Watts Consulting

More than you ever wanted to know about Alabama native Joe Watts

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Alabama’s Front Porches

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I’m just getting started working on a new site. I didn’t develop the look of the site, but they need help with updating it, examining the design and structure and determining what sort of direction they need to go in to improve the site for visitors. I’m particularly excited about this project because it is a part of the Black Belt in Alabama.

I’ve worked with many of these people on different projects (from Your Town Alabama and Scenic Byways, to Alabama Communities of Excellence and the Alabama Association of RC&D’s). But, I haven’t had the chance to do much work in the Black Belt where I grew up. I’ve made a trip to Thomasville, AL so far, and have several more trips to Clarke County scheduled. Should be fun. In the meantime, check out their site (prior to my working on it) at www.alabamasfrontporches.com. It has some driving tours, a listing of some restaurants and some activities to do while in the Black Belt. We’ll be working on many more. Right now, it isn’t that well developed and it has some issues related to how things have been updated (photos placed in at the wrong size and people not familiar with html making changes to code), but we’ll be working on that in the coming months as well as developing substantially more interesting and significant tours and descriptions of the many wonderful places in the Black Belt of Southwestern Alabama.

I just picked up an interesting new book on community tourism: Destination Branding for Small Cities: The Essentials for Successful Place Branding by Bill Baker. (if you buy it through this link, I’ll get a bit of money from Amazon.com)  I’m looking forward to reading it in more depth and getting some fresh ideas. I’m hoping that this book and a few others I’ve ordered will help me better work with the Alabama’s Front Porches folks and do an even better job of coaching them into a stronger identity.

Getting Ready For a Busy Week

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beach-1.jpgThis, the last week of January, looks like it will be a busy one. I’ve got a meeting to finalize my upcoming work on the West Alabama Regional Tourism website, www.alabamasfrontporches.com on Monday.

Then, Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be heading to the Gulf to be part of our final presentations relating to the development of a Corridor Management Plan for the Coastal Connection Scenic Byway (one meeting on Tuesday in Bayou La Batre and the next meeting on Wednesday morning in Fairhope). This is part of the Alabama Scenic Byways project I’m working on with the Alabama Association of Regional Councils and we’ve been actively working on this for almost a year. (The kick-off meeting was held in February 2007. That’s when this photo was taken.) It will be good to be finished.

This really is the time of the year to go to the gulf, although I won’t have time to enjoy it.

Birmingham: Love it, Hate it

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I have a love/hate relationship with the city we live in. Beautiful architecture, interesting considerate people, some great friends. We have amazing places to eat, some really great shopping, and, although I don’t usually get around to enjoying them, lots of cultural events. Birmingham is big enough to have all the great shopping and dining and still small enough so that you don’t have bad traffic (unless you try to drive down 280). Living in the city, we almost never run into traffic that is terrible. Try doing that in Atlanta.

Of course, there is a downside: we’ve got pretty bad crime. Birmingham has a VERY bad murder rate (not so much in the part of town we live in, but still, not what you’d really like to see).

Birmingham has questionable leadership–still a little early to know for sure, but judging by past performance, I have my doubts. There is such a reliance on old stereotypes and race still polarizes city politics. Maybe we can get past this. I sure hope so.

And, if that’s not enough, Jefferson County, where Birmingham is located, has had some pretty impressive corruption. Loads of county commissioners have gone to jail for graft–taking money (cash and services) in exchange for huge projects with the sewer. There was even an attempt to drill a sewer line under the Cahaba River (source of most of our drinking water). Luckily, it didn’t get completed, but how smart is it to send your sewer line under your drinking water. Enough of a rant for today!

Old Articles Die Hard

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I’ve been poking around the net today looking for interesting articles to go in an upcoming newsletter. I had forgotten that I wrote this article back in 2000 for Backpacker Magazine. I remember it was astonishingly hot when I went to hike this trail (seems like it was Summer of 1999).

We hiked it (Jonathan Merkle was with me) in sections and went back into Anniston, Alabama to eat pizza at a place called, I think, Matas. It was really good pizza, the place was a total dive. backpacker.com/gear/562. Here’s the link in case anyone’s interested!

The Best of 2007

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Reflecting on 2007, I’m mostly just glad to see it gone. I’m looking forward to getting back to work after all the holidays and time down. 2007 has been a pretty crappy year. But I’ve done a bit of reflection and think I’ve come up with my two favorite memories from 2007.

1. Lunch with Mama, Margaret, Bill, William, Ann and Julia at the Bright Star Restaurant in Bessemer, AL. What a treat this was–and turned out to be more important to me than I can ever explain. Mama and Julia brought us a bouquet of daffodils. They were beautiful and smelled so good (yes, they did bother my allergies, but I enjoyed them anyway–and I can’t wait to see the blooms in our yard this or next year).

2. My birthday. I think this was certainly not my best birthday–not by a long shot. But, I’d built it up to be so dreadful that, when it came and Ann took the day off to be with me and we got out of the house, it was overall a pretty nice experience. We went to eat at Gilchrist in Mountain Brook (yummy classic lunch counter sandwiches). Then, we went to the zoo. I got to use my new camera to take loads of photos (see them here)