the same concept) about the quickly vanishing once welcomed hour of the day called the Lunch Hour. It was reported today that on average most American workers are taking a half hour with many shrinking that to less than 10 minutes of lunch at their desks. According to a USA Today story in November of 2006,
57.9% eat lunch at their desk while continuing to work
Let’s go one step furhter. A company in Utah Valley that offered employees who worked straight through lunch could leave 30 minutes early from work was surprised when a majority of the employees accepted the offer.
After heating up my home made beef stew (thanks Cyn!) I realized that I too was part of the statistic. In fact, if it weren’t for the Domino’s pizza deal (1 three topping medium pizza a week for an entire year) that I won in an on air auction for my local public radio station (KPCW – Park City) I wouldn’t get out for lunch other than to walk to Smith’s or Wild Oats for the occasional dinner roll, banana or my favorite raisin bran muffin at Oats. Even so when I do walk to Smith’s or Wild Oats with a couple of co-workers it’s more about getting away from the computer than it is the food and sadly it only lasts about 15 minutes.
But in the NPR report above (did you listen to it?) reported a lot of American workers are doing other things than lunch if they do take the time away from the office. So I did some poking and found this graphic:
“The two-hour lunch is a thing of the past,” said Rick Mohr, manager of the Advanced Solutions team at Steelcase. “More people are working through their lunch hours because the nature of work has changed. For example, there is increased pressure to perform and get things done in today’s more complex business environment. Also in some organizations, up to 70 percent of the workday is spent working in teams, and those people need to find time to get their individual tasks done during the workday. Lastly, office workers may just want to get home to their families a little earlier at the end of the day in search of some quality time.”
I would completely agree, except for the occasional two-hour lunch when I go ski at The Canyons with a co-worker.
I doubt this will change my work habits or rather my lunch hour habits but it does reveal a bigger picture of the direction society is taking regarding work habits and relaxation – that the two don’t mix well. And with that cue, and the absence of my beef stew it’s back to work…
Open source in the world of software is quickly proving to be THE way of the future. Take this software platform, WordPress for example. While blog platforms like Blogger took a couple of years to come up with categories (one of the few visible features in the most recent release of the “new” Blogger) open source blogging platforms like Word Press or Nucleus keep adding features as fast as the both self serving yet community oriented programmers can make stuff.
But what about the retail world or businesses? Would a community become so involved with a retailer, say, like eBay, where the business sees the value and works with the community, allowing it to provide tweaks and add ons? Perhaps. Or would the sense that the profitability of the owners of a business, like eBay, be too big a pill to swallow when deciding to “give” to fellow community members? Or on the flip-side, would a business expose itself enough to the community and competitors alike to allow for such intimate interaction?
Take a look at SteepandCheap.com, commonly known as SAC and owned by Backcountry.com. This website has a STRONG following of gear aficionados who thrive on a deal and who enjoy the craziness that is SAC. The discussion each day is filled with common faces. People on the discussion would initially poke around in the code to determine how many items were up for sale. A lot of smart people within the SAC community were passing along info they garnered from the servers of Backcountry.com (the parent company) to inform each other about how many items were up for grabs. Rather than squash it, Backcountry.com let it ride. (nice move – no action was the best action to take)
Next there sprung up a separate forum for SAC addicts which was first called SacAddicts.com but has now been changed to GearAddicts.com. This community gives suggestions on gear they want to see and SAC responds. Backcountry once again applauded this new forum, reached out to them in acceptance and stepped aside to watch this grow. But let’s take it one step further.
Enter SACAttack.com. This guy in Canada has mined the data on the SAC servers and written some amazing scripts that give SAC addicts more data on the deal than they have ever had. Some of the widgets he had created were even beyond what the Backcountry team had come up with. Here was an example of the community being more innovative and quicker to the punch than the company. Backcountry reached out to him with 40% off discount codes to drive traffic back to it’s stores where left over SAC items show up, further capturing business that missed the SAC deals.
(Rumor has it that Backcountry wanted to hire the guy, which in my opinion would damage the relationship that a community member has with the business entity, making it worse in the long run.)
So two weeks ago Backcountry launched another website – WhiskeyMilitia.com – built on the ODAT model (One Deal At a Time) and low and behold it has incorporated one of the main features that SACAttack has, that of an item quantity status bar. This was something that in SAC was considered . Coincidence? Not one bit. An example of the community and a retailer working together? Sort of. More it’s an example of a business coming up with something unique, the community forming around it and pushing it to the next level and then the business embracing and incorporating the concept in it’s 2.0 version. (WM being the 2.0 of SAC.)
Where am I going with this? No where in particular. This train of thought was brought on by the video below, created by Novell and presented at the Novell BrainShare conference. (to much laughter from what I heard).
But the question stands. Would a community embrace a specific business to the degree that they have embraced Linux or Word Press? And would a company expose themselves enough to embrace a community? Is there a marriage to be made?
It was two years ago that we first started to dawn patrol together, right after I started working at Backcountry.com. I found in him a like minded backcountry skier – one of (semi) conservative lines, a knack for adventure, nary a phobia of early morning starts and a nose for powder. We even spent a portion of last summer cutting a trail through heinous scrub oak so that one of our favorite dawn patrol skiing stashes would be easier to access.
So on the morning of his departure it only seemed right that I would give him a proper send-off as we returned to the location of our first ski tour together – Flagstaff.
On that first outing, we found the skin up Flagstaff bulletproof and Josh’s skins were having issues. He cursed them and with a bit of duct tape and determination we made the summit of Flagstaff only to turn around and ski right back down having run out of time. To this day I still remember how dry and light the snow looked on the north face of Flagstaff. I stood there staring down into the untracked powder of Days Fork from the top of Flagstaff. I remember the angst I felt with the decision to ski back down the heinous bulletproof junk that led back to the car with meetings and TPS reports looming.
This time though I would have the upper hand.
Like our first outing, the skin track was bullet proof and we soon favored booting up Flagstaff rather than test our skills with skins and edge work. As I approached the top of the peak the snow went from thin and firm to dry and light. Probing my ski pole on the north facing aspect that dropped into Days Fork, I felt the anticipation grow and yelled down to Josh, “It’s dry!”. His pace increased.
Dropping in the first couple of turns were on chalky firm snow but it soon yielded to dry fast pow. Small turns morphed into fast GS and then super G turns as I neared the bottom of the basin. Watching Josh rip fast smooth turns in untracked dry powder was as good as it gets. As he swept into the bottom of the basin we clicked poles, the air buzzing with stoke. For this very reason I sometimes get more stoked watching my friends ski pow than I do myself.
The skin back up to the top was steep and although the snow was dry the sun was HOT! We got to the top and Josh said something about the needing to go down and start the long drive to Ohio but how it was so tough not to take another run. I put my foot down. “Sack up, gear up and let’s drop in for round 2!”. I’m sure Josh’s wife thinks I’m a poor influence but I had to do it, if not for me for Josh. One last run.
The second lap was faster than the first and spicy in nature as we flashed a steep ramp to a couple of tree lined chutes. By the time we arrived back at the top of Flagstaff the time had come to call it a day. I wondered if Emma’s Ridge would be corn by now and we headed that way. As we neared the top I knew we had scored.
Descending in tandem thanks to solid conditions, we skied some of the best corn I’ve ever skied. I could hear Josh’s hoots just over my shoulder as I lead down. It was the run that kept on giving…untracked and super smooth corn. What a way to finish what was already a perfect day of skiing with one of the best ski partners I’ve ever had the chance to share the skin track with.
