Two cents worth | Redbird Communications

Gary Linford and Carol Vincent participated in Power to Play -- a grueling adventure race designed by Redbirds pro bono client and one of the producers of Survivor. It was about 15 km of running between 22 stations; challenges included flipping a tractor tire up a hill, carrying sandbags, orienteering, scaling A-frames, crawling, hitting baseballs, kicking soccer balls, hand-over-hand on a rope strung between two trees, and surviving the mud pit -- twice. Yikes. Our team came in 12th, at 3.5 hours, about 40 minutes after the first team (made of big buff 20-something men) and an hour before the last team. Not too shabby!

StageWest Players must be doing something right in the advertising department. Their recent show 'Die Claudius' was sold out! Or could it have had something to do with Mike Kelley's performance? Formerly the marketing-minded director of OneStop Business Registry, Mike brought the house down as Blutus, the "Gwadiator of Wuv". Look for ads for 'Howl', coming this fall.

Last month I spent a few days in Arizona, and was tickled to find myself at the junction of East Redbird and Redbird Rd. Perhaps we need a branch office...?

Here is a rough demo of 'Enemy', a new song from Matt Johnson's trio, Hollydene. Together since 2005, the band's music is influenced by several genres, incorporating elements of rock, pop, and new-wave.

Check them out at:

Nov 22, 2008 9:00 PM - Pacific Fleet Club
Victoria, British Columbia - With our friends Machina.

Jan 18, 2009 7:00 PM - Victoria Event Centre
1415 Broad St., Victoria, British Columbia

Hello everyone, my name is Shane Vincent and I am a web developer with Redbird Communications. Our president has graciously opened up the Redbird blog to employee posts, so I've decided to use this opportunity to shamelessly promote my personal websites - hah!

First up, CanadaGTiR.com.

This site was born out of my love for the Nissan Pulsar GTiR, a right hand drive import from Japan. I had such a difficult time finding relevant local information on the car that I decided to create a Canada specific forum where I could find answers to all sorts of Nissan Pulsar questions. So far the site has been up for a bit less than a year, and already we've got a decent little community going. As of this writing the site has just under three hundred registered users posting topics and articles, and gets about 16,000 pageviews a month (thats just over 500 per day!)

Next up is canadagtir.com's sister site, canadagtr.com.

Don't let their almost identical url's (and design) fool you - these are two completely separate sites. CanadaGTR is a forum for Nissan GTR enthusiasts in Canada. The GTR is the latest and greatest sports car from Nissan, and my absolute DREAM. I sold my Pulsar on the previous site, so I figure I'll buy my GTR on this site (but with an $80,000 price tag, it wont be for a while yet..)

There's nothing Jim Poole won't do for his daughters, including representing the 70s at their recent dance recital. Way to boogie, Jim!

Newsletters: panacea or just a pain?

I worked for a company that suddenly started giving everyone a internal newsletter every month. You could tell when it hit the desks, even with your eyes shut, from the chorus of groans, followed a couple of minutes later by the ping of a crumpled ball of paper hitting a wastebasket.

Pity the poor newsletter, misused as a band-aid and miscast as a star of the HR department. Often put together by someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time (and miles away from where the idea was first mooted), containing fuzzy images and poorly edited copy, newsletters can often make an unhappy ship even unhappier --the opposite of the very thing they were supposed to do.

For a newsletter to hit the mark, whether electronic or paper, bear in mind these considerations:

1. It shouldn’t be seen as a quick fix. If there are problems of morale or poor communication, these can be addressed in other ways - a newsletter may just be an irritant.
2. Get to know your audience, and continually imagine yourself as the reader.
3. Only use humor if it’s good and inclusive.
4. People are very interesting -- you may have to dig to find a hidden talent or passion, but dig anyway.
5. Use good pictures, see above; there are clever amateur photographers in most organizations.
6. Be fresh in tone and look, get a good designer to help you create a template if necessary.
7. Surprise people, and they’ll reward you by reading every page.