Watts Consulting

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

Joe Watts

Reaching 10,000 People in One Month

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I’ve been busier with newsletters this month even more so than usual. I’ve completed the Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama Spring 2008 newsletter (complete with a redesign), the April 2008 issue of the Sierra Club’s Alabama Sierran, the Birmingham Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Birmingham Chapters March newsletter, a Your Town Alabama newsletter and CGH Insurance Group’s newsletter. Who knows, I may be forgetting a newsletter.

Some of these go out via mail (about 9,500 of them) and about another 1,000-1,200 go out via email. (Both of the mailed newsletters do get posted on the respective websites, so they get additional views as well.)

Anyway, I was adding up the number of people these go out to collectively and I realized that, probably for the first time, I’ve hit the 10,000 person mark for newsletter communications. It just seems pretty cool to me. No real significance to it, really, but I find it secretly pleasing.

Another Newsletter–Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama

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Just wrapped up a newsletter for ALZCA. I’ve been doing their newsletter for about 4 years now, and have always wanted to redesign it–I picked it up from their previous designer who moved away. I’ve made small changes to the newsletter each issue, but haven’t ever done a redesign on it until now. I think it turned out pretty good. Clean, simple, and easy to read with ample white space and useful information.

Vance Holder and I spent several weeks working on this–glad to finally get it ready to go to press. You can access the full newsletter as a pdf here:
f3_alzcaspring08.pdf

Small World

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Someone I do a good bit of work for, CAWACO RC&D Council, recently had a part in a video that Alabama Power was doing. The project is called Renew Our Rivers. Basically, they get volunteers to go out and clean up the trash and other debris that people toss into Alabama’s waterways.

Anyway, I was downtown yesterday and picked up a copy of the video to put on You Tube for CAWACO. I popped the DVD into my computer to rip it and put it on the web. Decided I’d watch the video, too. Imagine my surprise when I heard my friend Ben Burford (of Chevy 6 fame) doing the narration. Pretty interesting video, particularly when it joins two groups together that you hadn’t imagined crossing paths before. Here’s the video: click here.

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!

Another Newsletter–for the Alabama Byways Program

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Seems as though I’m working on lots of newsletters these days. This is a newsletter I’ve intended to put together for a long time and just haven’t gotten around to it. This is the first newsletter for the Alabama Byways Program. Future issues will have more topical information  including grant deadlines, tips and more, but for the first issue, it seemed a good idea to send out basic information about exactly what the program is.

I’ve been working on byways in Alabama since I took a job at Scenic Alabama back in 1999. I’ve long since left Scenic Alabama, but really fell in love with the byways program. It is one of those really great concepts that lets small communities around Alabama (or, in larger terms, around the country) band together to create something bigger than any of them can create on their own.

Growing up in rural Alabama (I’ve always referred to it as the edge of nowhere because people have actually heard of the middle of nowhere), I’ve always had a love of rural life and the small towns that exist nowhere else. The byways program is my chance to work with these communities. (I’ve also managed to work with Alabama communities on some other projects, too. More on that in another post on another day.)

To read the newsletter, just visit the Alabama Byways website: www.alabamabyways.org/news.htm.

And, in case you are wondering about the seagull, this was taken in February of last year along the beautiful Coastal Connection Corridor that runs from north of Orange Beach over to Dauphin Island and beyond.

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!