Watts Consulting

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Newsletters

Monthly Newsletter: Off to the Printer

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Another newsletter for the Alabama Chapter of the Sierra Club. One of my favorite newsletter projects as I have the schedule for this newsletter down to a science.

In other news, I’m getting ready to ramp up work on the Alabama’s Front Porches website again. I’ve taken a month off, but plan to add a good deal of content in the next couple of weeks. Check out the website: www.alabamasfrontporches.com.

I’ve also got to continue working on the wayfinding / wayshowing workshop I’m working on with ALDOT and the National Byways Program. The workshop should be great–it will be an all-day workshop and we’re holding it at the very nice Barber Motorsports Museum. Should be really helpful to lots of tourism-oriented people in Alabama. Helping people understand that signage is important, but so many other things are even more important should really help move Alabama’s tourism and visitor experience in the right direction.

And this is the week to get really started on a website I’m working on in Bibb County. More on that later!

AIA Newsletter

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Another newsletter completed for AIA Birmingham. Originally planned as a short newsletter, it grew a bit. Still much, much, much shorter than the Design Awards special edition last month. Overall, pretty pleased. We announced the completion of the redesign of the AIA website and I’ve been making small edits to the site to tighten up small issues (mainly spacing issues and wording changes). www.aiabham.org.

In addition to this newsletter/website, I’ve been working on completing the Aztec Construction website. We’re still in the design phase, but think it is pretty much complete.

I’m working with the Alabama Department of Transportation and the Scenic Byways Advisory Council to set up a workshop at the end of August for all of Alabama’s scenic byways. The workshop will be held in Birmingham (well, actually in Leeds, Alabama: Home of the Stagecoach Route Scenic Byway) at the Barber Motorsports Museum. Should be a great venue and will probably help make it even more attractive to folks! The workshop will last all day and we’re bringing in several trainers from the National Scenic Byways Program to conduct the workshop. The basic premise of the workshop is on way finding and way showing as they relate to the byway traveler. The workshop will be particularly helpful to byway leaders around Alabama, but should prove useful to anyone interested in tourism in Alabama.

July 2008 Postcard for AccuPrint

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A postcard for AccuPrint featuring downtown Birmingham. This photo is actually 4 photos I took using my Canon 40D and 17×40 wide angle lens and combined in Adobe Photoshop. it is so much less complicated to merge photos than it was just 5 years ago. Would have taken an hour to merge these photos–now it only takes a couple of minutes and the heavy lifting is done by your computer. There were a couple of errors–mainly with the concrete work around the edge of the pools. Easy enough to correct.


Notice my link to the LinkedIn Network at the top right of the page–if you would like to join this networking site, just click the button. (and don’t forget to add me as a connection!)

A Busy Week Last Week

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Wow! Last week was about the most hectic I’ve had in a while. Monday and Tuesday started off normally, I guess. Finished up a newsletter for the Sierra Club and got a good bit done on a website for a new client, Aztec Construction. Oh, and I finished a postcard for the Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama’s summer fundraiser, Hot Diamonds in the Summer.

Then, Wednesday, I headed to Gadsden, Alabama for a final meeting with the Lookout Mountain Parkway Association on a corridor management plan we’ve been developing over the past 12 months or so. Got some good press on this one–including a nice long article in the Gadsden Times and some coverage–thankfully not including me–on local Jacksonville, Alabama channel 24. Channel 24 TV video: http://www.tv24.tv/news/?newsID=4959#. Looks like the Gadsden Times really believes in the project, as they ran a Sunday editorial on the Lookout Mountain Parkway.

On the way back from Gadsden, we had a flat tire–I didn’t know if I’d remember how to change a tire. I doubt I’ve done it since I was forced to learn how in high school–a teacher thought that everyone should know how. I was successful, however.

We made it back to Birmingham around 3 p.m. I hurried home, packed a bag and hustled away to Camp McDowell for the 2.5 day Your Town Alabama workshop (see the photos below). As luck would have it, I left all my hanging clothes hanging in our guest bedroom, so I stopped in Jasper to buy new shirts–at the tractor supply store because they had a sign for Carhartt clothes. Good deals on 4 shirts. I took about 450 photos over the course of 2 days.

To cap off a busy week of being in front of people, I got a copy of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s quarterly newsletter, ACTION, that has an article I wrote on scenic byways. I’ve copied the article and added it to my Your Town Alabama blog.

Up and Running: AIA’s New Website and more

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After a month of testing and review, the AIA Birmingham office’s new website is up and running officially. There are a few holes to plug, but overall, pretty much complete. We finalized the website along with their June 2008 newsletter so members would get the new website along with the most current newsletter all at the same time.

The website turned out just as I had hoped, and, as best I can tell, everyone is very pleased with it.

www.aiabham.org

Also, completed the upload of the Alabama’s Front Porches website, alabamasfrontporches.com, yesterday. It has a good many holes, but is substantially stronger than their previous website and built for expansion. Soon, it will have over 100 great attractions throughout the Black Belt. I’m getting ready for two trips next week–on Wednesday, I’m heading to Tuscaloosa to meet with some Appalachian Regional Commission folks to discuss potential scenic byways in the ARC portion of western Alabama. On Friday, I’m off to meet with the board of the Rural Heritage Center to discuss a possible website, marketing materials and to just give them a general overview of some tourism opportunities that they might be missing. Looking forward to that as well.

Another Newsletter: The 30th Alabama Sierran

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Just looking back and realized that this newsletter (finished this afternoon) is the 30th newsletter I’ve done for the Alabama Chapter of the Sierra Club. All but the first 3 have been printed on 100% recycled newsprint. One of the fastest, most economical printers for that I’ve ever found is located right here in Birmingham (jsprinting.com). They print primarily newspapers for local high schools and colleges. Anyway, here’s the 30th newsletter (shown here in color, but actually printed in black and white for cost savings).