Crossing Your Ts, Dotting Your Is

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A story from Mt. Airy, NC highlights why you have to be very careful when you have a raffle or other fundraising contest at one of your events:

Vickie Riekehof was called out as the winner of the raffle for a 2013 limited edition Fiat Abarth, or that is what she thought. After arriving to claim the car, she said David Chaloupka, owner of Amadour Winery and Vineyards who oversaw the contest, told her that she had to toss a Frisbee into the car’s open window from a point estimated to be about 90 feet away.

She claims there was no such rule for the contest when she purchased the $100 raffle ticket.

Bob Meinecke, organizer of the festival and member of the Mount Airy Rotary Club, said it was his understanding the instructions would be printed on the ticket and on the literature about the event.

“There was a misunderstanding. We refunded her money and apologized,” said Meinecke. “It was a he said she said thing. My understanding was that verbal instructions were given to each person who purchased a ticket from the salesperson.” He said that person was Chaloupka.

Word of advice: whenever you're trying to separate people from their money, even for a good cause, never allow it to be organized in such a way that it come down to a "he said, she said thing."

Labor of Love 2013

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One of the best parts of my job is being able to work with on community service project with our member companies. Each year we do a project related to housing and this year we worked with Housing Greensboro to help repair two homes for families that are facing some fairly serious difficulties due to illness. One of our members, THS National, sent along a videographer and the result is the video below. 

Five Seconds of Fame

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Thanks to my job I'm occasionally interviewed by local TV stations. It's cool in the "I never thought I'd be on TV" sense, but on the other hand it's a little like jumping off a cliff because you learn pretty quickly that the TV folks can make you look as good or bad, smart or stupid, as they want.

Last Friday I was fried. We had our annual banquet the night before and my brain was little more than Jell-O as a result. Luckily I had a light schedule so I was cruising through my day until the phone rang at 12:30. It was the local Fox affiliate looking for some background on a story they were working, and also looking for a soundbite if at all possible. Knowing I was in no shape for an interview I claimed a full schedule. Nominally true, but I really just didn't want to do the interview. Eventually the reporter persuaded me to talk and we set a 2:30 appointment. 

The result? A half hour of prep work followed by a total vapor-lock of the brain as soon as the camera was on. Luckily they took mercy on me and only used about five seconds of the interview, thus minimizing my on-camera freeze. 

Here’s What You Should Know

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A good suggestion for news organizations from Jeff Jarvis:

So the opportunity: If I ran a news organization, I would start a regular feature called, Here’s what you should know about what you’re hearing elsewhere.

Last week, that would have included nuggets such as these:

* You may have heard on CNN that an arrest was made. But you should know that no official confirmation has been made so you should doubt that, even if the report is repeated by the likes of the Associated Press.

* You may have heard reports repeated from police scanners about, for example, the remaining suspect vowing not to be taken alive. But you should know that police scanners are just people with microphones; they do not constitute official or confirmed police reports. Indeed, it may be important for those using police radio to repeat rumor or speculation — even from fake Twitter accounts created an hour ago — for they are the ones who need to verify whether these reports are true. Better safe than sorry is their motto…

* You may have heard reports that there were more bombs. But you should know that we cannot track where these reports started and we have no official confirmation so you should not take those reports as credible. We are calling the police to find out whether they are true and we will let you know as soon as we know.


 

The Law of Two Women

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From Sasha Dichter's post titled Four tips for better group decision making we find this interesting tidbit:

The Law of Two Women.  “One night I was having dinner with an executive at Google, and I asked him to tell me the most significant change he’s seen in how his company runs meetings.  Without hesitating, he told me they always make sure there is more than one woman in the room.  He then told me about the study that led to this principle…”  I won’t summarize the subsequent MIT study – the punchline is “groups that had a higher proportion of females were more effective.  These groups were more sensitive to input from everyone, more capable of reaching compromise, and more efficient at making decisions.”      This one is fascinating and, again, very easy to implement.

Virginia, We Have Liftoff

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Who knew that the Commonwealth of Virginia was home to the newest entrant to the commercial space race?

"A privately owned rocket built in partnership with NASA to haul cargo to the International Space Station blasted off on Sunday for a debut test flight from a new commercial spaceport in Virginia. The 13-story Antares rocket, developed and flown by Orbital Sciences Corp, lifted off at 5 p.m. EDT from a Virginia-owned and operated launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island."

And where is Wallops Island?


Loophole Hits Close to Home

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Fox8 has a story about a family in Lewisville, NC that’s experiencing hard times due to a loophole in our country’s safety net. We can argue all we want about how our social safety net should function and how we should pay for it, but I think any of us would be hard pressed to argue against families like this being able to tap into it. This is exactly the kind of situation it should cover:

Striking Oil

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Here's a really cool story about an old LA hotel that was sold and during the liquidation process an old mosaic mural was found behind some wall paneling:

During the clearance sale, a puzzling discovery was made: a fifteen-foot mosaic mural commissioned by The Los Angeles Petroleum Club was found behind some old wood paneling. The Club had at one time maintained a posh member’s suite at the hotel. This is where the intrigue and mosaic sleuthing begins.


Oilmural

Free the Sisters

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A French scientist (of course) has done a study that shows that women probably shouldn't wear bras. Well, okay, just young women:

His preliminary results on 330 women aged 18 to 35 suggested that wearing a bra from an early age does nothing to help a wearer's breasts and going without could improve firmness.

"The suspension system of the breasts degenerates," Rouillon said, explaining that bras also unnaturally hamper circulation.

"But a middle-aged women, overweight, with 2.4 children? I'm not at all sure she'd benefit from abandoning bras," he added.