Earth Day, Acronyms and Gert the Cow

I’m on United Flight 365, somewhere between Newark and Denver after a week on the East Coast. It has been a great week with a lot of variety. I started last Thursday in Madison, NJ where I did a presentation at Blue Ridge Mountain Sports (BRMS). I had a small, but in enthusiastic audience—quite a few staff from the store, a few enrolled students and their parents and couple of curiosity seekers interested in seeing some cool pictures and learning more about NOLS. As always the BRMS staff in the store were great. They always take great care of us and I am always impressed by how well they know their customers. There is a real family feeling in all of their shops.

On Friday I ventured into New York City where I caught up with the NOLS Bus and crew—Zandy, Curtis and Amy. Matthew and Cara also came out from Lander to help handle the Earth Day New York throngs.

The bus was parked on Vanderbilt Street, the west entrance to Grand Central Station. Friday was filled with school groups who came down to visit the exhibits, others who came to visit Earth Day festivities and lot of folks who stopped by while on their way to catch a train. I had an opportunity to catch up with Rick Hunt the marketing VP at a cool organization called Sharedbook. Headquartered out of Tel Aviv, they have developed an elegant online scrapbooking sort of product that could be great for NOLS students. A film crew also visited us from The Weather Channel who was there to take some “B Roll” of the Bus.

Saturday brought a downpour. Perfect for the Weather Channel’s live broadcasts from the NOLS Bus! Matthew took the early shift and was interviewed at 7:30 am. I did the 9:30 shift. A few of the people who stopped by the bus later in the day and said they had seen us on TV. We were lucky to have made it on. Meteorologist Stephanie Abrams and her crew were having technical difficulties right up until the time we were supposed to go live.

In spite of nasty weather we were busy all day. All of us were using all of our best NOLS tricks to stay warm in the cold, wet weather. It was family day at the NOLS Bus. Cara’s Mom and Dad came down from Rochester and Zandy’s Mom made it down from Boston to visit while we entertained the New York City throngs. By the end of the day more than 1,500 catalogs found good homes.

Sunday I split off from the NOLS Bus and headed up to New Hampshire. The rain continued—hard, making a four and half hour drive into a six hour slog. I started out Monday at the Student Conservation Association (SCA) visiting with Kevin Hamilton, the communications guy for SCA. Kevin and I have teamed up on a session at the Wilderness Risk Managers Conference for the last five years. SCA has a beautiful location right along the Connecticut River in Charlestown, NH. Kevin gathered a few members of his team together and we traded some war stories about our attempts to spread our respective organizations missions and increase our recognition.

From SCA I headed over to Peterborough, NH to catch up with Gary Ehlers at Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS). We updated each other on current initiatives at our organizations. We are working to bring the EMS stores on board as NOLS Preferred Retailers. We had hit a bit of a logjam. But I believe that has now been broken. We look forward to welcoming this flagship outdoor chain into the fold soon.

Tuesday—Boston, Mass. I had an opportunity to catch up with Dave Balter, the CEO at BzzAgent. Last spring NOLS did a GoodBzz campaign, a pro bono word of mouth marketing initiative with Dave and his crew. It was a wonderful experience. We learned a ton about how to do a better job managing our own word of mouth initiatives, got back a lot of great data, received tons of anecdotal information that allowed us to hone our message and got to meet some very cool folks. Since then Dave and BzzAgent have gotten famous. Dave a has a book out, Grapevine (NOLS is in the book!), they have received a big infusion of capital and in the past few weeks BzzAgent has been featured in Inc. magazine and on NPR.

Tuesday afternoon I met with Joe Curl and Steve Lembke at Elderhostel. Joe and I met when we teamed up on a presentation at the recent Educational Travel Conference. After shooting the breeze a bit at the conference we decided that there might be some synergies between NOLS and Elderhostel. This meeting in Boston proved that thought. Elderhostel is trying to explore some offerings that could attract some younger travelers. At NOLS we have long tried to grow our programming for those over the age of forty. We agreed that there might be some opportunities for co-branded offerings between our two organizations so we will be further exploring this.

Tuesday night I got back together with the Bus crew at Zandy’s Mom’s home were she put out a fantastic dinner for us—grilled veggies, tofu, bread and dips, desserts. Yummy! Shout out for Rena!

Yesterday the Bus crew plus Matthew and I journeyed north to Manchester, NH to meet with Stonyfield Farms CE-Yo Gary Hirshberg, Mary Townsend, Tim Kenney and the marketing team. Stonyfield Farms produces incredible organic yogurts and other dairy products. They are an industry leader in organic foods and have a very prominent educational mission focusing both on the foods that we put in our bodies and how they are produced.

Stonyfield Farms is considering sponsorship of the NOLS Bus starting in the fall. Curtis, Amy and Zandy did a fantastic job introducing staff there to NOLS and the Bus. Over lunch we discussed the missions and values of our organizations and identified a number of possible intersections. From my perspective Stonyfield Farms would be an excellent partner for the bus project and there are many other projects we should consider working together on.

After the meeting and with a few quarts of Stonyfield Farms organic ice cream under our belts we have all headed in different directions. The Bus crew is at Williams College today, Matthew is headed for the Bahamas for a well-deserved break and I’m on my way home to Lan Diego where we will be celebrating my son, Clay’s 18th birthday! Cool!

Bruce Palmer, NOLS marketing director

p.s. Stonyfield Farm’s trademark cow is named Gert!

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flickr foto frenzy

Link: Flickr: Photos tagged with nols.

So, today I looked on flickr for photos tagged "NOLS".

Holy cats! There are now 3135 NOLS photos up. The number of NOLS-tagged photos is doubling every two weeks. Incredible.

I'm heading home from a week on the East Coast tomorrow. Flying out of Newark. I'll whip up a report for the blog while I'm in the air. It has been a great week. Tons of cool opportunities for NOLS.

Bruce Palmer, NOLS marketing director

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New Copies of NOLS Video, The Expedition, Feature…

…Cross-dressing Haitian Dancers!!! What the…?

Last week NOLS marketing manager Matthew Copeland was getting prepared to do a presentation at newest NOLS Preferred Retailer, Tents and Trails in New York City. When he popped the NOLS branded video into the player he was treated to a very weird video featuring several cross-dressers in a hotel room. There was “island” music and the dialogue was in French. Definitely not the NOLS video, The Expedition. Needless to say, the presentation went forward without the video.

Later we had the good fortune to view the whole video. It was just as described above: weird. No pornography as we feared, just a whole lot of bad video. Thankfully.

What we don’t know is if there are any other bad videos in the lot of 30,000 that we just purchased. Was there only one? How did it end up in there? About 2,600 of the 30,000 have already gone out the door to NOLS prospects. What to do?

After a good deal of thought we decided that we needed to contact the students and families that may have received the NOLS video, “Weekend at Bernie’s” edition. So the following email went out on Friday:

>Recently, we sent you a copy of the NOLS promotional DVD, "The Expedition". It
>has just come to our attention that one and possibly more copies of our DVD,
>have been tampered with while in production at an external company. This
>tampering incorporated non-NOLS material.
>
>We sincerely regret that this has happened and request that you discard your
>copy of the DVD. If you have already viewed the NOLS DVD and found it to contain
>non-NOLS material, we would appreciate being made aware and we will send you
>a mailer to return the DVD to us. If you would like a new DVD to be sent to
>you, please let us know, and we will send one as soon as a new supply is available.
>
>The National Outdoor Leadership School is very concerned about this situation
>and we are working with the production company to rectify the problem. We
>apologize to anyone who may have been affected.
>
>We appreciate that you are considering NOLS for your outdoor education and we
>hope to see you on a NOLS course soon. NOLS has educated over 85,000 students
>during the past 40 years and we take seriously our reputation as the Leader in
>Wilderness Education. Should you have any questions or concerns about your
>course or the unfortunate matter which has made this e-mail necessary,
>please do not hesitate to contact me.

We have heard back from 71 of the 2,600 people notified with the email. So far it doesn’t appear that anyone received a video with the weird, non-NOLS material. We are still following up with a few of the respondents for more information.

If you have one of these tampered with NOLS videos, please contact us. We want to further understand how this happened and to rectify the situation.

This made for an interesting end of the week. I wonder what this week will bring!

Bruce Palmer, NOLS marketing director

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SSW2: Headed for the Gila

The second southwest semester is headed to the Gila for their final section. Their are pictures posted from the canoeing and climbing sections here. The semester is winding down and all of our courses have been great. It's going to be quiet around the branch during the summer, but we'll be ready to roll come September.

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NOLS Grads Make International Business News

Shantanu Pandit, an Indian NOLS instructor was featured in an article in Business Standard magazine highlighting experiential training for business leaders.In addition to instructing for NOLS Shantanu also runs a management consulting practice in India.

NOLS graduates Charles Wanja and John Wachira and their company, Summit Venture Expeditions, were featured in today's issue of The Nation (requires free registration), Kenya's national newspaper. Charles and John have introduced the concept of mountain guiding to Mt. Kenya and have worked tirelessly to improve the level of professionalism among the areas guides and porters.

NOLS, The Worldwide Leader in Wilderness Education!

Bruce Palmer, NOLS marketing director

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Riding Through the Gap

On March 3, NOLS grad Kate Spelman and her dad, James, dipped their rear tires into the Pacific Ocean in San Diego, pointed their fully-loaded bikes east, and started to ride.

Kate is on the third leg of her "Gap Year" between high school and college; she worked as an au pair last fall in Paris, then explored a bit of Mexico on her Baja Coastal Sailing course this past January. In the fall, she will start as a freshman at Wellesley College. This trip across the country will bring her and her dad home to Massachusettes as she practices her LNT camping and cooking skills along the way!                                                   

So far they've cruised through deserts, crossed over the Continental Divide, and as of a week ago were clocking their miles across Texas. Keep tabs on this duo with their blog, which they created to keep up with their family and friends. They also hope to raise at least $100,000 for the Jimmy Fund, a Boston-based organization that helps aid cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. You can support their ride by clicking here.                                                      
   
Way to go, Kate -- all of us at NOLS are rooting for you!

Julie Hwang, publications

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I 'GoodSearch' for NOLS. Do You?

If you haven't heard of it yet, GoodSearch.com is the best new way to search the Internet. Every time you do, money will go to your favorite school, NOLS! The site, powered by Yahoo!, will give you the same quality search results that you're used to, but what's unique is that they have developed a way to direct money to charities and schools with every click.

What a feel-good way to search! Simply enter 'NOLS' into the 'I'm supporting...' selection box before searching and you'll be part of a great cause. And it doesn't cost you a cent! The money comes from revenue generated from advertisers, at least 50% of which is shared with your chosen school or charity. You can even keep tabs on how much is being raised by clicking the 'amount raised' button under your selection.

The founders of this new site are a brother and sister team that realized the potential of raising money for charities after seeing how much money advertisers make from search engines.  They dedicated this site to their mother who recently passed away from cancer and want to make it easy for others to donate to the charities, schools, and non-profit organizations that mean the most to them.  Read more about their story: Meet the Founders.

The more people who use GoodSearch.com, the more money NOLS will earn! Spread the word to your family and friends! We appreciate your support and look forward to putting that money to work for our students and alumni!

Joanne Kuntz, Publications Intern

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SWNW 2: Done Backpacking

The second semester on the borders has finished their hiking section on Friday. Now they are climbing at the Cochise Stronghold. They had a great time out in the Galiuros and even got a little wet. When their instructors got back, they dropped off some photos you can check out here.

 

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SSW1: Finishing Up

Our first Southwest Semester is almost done. They are finishing their last section hiking in the Gila Wilderness. They all seem to be having a great time and are sad as well as excited to be finishing up. I downloaded pictures from Molly again and you can see them here.

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NOLS Grad and Former Instructor Featured on “This I Believe”

Phil Powers, the executive director of the American Alpine Club and former NOLS instructor presented his essay, “The Practice of Slowing Down” last evening on This I Believe. The program is a weekly feature on NPR’s evening news program, All Things Considered.

Phil did a great job elaborating on the way that his mountaineering has influenced his approach to everyday life in Denver where he lives, works, and plays with his son, Gus. He attributes much of his perspective on life to NOLS founder Paul Petzoldt, particularly mentioning the “rest step”, a Petzoldt technique for conserving energy while climbing.

Congratulations to Phil on his essay and the balance he has been able to achieve in his life!

Bruce Palmer, NOLS marketing director

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