Who Needs a River to Kayak?

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We went tubing on the New River last week when we visited my mom in Radford, VA.  The river was low (got butt-stuck on numerous rocks; insert fat-ass joke here) and the "rapids" were whatever is below Class-1 but we had a great time.  Now if we wanted some severe rapids we could have gone farther north on the New, or visited the Gauley river, or we could have gone down to Charlotte where the US National Whitewater Center has a $32 million totally man-made whitewater experience.  Well if their artificial whitewater is as lame as their website I think we’ll pass.

Here’s a Good Example of How Blogs Change Business Practices

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Dell caught some severe hell over the past year or so and I have to agree with many of their detractors that they were slow to react.  They seemed to be stuck in an old-world customer service/PR paradigm that was a little incongruous for a company that built its business on a "revolutionary" business model.

Well they might have been slow but Dell is beginning to hit its stride.  They’ve launched a customer service blog called Dell one2one that is a great example of how a corporate blog can change the way business is done.  When the blog launched it was criticized by some blog purists and PR/customer service gurus, but just like every other person/entity that ever launched a blog I think the Dell-ers just needed some time to develop their sea legs.  After reading it for a few weeks I think they’ve developed a nice mix of PR (using the space to refute some negative statistics about them) and product updates (here’s what we’re doing about fill-in-the-blank issues).  Basically they’re beginning to open up a window to their operations and if they’re careful and don’t become too defensive I think they’ll find that they will engender more customer goodwill in the process.  Simply by admitting that they’ve made mistakes and do indeed need to improve their customer service (see here) is a huge step in the right direction.

On an anecdotal note I’ve noticed that more people are stepping up to defend them when stories about exploding laptops appear, or at least point out that it’s really more of a battery issue and less of a computer issue, so any company that is supplying customers with computers, PDAs, phones, etc. will have these instances occur. Until recently everyone seemed satisfied with only blaming Dell as if it’s the only manufacturer that has these problems.  I think Dell’s willingness to be more open with its practices is allowing people to see the positive along with the negative, and by admitting that they make mistakes and explaining how they’re working on fixing them they are stopping the negative momentum. Remember it’s human nature to complain about bad service to multiple people but never mention satisfactory service at all so by using its blog effectively Dell is able to answer the negative feedback and then point out positive developments as well. 

A lot of businesses can learn something by watching how Dell goes about this, because if they fail there will be a lot of "this is how you don’t do it" stories and if they succeed they’ll blaze a trail that others can follow.  My money’s on the latter.

Bloggin’ in Winston-Salem; Blogger Needs Some of That “Carolina Neighbor Code”

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The Winston-Salem Journal ran a front page story on people blogging in Winston-Salem.  I was interviewed as was a woman named Lucy Cash who writes a great blog called Life in Forsyth.  It’s kind of cool to make the paper in any form, but the front page is really cool!

On a sad note, I emailed Lucy to introduce myself and she replied this morning saying that she’d reply in length later but that her father had died this morning.  So what should be an exciting day for her has unfortunately turned very somber.  Anyone who has read her blog knows that her dad has been sick, so I’m guessing she’ll get a lot of what she calls the "Carolina Neighbor Code" which will include home cooked meals and a bunch of hugs and offers of support.  That’s one of the great things about living here.

Forget PTI. Let’s Talk About Smith-Reynolds Airport

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There’s a lot of teeth-gnashing in these parts about the struggling Piedmont Triad International Airport  (PTI), which is losing passengers and flights to Charlotte and Raleigh airports.  Flying out of PTI has gotten bad enough that I’d rather drive the 5 hours to DC and I’m fine driving to Charlotte for flights to more distant destinations, whereas just a year ago I was ecstatic with the cost and convenience of flying out of PTI.

When I was a kid the Smith-Reynolds Airport here in Winston-Salem was still a functioning commercial airport, but now it’s used for general aviation and an air show.  Still it’s runways are large enough to handle any but the largest jets and it is very close to downtown Winston-Salem which is why I think it would be the perfect candidate for an air taxi service.  The FAA just gave the first provisional approval for a VLJ or "very light jet" and there are entrepreneurs getting ready to take receipt of the first VLJs and start their business-oriented air taxi services.  Interestingly two of these companies are based in not-too-far-away Greenville, SC.

Because the VLJs are less than half the cost of the cheapest business jets currently available they are apparently going to allow entrepreneurs to provide air taxi services that are slightly costlier (one company is estimating $1,000 for a 500 mile round trip) than flying commercial but with greater convenience.  Here’s a good article that provides an overview of the likely challenges that the air-taxis will face and how they can overcome them.

If these air taxi services do indeed come to fruition this could be a boon for Smith-Reynolds.  The terminal facilities already exist but there are no commercial airlines to compete with so it wouldn’t take a whole lot to turn the airport into the premier business travel gateway for the Triad.  Add that to the growing bio-tech sector here and I think you have two rather nice spices to add to Winston-Salem’s business development stew.

Breaking News: You Too Can Be a Reporter

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CNN has launched a service called CNN Exchange that solicits video, photos and eyewitness accounts for stories from all of us Average Joe (Joanne?) citizens and then they will filter it and use what they feel is appropriate for their coverage.  Isn’t it kind of surprising that this has already been done by one of the major networks?  I mean it costs them next to nothing and it promises to give them exponentially more raw material to work with.

I say it costs them next to nothing because they will have to dedicate staff time to this, and building out the system had to cost them something, but compared to what it would cost them to hire enough people to try and replicate the amount of raw material they’ll be getting from camera-phone toting Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour wannabes it is a negligible amount.  And in their defense the evolution of inexpensive camera phones and the realization that the public doesn’t demand perfect video (i.e. that crappy MPEG footage from Mary Sue’s camera phone is better than nothing) are all fairly recent developments.  So kudos to CNN for getting this going.

Another Reason That Forsyth County’s Election Board Was Right

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If you’ve been following the saga of the Forsyth County’s Election Board over the last year or so you’ll remember that the former director of elections left because the board would not support her recommendation that the county adopt Diebold’s paperless ballot system for future elections. In a post last May I linked to several pieces that really made the board’s stance look like a good one and now there’s some new information that show the Diebold machines are even more susceptible to fraud than previously realized and of course that makes the board’s decision look even better.

Hanging chads anyone?

Audio Obituaries?

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I’m not really sure I know what to make of this.  The Greensboro News & Record is adding a service that allows people who place paid obituaries to add 60-second audio tributes to the dearly departed in their online guest books.  My first reaction is, well, that’s weird.  My second reaction is that it reminds me of those RIP t-shirts with the dearly departed’s picture on them, which I’ve always thought to be kind of tacky.  But that’s just me and I’m as capable of being a snob as the next guy.

If anyone wants to make an audio tribute to me when I’m gone I only ask that they not use any Journey songs as a background.  Other than that, have at it.

Winston-Salem Journal Expanding Blogs

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It looks like the Winston-Salem Journal is getting ready to launch more blogs and they’re looking for ideas about what they should be blogging about.  Here are some suggestions, although I doubt they’ll be welcome:

  • Where in the World is Vernon? – A blog that covers the escapades of our local gadfly Vernon Robinson.  I think this fits under the category "if it bleeds it leads."
  • What’s Your Church? – A blog that disects the peculiar local custom of asking people what their church is rather than the more ubiquitous US custom of asking what someone does.
  • Where in the World are the Democrats? – A blog that identifies the three or four democrats that live within an hours drive of Winston-Salem and don’t work at the newspaper or within a school system (this includes universities).  Dixiecrats don’t count either.
  • The Nuts on Peanuts – A blog for the thriving "Peanuts" fan club that obviously exists in the area based on the number of people who sent in irate letters about the venerable comic strip being replaced.  This despite the fact that it’s been in re-runs longer than President Bush has been saying "nucular."
  • Chicken Pie – For newcomers and carpetbaggers there’s not enough information on where to find the best chicken pie.  From what I can tell you have to know someone who knows someone who’s great-aunt fixes a hundred a week in her vintage 1956 gas stove.  And she’ll sell them to you for $4 each but you have to pick them up.  We need a guide on how to find these culinary saints.

That oughtta do it for today.

Wake Up Erin!

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We’re slowly but surely converting our old home videos from VHS to DVD and in the process I’m playing around with converting the DVDs to MPEG files.  Below is a video of our daughter falling asleep while eating pizza when she was a toddler.  Man does time fly.

Does Evangelical Christian = Republican?

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There’s a fascinating article in the New York Times (found via Ed Cone) about a pastor at an evangelical mega-church in Minnesota who denounced the practice of churches closely identifying with a particular political party or getting involved in political issues.  The pastor, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd, refused to allow anti-abortion activists to set up tables in the church, refused to endorse political candidates or to allow pamphlets for candidates to be distributed and eventually gave a series of sermons titled "’The Cross and the Sword’ in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up
moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a
“Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns."  In the process he lost about 20% of his congregants and a church fundraising campaign fell well short of the church’s goal, but he says he has no regrets.

What is most interesting to me is that as I was reading the article I realized that I had assumed all along that all evangelicals are right-wing, super-conservative, pro-war, Bush evangelists.  I had fallen into the trap of lumping everyone into the same category, of not giving evangelical Christians the credit for being able to think for themselves.

Kind of scary how easy that is to do.