Floating Home Log Delivery

Last week I was working in my office and I saw this tug pulling a raft a logs. I’ve lived in the Bridgeton neighborhood on the North Portland Channel of the Columbia River for nearly five years. This is the first time I’ve seen floating home float logs being delivered. It was like a time trip to the lumberjack days of yore.

Log Wrestling

These Douglas Fir logs are from Hamilton Mill between Camas and Washougal, Washington. Each log costs about $1,000. They will be used to replace a float on a home in the moorage next to ours. These logs have been squared off to make it easier to attach and level the stringers, the timbers that support the home’s bottom floor. The logs and stringer are the home’s foundation.

Trimmed logs for floating home float

Using the squared of logs is an improvement over the traditional method of notching the logs for the stringer attachment. It’s less labor intensive for the mill to take a slice of the log compared to precisely creating the notches. The squared off logs are easier to work with because they are essentially self-leveling and stringer placement is more forgiving.

This float uses notched stringers.

Notched Log

Here’s a newer float using the flat top logs.

Flat Top Log for Floating Home Float

Lately I wake up in the morning and head downstairs to workout on my Concept 2 rowing machine. I turn on the TV, fire up my iPod and start rowing. For visual entertainment, I’ve been watching fishing shows on Versus.

These shows follow a predictable pattern. Fishing expert decked out in more logos than a NASCAR driver uses electronics to identify likely spots that will be high producers. Next he explains how he selects the appropriate bait based on the species of fish he’s going after and the conditions. Then our expert explains and demonstrates the presentation of bait through casting and retrieval techniques.

The results are also predictable. Fish after fish is reeled in to much excitement and rejoicing, “Nice fish. Fine fish. He really went after it. He killed that bait.” The fish is reeled into the boat and released to bite and fight another day.

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter to generate sales for a new client Trek-Tech. Trek-Tech makes great versatile monopods and tripods designed for outdoor photographers. I’ve been using fishing shows as my sales workflow model.

Let me be clear right upfront. I don’t consider customers or prospects to be fish. I love customers. I just happen to love fishing too.

For my fish finding electronics, I use the search feature in TweetDeck. For Trek-Tech, I search on the keywords – monopod and tripod and go about my work. When I see the Tweetdeck notification “Search: Monopod.” I take a quick a look a the message. If the Tweeter is in buying mode, I think about the bait and how the bait will be presented. I look at the profile to get a better understanding of the species. My bait of choice is usually a link and a discount code for the Trek-Tech online store. I present the bait with relevant comment and ask the prospect politely to retweet the offer.

Fish on!

It works surprisingly well and it seems to be well-received. I’m getting friendly replies more than 50% of the time and 15% of the time the offer is retweeted.

By the way, if you’re looking for a cleverly designed monopod/tripod/hiking staff checkout Trek-Tech and signup for the news. You’ll get a 25% discount on your first order.

Here’s the pitch. It’s really just a case study of the Oreilly Media Web 2.0 Expo social media marketing tactics.

This morning I got up at way dark thirty to talk to the PDX Sales Leadership Forum about slicing through the tension between sales and marketing with collaboration initiatives, tools and an on-going commitment to develop sales and marketing processes that work together.

The PDX Sales Leadership Forum is a group of senior sales executives from Portland technology companies who meet monthly to share experience, insights and wisdom. It’s what collaboration is really about. Smart people efficiently sharing ideas to solve problems.

Despite my best efforts when planning and preparing a pitch, I never really know where the audience’s collective head is in terms of their experience and the relevance of the content I’m presenting. My defense mechanism is to look at the success of a presentation the same way Allen Alley taught me to think about board meetings when we worked together at Pixelworks. There are only three possible outcomes:

1. Don’t Survive

2. Survive

3. Survive Plus

I can pitch (it’s a survival skill)  so I didn’t really think Number 1 was an option. I figured what’s the worst that can happen?  I’ll get up and talk, show my slides, try to ignore the bored looks and watch watching and it will be over in an hour. I was very pleasantly surprised, make that delighted, when the content resonated and generated a solid discussion. Survive Plus. Thanks PDX Sales Leaders. Sales and marketing can get along. Beautifully.

connecting with customers on Twitter

Mashable has 40 examples of how a mindful approach to Twitter can build brands and rapport with customers and prospects. These companies are using Twitter for news updates, customer service, promotions and for gaining insights directly from customers.

before and after

New day, new administration and a powerful new Web presence at whitehouse.gov.

All the hallmarks of team Obama’s innate sense of how the Web works. Clean graphics, fast track development, community involvement and delivered in the nick of time. Change has come to America and it feels just right.

Queue up them tweets with Twuffer

Twuffer is a fantastic tool for scheduling your tweets.  It was developed by Grady Britton in Portland.  It’s perfect for communication plans that require consistent and frequent pithy updates. You can queue up your twitter messages and send them on a schedule you define. It’s easy.

Most of the connections run down the ramp and under the docks that tie our11-home moorage  together.  Electricity and phone service starts at a telephone pole on the dike. From there, wires are slung from secondary poles and then connect directly to the houses. The wires have slack to accommodate for fluctuations as our houses move up and down with changes in the water level.

Each home has its own electric and gas meter so getting the bill is no problem.

honey pot macerator

The connection from our house to Portland’s  sewer system is where it gets interesting. Each floating home has a honey pot. The honey pot is a tank with a macerator and pump. This diagram from Saniflow will give you the basic overview. With each toilet flush, the contents are sent to the honey pot. The macerator grinds up the nasty bits into a slurry which is pumped through a flexible hose under the docks and up the ramp. The hose connects to the city sewer system.

When everything is working in harmony this is a beautiful thing . When things go awry it’s another story altogether. When we purchased our home four years ago, Tom the previous owner and a man amongst men, gave us the inside story and detailed tour of the inner workings of the floating home infrastructure. The whole honey pot thing was baffling to me and I couldn’t wrap my head around why he was so damned proud of this particular honey pot. “It’s got a 50 gallon tank…stainless steel.”  Ok…great.  Four years later I get it. The only problem we’ve had is a blown fuse that shut the system down until we flipped a breaker. Our next door neighbor has been through 4 macerators in less than 10 years. These are expensive, stinky, unpleasant repairs. I’d be proud to show you Tom’s stainless steel honey pot. Here it is in all of its glory.