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.