Friday, August 17, 2012

This Just In....


Lots of stuff to cover in this BlogSpot, so hang on.

1. US Nationals: short story, we tried mightily to make the USS Midway work. Two planning meetings, in San Diego with the engineering department and a date identified. A contract was created and it started through channels without any indication of any issues. Then, before the contract was executed, the Midway Foundation wanted to punt this to next year. The bottom line is it’s just too hard. Sounded good in theory, but in reality, not going to happen, ever. So, we’re scrambling. Walt White has been knocking on doors as has Cliff Walker and Bob Pfohl. I believe we’ll have a destination for you soon. Out of respect for our West Coast competitors, we want to put this on in California- somewhere. My apologies for this taking so long. Because it looked like it was a lock after our second meeting, we did not build out a contingency plan. Some things are just beyond your control. 

Windsor (aka Parker Construction) is working on Lyrics!
2. Canadian National Anthem: in our survey, one of our Canadians brought to our attention that we did not play their national anthem when a team came south of the border. Following the protocol of MLB, the National Anthem of the home team is played- only. For sure, we can’t do this at the World Championships when we have nine countries represented. But, it will be our policy to recognize any Canadian at a US event by playing O Canada! Last week, I offered Windsor the privilege of singing the lyrics at the opening ceremony. They said that they’d pass; but, they mentioned that the Fire Department had a recording of some of their firefighters singing the anthem. We’d like to get that in an M3! 

3. Survey Monkey: Speaking of which, I have a lot of content for upcoming Blogs from the robust nature of comments we’ve been getting from the survey. All of these comments are appreciated, even the criticisms. After all, that’s how we improve our customer service. Trying to communicate with the constituents of the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge is like hitting a moving target. We try to disseminate timely information at the event. But that’s only good for who’s there. The Hot News is supposed to be that: Hot News. But do people read it? Don’t know. One thought was to send a short update to every email of record. Not that hard, assuming that people actually fill in the fields when they check in. We don’t want a repeat of a situation a few years back when a team showed up for the final day of racing, having assumed that they had a bye. Holy cow. 

4. Speaking of Checking In: We received some complaints in the Survey that “I’ve not received my participation certificate.” We’re pretty good, but we can’t divine mailing addressed on the basis of a name only. If you haven’t received your certificate, send us an email, with your mailing address- and we’ll get it out to you. I can’t stress enough the frustration of attempting to track down a firefighter without a cell phone number of email address. Pretend that you won the lottery and you want us to mail you the check. One more thing: we hate screwing up the pronunciation of people’s names. There’s a place to enter: “How do you pronounce your name?” Do the best job you can to spell your last name phonetically. Also, it won’t hurt to put something down about yourself. I jokingly said, we should default the field to “alleged sex offender” and if you enter nothing, that would be Mike’s comments- but it’s only alleged. 

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