Seth Godin is my marketing hero. The author of a dozen or so books, including “The Dip” and “All Marketers are Liars”, Seth’s books and blog have been a constant source of insight and perspective since I first started looking into his stuff. One of the concepts I picked up out of the many ideas in his book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, was this idea of leaning in or leaning back. It’s not even one of the big ideas in that book, but you never know where you’ll find something you can use.
Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, I was invited to the Gala Dinner for Chefs’ Holidays, and thought it pretty amazing. But Chefs’ Holidays is so much more than just the Dinner at the end. This morning a few of us went to see John Stewart and Duskie Estes give a cooking demonstration in the Great Hall at The Ahwahnee. As the kind of person who tends to ‘heat things’ rather than actually ‘cook’, I wasn’t sure what, if anything I’d get out of this, and was pleased to be going with someone who actually follows cooking. During the presentation, it was so exceptional that she actually described herself as ‘giddy’.

We learned to make fresh pasta, Cappellacci di Zucca + Sage Browned Butter, and a delicious Lemon and Huckleberry Napoleon desert, which we were then able to sample afterward. The demonstration was a bunch of cooking, a bit of storytelling, and plenty of time for the audience to ask questions. Recipes are provided, and I wish I’d had the forethought to bring a pen to take notes. I noticed that many of the other guests were. We got tips on everything from texture, how to tell if something is done, to how long various items could be stored in the refrigerator or freezer.

A few random highlights? Spices like nutmeg were introduced into Italian cooking at a time when possessing such spices was considered a mark of wealth. It doesn’t take that long to make your own fresh pasta, but it helps to know what you’re doing – fold often for good tooth. Use good wine in your cooking. Flavor is flavor. Turns out, according to one of America’s best and brightest chefs, the technical term to describe over-cooked pasta is “Just Gross”. Lemon cream can be used on everything – the Napoleons that we had, icing for doughnuts, dip for fruit, topping for waffles… Once made, it will keep for a few weeks, so make some and then just have it around. [Of course, it is made of eggs, butter, sugar, lemons and more eggs, so maybe it shouldn't be the centerpiece of your diet.] Plan ahead and thaw Filo dough the day before in the refrigerator, it will handle better that way than preserved under a wet cloth. Duskie thinks chefs create a lot of trouble for themselves when they try to cram things in quickly.

Duskie and John follow impressive sustainable cooking practices – raising their own chickens, and growing approximately 30% of the vegetables that they use at their restaurants. Harvesting is just part of prep, in their kitchens. They incorporate heirloom varieties whenever possible for their exceptionally rich flavor, further supporting local agriculture, because these varieties often do not package and ship well. Plus, they are passionate about a ‘snout to tail’ philosophy, which uses all parts of an animal, and about using antibiotic and hormone free meats. You can find out more about them, and their restaurants, Bovolo and Zazu.

The Ahwahnee hosts a number of special events during the off-season. Vintners’ Holidays is the first, and brings top wine-makers from around the country to showcase and give seminars about their wines. The event is capped with a gala dinner in the vast and sweeping Ahwahnee Dining Room, that, as one Vintner remarked is strongly reminiscent of the dining hall in Hogwarts (for you Harry Potter Fans) minus the owls.

And on Nov. 6, Tom and I got to go.

Couldn’t possibly market something that you don’t know, right? That was the previous excuse, but this time, I was selected to sit in front of a video camera because…?  Because I sit in the same cubby room as the guy who makes the decision about who sits in front of the video camera.  Too sweet!

Of course, dress up events aren’t exactly things that Tom and I participate in frequently, so there was a some stress leading up to the day of the dinner.  I borrowed a super cute outfit from my chic neighbor, Josie, right down to the shoes and matching purse.  Tom located the bag with the one suit that he owns, but was chagrined to find, the night of the dinner, that there were no shirts and only one dress shoe in the bag. The left one, I think.  We found a solid colored work shirt that was made passable with a few sweeps of an iron, and made a sheepish phone call to a similar-sized friend for shoes.

Vintners was amazing. Not being a real foodie, just playing one on TV, literally, I don’t have the rich foodie vocabulary to describe what I was tasting in terms of the food or the wine. But, I’ll tell you this much, a few Vintners’ Holidays, and a Chefs’ Holiday under my sleeve and I’ve gotten hard to impress. The presentation, and flavor is hard to beat.

There’s so much to know, about just the wines, or just the food, but there’s also something to be said for just pure enjoyment. In fact, another friend had the pleasure of sitting next to a real connoisseur, and he even recommended against analyzing the wines you really enjoy. Just enjoy them. And so we did. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

Think of all the things that I have to be grateful for.  Family. Friends. Health. Fun work, and great co-workers. Enviable lifestyle. I live in Yosemite National Park, after all. The list could go on and on.

Tom shared a great audio interview with the sucessful copywriter, Ted Nicholas , with me the other day. In addition to imparting other good technical and attitudinal advice for writing copy, Ted recommends developing an Attitude of Gratitude by starting each morning with being thankful.  He spends 15 or 20 minutes every day just to get started with a postitive mental outlook. He even writes them down in a list and strives to add at least one new thing every day. Who, after all, can write powerful, moving copy when grouchy, dispirited, and dissatisfied?  And even if I don’t plan to write anything, who wants to be grouchy, dispirited and dissatisfied, anyway?

I stumbled on (that’s a little S) a great blog, called Zen Habits just before I heard the Ted Nicholas interview, and one of the first articles I read there was on ways that being grateful can change your life for the better. Would taking the time to remember how lucky you are to have a person in your life change the way you treated them on a daily basis? How about remembering the the huge favor your co-worker did for you, before you confront them about a mistake they made? Would it change the tone of the conversation?

I haven’t started making a list of things that I am grateful for yet. But I carry the thoughts around in my head, and it makes a difference.

We got back from this trip September 8, but there has been so much going on in the interim, that I haven’t had any chance to post anything until now, and there’s so much to do still, that I’ll keep this short.

We flew from Fresno, CA to Logan airport in MA in a long and painful trip that was accidentally extended at 1:30 am when I locked the keys in the car in the middle of nowhere VT while changing drivers in the middle of nowhere VT. Keys, phones, money, everything was in the car. Fortunately, there was a pay phone nearby, and not knowing the AAA phone number, I dialed 911. They were surprisingly efficient, and called a tow truck for us.

Our time in Stowe was really wonderful. It included an outdoor concert with Tom’s parents and his sister’s family at the Trapp Family Lodge (the family of Sound of Music fame). Although I had been there many times for XC skiing, it was the first time I’d seen in without snow. Unsurprisingly, it is still beautiful. Sitting outdoors, enjoying some music, and watching the sun set made for a great evening.

During that week, we spent time with Tom’s parents, enjoyed conversation with Mary, Steve and Mariana (they persuaded me to join Facebook), as well as Denis, Pat and their kids who came up for the long weekend. We took walks with Tom’s mother, Maria, along the Stowe Recreation Path. Ate out at many fine Stowe restaurants, and went for a run along the Recreation Path which has measured distances. This is the first time I’ve really run a measured distance that I have any faith in. I’m slow. I averaged something like 11+ min miles over the 4 miles that I ran, and suffered to do it. One morning we hiked to the top of Stowe Pinnacle with Tom’s bro, Denis. The hike was beautiful – like a temperate rain forest wet and with beautiful roots, and brightly colored lichen and fungus everywhere, and so unlike the drier and dustier trails of California. I took a bunch of pictures, but they didn’t really turn out. I blame the camera.

We also went to Doug’s new house in South Hero, VT, and visited with Doug and Bridget. It’s a beautiful old farmhouse, on an enormous property that has necessitated a driving lawnmower to care for the sprawling green lawn. Bridget has started working for a local apple orchard that Tom used to work at when he was young, and they are thinking about starting a Bed and Breakfast at their home to take advantage of the extra space, and earn some extra cash. We tried to convince Doug that he wanted to run just a Bed, because the breakfast part really creates so much additional work, but neither Doug nor Bridget seemed much convinced.

On Friday, we drove down to MA for the second part of the vacation. Our friends, Rachel and Garrett got married in Salem, MA, a short drive from Tom’s sister, Tracy’s, house in Acton. Their wedding was beautiful, set outdoors on the coast, and we met many of their other friends, and family. I took a bunch of pictures of the wedding which also mostly didn’t come out. More and more momentum for the Canon dSLR and nice lenses on the wish list that probably won’t actually improve my photography. Fortunately for the bride and groom, their pro photographer got some great shots.

We also enjoyed lounging at Tracy and Ron’s house in between wedding events. Caroline and Julia are growing up so fast. We applauded Caroline’s interest in nursing, and tried (unsuccessfully) to get Julia to start a million-dollar Cell Phone Website. We strolled with Tracy, Ron and Dori to the dog park, and photographed the interesting mushrooms that grow in the park near their home. It was exceptionally wet from the rain brought by Hurricane Gustav, which is such a pleasure after the extra dry season that we’ve been having in Yosemite.

Unfortunately, the wonderful, relaxing vacation was capped by another marathon airplane journey back to CA. This time our flight arrived shortly after 5pm, and we managed to do a small amount of grocery shopping in Fresno before heading back to Yosemite.

I even managed to drop off a few of the Girls on Granite brochures that I’d brought with me. It’s late to get printed materials out for the September sessions, but there it is.

The last few weeks have been extraordinarily heads down as I prepared for a Marketing Summit presentation that was going to be given to all Parks & Resorts marketing staff in Tenaya Lodge. Fortunately, it seems to have paid off. Not only was my talk well-received, I made a couple of really great contacts at that meeting that will hopefully come in really useful in the future. Plus, thanks to a tiny and very scary piece of climbing gear, I also managed to win a 4GB iPod nano.

Although I had been warned that Deb Collins was planning to ask me to speak at this summit, I didn’t get the official request, or the topic of my talk until only 2 weeks before the Summit. Other projects came grinding to a halt as I tried to gather my thoughts and put together something interesting to say on the topic of “Stewardship and Interpretation on the Web.”

As I thought about it, I realized these were thoughts that I could really get excited about. Stewardship is GreenPath and taking care of the park and its community, and Interpretation is the art of sharing your love for a place – creating connections between people and the park. At the end, I got a lot of positive feedback on the talk, almost all of which revolved more around the presentation style rather than the content of the talk. My friend, Stan, was right – ultimately the reception of my talk depended more on me than on what I had to say.

As another part of the Marketing Summit, we were all asked to bring an item from our property which we felt represented our property/park to us. I brought a Realized Ultimate Reality Piton with me. Designed by Yosemite legends, Tom Frost and Yvon Chounaird, in Yosemite specifically for Yosemite’s big walls it really represents the core of Yosemite climbing. It is a part of Yosemite’s bold, cutting-edge climbing scene, and also connects climbers with the rich history and spirit of Yosemite climbing. Near the end of the meeting we all voted for ‘best icon’. Brian tells me that I won by a landslide. Kenny thinks that it may have been because Brad A. also got me to tell my squishy story – but I prefer to think that it was the inspiration of Yosemite climbing rather than any kind of pity vote that convinced people that the RURP was a great icon.

One March adventure down, and one more to go. Now there is just one week before I head off to NYC and the SES conference, and there is more than enough work to do.