on being SMALL

Seth Godin – who coined the phrase “Permission Marketing” back in the dot com days, and how made a substantial mount of real money selling something to Yahoo – has come out with yet another excellent book – “Small is the new Big”.

Part of it includes a section on the value of blogs – I had earlier opined on this topic relative to yacht club and/or class communication.   While Seth’s book is about business, when we are talking about sailing, whether it is club or class leadership, we are talking about the business of fun.  So, it’s all about selling the idea, and that takes constant communication with current and prospective customers.

Here’s an except from the USA Today article on the book……….

•Hard work. It’s not about pulling all-nighters, working weekends or being attached to your BlackBerry. Hard work is about inventing a “new system, service or process that’s remarkable.” And consider this, writes Godin. “It’s hard work to tell your boss that he’s being intellectually and emotionally lazy.”

•Change. The ones most likely to resist change are competent people because, “Change threatens to make them less competent.”

Perhaps the most valuable part of the book is Godin’s two lengthy essays on Web design and blogs. Especially for the green blogger, this is worth lingering over.

“The best blogs walk a very fine line between civility and anarchy, between passion and privacy,” he writes. “The best blogs start conversations, they don’t control them.”

To Godin, if you want to grow, blogs matter. To ignore them is a grave mistake. Blogs are today’s quintessential means of touching information-hungry, idea-sharing people.

At the workplace, the new, new thing is CEOs writing blogs, and that’s something that should be approached carefully in this competitive environment, he writes. To draw in readers, high-profile bloggers should hit on at least four of these qualities: candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, controversy, utility.

……………………………………..

 

You can read the rest of the USA Today article here.

You can read Seth’s blog here.

 

Help! … keep your fleet together

Recently I was asked for some ideas about how to keep a new fleet together – it’s the age old problem of the people at the end of the fleet getting frustrated and finding any excuse they can to stop coming out.  Who can blame them, losing is not fun.

I was fortunate enough to grow in a class and at aclub where the champions – and there were many including an Olympian – freely shared all kinds of help with people who had less experience than they.  It was a virtuous cycle that propagated many great sailors over several generations.

But times change, and with it change little things that made it easy to learn to race, and then race better.  Like a tide that ebbs and flows, so too do clubs and classes, but with uneven participation numbers come more extreme lows in the quality of competition, coupled with a paucity of more knowledgeable sailors who can help improve the the talent for people at the bottom of the fleet.

Anyone who says they know it all in sailing, doesn’t.  I have never met a quality sailor that didn’t learn something new throughout their career.  Sailing is a very complex sport with many nuances, but on the other hand, there are some very fundamental things that can be done to help new sailors get better quickly.

The most important aspect of racing better is simply boathandling – the “blocking and tackling” of sailing – tacking and jibing.  Getting the sails up and down and around. 

But before doing that, the guys at the top of the fleet can help the bottom of the fleet by making sure that the boat is set up to a simple class standard.  Get the mast straight, then make sure the rig tension is generally where the sailmaker suggests it should be. 

Then, mark the halyards and sheets with black tape or a marker with some distinctive reference point – do this for an average setting in medium breeze – say 8-12 knots. 

Then depending on that boat, figure out where the reference points are for the traveler and backstay, if the boat has them. 

Controls like Cunningham and Outhaul, and perhaps jib cloth tension, at least for the beginning racer, should have simple reference points for medium breeze.

Once the sail control reference points are known, then just go sailing.  Get a “Coach/observer” – on a boat that is big enough, have then aboard, otherwise get a small dinghy and have them motor nearby.  Just tack and jibe, and let the observer comment on the simple things – is the jib being cast off too early or late?  Is the crew crossing the boat at the right time, based on the breeze.  Depending on the boat, it’s characteristics, and the amount of breeze, is the boat being turned to fast or slow? 

The best way for new sailors to learn is to go sailing with a great sailor.  You can read the books you want, go to all the North U classes you can, but there is nothing like actually seeing how the boat is set up, and then feeling it in your gut.

Another thing that can be done to help the tail-enders learn is to mix it up for the entire fleet.  STOP running windward leeward races only.  START running races that put some luck back into the game.  If a couple of the local rock stars sto sailing because they don’t get to display their superiority over a weaker fleet every time they get on the water, that might be the best remedy to declining fleet participation anyway.  Be inventive, and use your local geography to come up with courses that are fun and challenging.

One thing I like to do is have a race where the RC can blow a whistle at any time which alerts the fleet that the course has been changed 180 degrees – everyone turns and sails back to the RC boat for a finish.  This lets the back of the fleet have some practice sailing out in front.

As for tactics – it’s all really pretty simple – stay on the tack closets to the mark.

Or like Buddy Melges likes to say – the best way to win a race is start first and increase your lead.

 

Results Matter

Earlier this evening I was talking to an avid one design racer who was trying to find out the result of his class national championship.  The class, or the club, or whoever is in charge of publishing results, seems to be about day late in posting results.

The world demands information instantly now.  Those that provide it, will prosper.  Those that don’t, won’t.

There are many good scoring program available, some even for free.  But like anything open source, you get what you pay for.

If you want your event, class or club to be taken seriously, then you need to use one of the better scoring programs .  And, you need to think about more than just a simple spread sheet for results – if you are looking to the future, or even the present, then you need to figure out how to get all the information into one place that everyone who wants to know anything can find it easily.  Sooner rather than later, we will all be getting results on our cell phones as we cross the finish line.

And while results obviously give us a list of where people place in a race or regatta, publishing them in a timely fashion isn’t so much about telling exactly who was first or last – it’s really about keeping people connected to each other.

For some, sailing is only about winning.  There are those who win and don’t like to sail – who actually never just go sailing, they only go racing.  Their loss for not enjoying all that sailing is.  For others, results measure improvement in their performance.  For most, it’s a social connection.  Can’t be at the big regatta because of work or family obligations (or another regatta conflict)?  Then log on and let your mind be there with your friends for a couple of moments.

Any club or class that is looking to help themselves by using the best regatta results progam - and all regatta document management program for that matter – need only to call Luiz Kahl, who runs “Yacht Scoring”. He’ll be at the Verve Cup in Chicago this weekend for anyone who wants to look him up.

Or you can reach Luiz at any of the following numbers -

Interactive Creations – www.intercreate.com

Yacht Scoring – www.yachtscoring.com

Regatta Dates – www.regattadates.com

Skype (Chat/VoIP) & AIM user: lekahl

P: 313.886.4539 / E: luiz@intercreate.com

F: 313.886.4499 / C: 313.550.7995

 

Communicate to Grow

The Telegraph

It never ceases to amaze me that some clubs and classes complain about participation at their events, and yet, they do little to communicate what they are selling.

The days of being able to rely on a simple monthly mailer are long gone.  Both content and delivery format matter.  If your the front page of your club monthly magazine features social events or dining room schedules, guess what, you belong to a social club, not a sailing club.

What a new event is tried, but doesn’t draw entrants, or an old event starts to fade, the first question that needs to be asked is if the club or class is using the right communication methods with current members, and those it wishes to attract.

One thing almost every club and class can do to help promote whatever it is they want to promote is obviously, in this day and age, to make better use of all things digital.  Some clubs and classes do a good job with their websites, but even of those that use it routinely, most often it is for information of either static or historical importance.  Too often information about current events is very hard to find, if it’s even there.  Websites are alot of work to maintain, and it generally means you need a webmaster to update it, though FTP tools are available for many people, but then you get into several security issues, if not content format issues.

One very simple way for information to be widely dispersed is through a simple blog, like this.  Blogs are really easy to use, and can be linked directly to websites.  Doing this will allow officers and regatta chairman to update information without any technical burden.  If you can use a web browser to get email, you can set up and run a blog.  Listserves are so 20th century…blogs are available to be read by all.

There are many blog tools to pick from – I’ve used  a couple, and each have their own advantages.  Two of the free ones are WordPress and Blogger.

Sooner, rather than later, clubs and classes that really want to connect with the younger generation are going to have to move beyond their telegraph mentality, and into the word of all digital communication.  Pretty soon those pesky junior sailors are going to be wanting all their information via SMS and/or text msg.

Bayview Women’s Invitational

While it is sold out, that fact alone makes it worth mentioning that Bayview YC in Detroit is hosting a Women’s Invitational Regatta this coming weekend.  Events like this help the sport immensely – while it’s billed as a regatta, if you read blurb in the Bayview site below, you’ll see it’s probably far more of a clinic than a pure regatta.  Forget that this for women, the sport plain needs more clinic/regatta formats just like this.  When all you do is race, most people just get good at perfecting the mistakes they make over and over.

In southern California there is the annual SYCA Women’s sailing event at Bahia Corinthian YC that has been going for probably near 20 years now – it always attracts several hundred women, many of whom take up racing.

Perhaps the marine industry will take notice of these types of events and replicate them in other locations.  

We’ll try to get a post event report next week.

Bayview Yacht Club Women’s Invitational information here. 

 

Golden Retriever

A Golden Retriever is one way to help recover a man overboard

Or you can install the cool new Personal Retriever, which doesn’t need feeding, and smells less when wet too

Having just helped prepare a boat for entry in major offshore races, I’m a bit more up to speed on all the various required safety gadgets than I was several months ago.  Just found a cool now device – “The Personal Retriever” – a much improved system of integrated heaving line/throwable cushion.   Think floating frisbee with attached line.  Wish I had thought of this – cool idea, simple product, big market.

Read about The Personal Retriver here.

Sky Rats

 

J. L Seagull learning to fly – looking good

J.L Seagull and friends – hey, it’s just a party

Nobody ever taught J.L. Seagull to clean up after the frat party

There’s a company with inventive ideas about how to help eliminate the source of bird droppings, without resorting to guns.   They sell all sorts of devices to help keep our feathered friends away from things we need to keep clean.  You can read all about Bird-B-Gone Supersonic here.

All Kinds of Minds – All Kinds of Sailors

The Chautauqua Institution recently hosted a lecture by Dr. Mel Levine, the found of the All Kinds of Minds Institute.  The purpose of All Kinds of Minds is to help children who are having trouble learning through our tradition methods of school teaching use different techniques to unlock their mental capacity.

You could say that Dr. Levine and his associates are the cure for the No Child Left Behind Act and that absurd system of rote memorization and learning only to test well on a format test.

After watching some sailing classes this summer, and listening to some instructors gripe about the arduous certification process they must go through, and then reading the report of Dr. Levine’s recent lecture, and then learning more about his educational Institution, I thought about how we teach people to sail and/or race, especially kids.

One quote from the lecture that was reported in ”The Chautauquan Daily” stuck out – “”Parents can not pick their kids affinities.  What prevents kids from developing affinities is pressure from peers to homogenize” said Levine.  ”Successful adults, it turns out, have spent alot of time with adults as children.  Children are being overdosed with each other”.

Thank you, Dr. Levine.

This is EXACTLY my gripe about the Opti.  We try to force kids to “Race” an Opti (which is an oxymoron for starters), and then we force them to stay alone in a boat, and then only compete and socialize with their age group.

My junior sailing experience was alot different.  Yes, we had a sailing class.  Yes we sailed alot of boats like Tech’s and Sailfish with our own age group.  But – we also sailed Lighthings, Albacores, Knarrs, and big boats with adults, all starting at age 11 or 12.  A had a variety of experience and opportunity at an early age.

A few weeks ago during the “Gates of Hell” thread, a US Sailing Sr. Judge had a long private email exchange with me about what he sees in his part of the world.  Seven years ago his club opened up the sailing program to local non-member kids.  They have averaged 100 kids in their program as a result of this.  Of those 700 kids that have cycled through the program, not one single kid has joined the club, or remained active once Opti sailing is over for them. 

Do you think there is a message in here somewhere.

The Opti isn’t the devil on water – it’s a fine boat for teaching a very little kid to get comfortable around the water, and maybe learn the fundamentals of racing – but that’s a big maybe.  There are simply better boats available.

I recently read a report of a “Successful” Opti regatta with more than a 100 kids in attendance.  I saw the names of kids that finished in triple digits.  I wondered if they had a good time.  I wonder if anyone really asked them about the value they got out of being 100+ in a regatta.  Forget the issues of self-esteem – do you think it’s really fun being 112th in something like this?

Did anyone ever ask that kid if maybe he’d rather have been with his father (or mother) in a Lightning or J22 for a couple of hours that weekend, instead of getting the snot beaten out of him in a huge fleet, just so a couple of regatta organizers could brag about how big their event was.

I was active in USYRU/US Sailing during the time all the Level 1 certification was starting.  It is a generally good idea to have sailing instructors have a standard system of instruction.

But if we are looking for evidence of the benefit of sticking to a wrote system of teaching a recreation, then we really need to look no further than the number of people who have graduated from these sorts of sailing factories, and see what those gradutes are doing this summer.  The evidence suggests they are largely not sailing.

The problem of course is not the Opti – the problem is a lack of strategy to help kids find a path to other boats that will fit their needs and desires.  A problem are the preachers of the Opti gospel.  A solution is to open your mind and learn more about learning.  Maybe it’s the parents who have the learning problem.

All Kinds of Minds Institute

 

What’s a Race?

America’s Cup boats and Opti’s cross tacks in Kiel last weekend

(photo courtesy Richard Walch – via “The BOB” news agency)

In my view, one of the reasons for the slow and clearly steady decline of racing is that for the most part, on the club level, we tend to sell one form or racing – windward/leeward courses.  While I really enjoy that format, I also like variety.  It is also my opinion that after decades of being involved in the administration of the sport, and watching this relatively homogeneous sales format, if we want to increase the sales of sailing events, we better find different ways to sell the sport.

So – what’s a race?  And what are people buying when they agree to spend their time in your event.

A few of us like to buy the chance to win, and fewer of those in that group actually do win.

But most of us just like to buy the personal entertainment that comes in several forms through participating in an organized race.  But if we only have one format of racing, then we are going to get bored of that pretty quickly – especially if we are asked to spend our precious free time in a manner that is not reflective of our interests or resources.

Alot of people think the America’s Cup is a waste of time and money.  I happen to think it is very good thing for the sport.  Yes, there are faster boats on the planet, and yes alot of money is spent within the Cup family.  But alot of this money is now coming from sponsors who know the value of the sport to their marketing equation.  BMW has one reason and one reason only for signing on, and then resigning with Oracle – it is going to help them sell cars.   A company like BMW does not guess about relationships like this – they KNOW the sport works for them as a marketing tool.  Every other major company associated with every other team knows this too. 

But my point here is not about money – my point here is about changing the game in small doses to reflect what the market wants – the market meaning several things, active participants and passive viewers.

Take a look at what three America’s Cup teams did last weekend in Kiel, Germany with a regatta in a different format.  The photo’s of the Cup boats sailing that close to shore are stunning.  Where Cup races used to take place only miles out to sea, last weekend they were within feet of breakwalls, in front of thousands of spectators.

Not that recreational racing should try to attract a passive viewing audience, but we can certainly use more events that are something different than the same old same old of windward-leeward.

To read about how the America’s Cup is changing the face of sailing in ways that even a few years were not imaginable to most, read the excellent BMW Oracle Blog – or “The Bob” as it has come to be know – here.

And then think about what your club can do to get more boats off of trailers and untied from the dock and out racing.  And then do something.

Calendar AND Strategy

Two local events of note have had a fairly serious decline in participation within the last month – the Levels and now the BYC Queen City/Mayor’s Cup.  There are probably multiple factors for the decline in participation, and to properly address the decline we need to have a serious regression analysis, rather than just relying on anecdotal evidence or conjecture.

One thing for sure is that here in western New York/southern Ontario need a local/regional calendar coordinating organization(s).  When two clubs that live within literally swimming distance of each other can’t figure out how to avoid having respective major one design class regattas on the same weekend in July, and then almost literally nothing for the rest of the summer on a weekend, something needs to change.

Maybe we are relying too much on email and online calendar services like the excellent one that Luiz Kahl provides for Scuttlebutt.  Maybe we think it enough promotion if we just post the date of our regatta on that calendar, and everyone will just magically show up.  Perhaps we tend to think we live in an MP3 world, when 33rpm records were really pretty cool too, and maybe for a variety of reasons the analog lifestyle forced us to have more in-depth conversations, leading to better understanding and longer lasting results.  Often times digital = disposable.

The late Bob Coleman, a Past Commodore of the Buffalo Canoe Club, used to be the driving force in organizing the local racing calendar.  While not always a pretty or painless process for some, the results of Bob’s efforts were meaningful for the greater good of the sport locally.

During my time in southern California, I spent alot of time with SYCA (see previous post on Lorin Weiss).  All the clubs in a given local harbor would have their own calendar planning process, and then there would be a big confab with SCYA.  This being August already, and having been involved in that process in the past, it’s pretty safe for me to assume that the ‘07 racing calendar is already finished in southern California.  Granted, they never stop racing out there, but for many of us, neither do we.  And just because the boats are on the hard for many months doesn’t mean the racing community doesn’t have reason to coordinate sailing agendas year round. 

Locally, Don Finkle and his RCR Newsletter does the best job of publishing the local/regional calendar – but a calendar is not enough.  We need  a strategy to revive racing in this region.  That can only mean a meeting of the minds – and literally a meeting.

It has been suggested to me in the past week that one Past Commodore from  a major Lake Ontario club is willing to marshall the forces he knows to call a meeting for this purpose.  And I’ve had an indication from one other incoming Commodore of another club as recently as a few hours ago that he would be interested in hearing more about this.  Perhaps this is a LYRA function – but maybe it’s not too.  i don’t get the sense that LYRA has alot of interest in dinghy racing, and that aspect of the sport needs serious attention locally.

It doesn’t matter what you race, or want to race, we all need to talk with each other and figure out how we are going to cross promote each other’s prime interest.  Maybe a couple of events need to be killed off – maybe there is way to revamp a few, maybe we need something of a different format from time to time.  But one thing is for sure, we need to sit down and talk about it.  We have amazing natural and physical resources in this area, and it staggers me that we have so many boats sitting on trailers and tied up to the dock on a weekend instead of being out sailing and/or racing.

Or maybe we just need calendars with covers like these to get people to pay attention and inspiring them to sail more often.