Author Archives: Nick Pearson

FOCUS Training…. In Winnipeg!

Posted on October 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

I won a free trip to Winnipeg! Oh wait…. Winnipeg

Landing Right Between the Bugs and the Cold

This weekend (extended out till Thursday) I’ll be out in Winnipeg teaching a FOCUS course with three fellow Rovers from Vancouver. We were invited over there through an on going working relationship with the Manitoba Council that started a few years back. Also, because we rock.

The ~20 youth coming to this weekend are not only getting our highly enthusiastic FOCUS training, but they are also learning about the Duke of Edinburgh and Scouts of the World Awards. Somewhere in the mix of all this we’ll be cramming in two hikes.

Now, the trick with all youth is to tire them out during the day so they don’t stay up all night. With Venturers, it just takes more work. Those poor kids have no idea what’s coming for them.

The Twist

We’re going to be trying a unique format for this course. As per usual, the youth are from a smattering of groups. However, the task before us as trainers is to hopefully create a sense of a group amongst these youth. The organizers plan is to have them tackle some sort of project (of their own decision) as a group after we leave. The spin is that we will help them come to some form of decision by lunch on Friday, and then spend the rest of our FOCUS time to start to work on the planning.
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Posted in PCC Rover Crew, Training

UBC AdvertisINC’s Insight Conference

Posted on October 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

What happens when you get 45 university students to sink their teeth into marketing Scouts Canada?

You get nine wonderful and energetic plans on how to help recruit more young adult volunteers for our movement. To get us there, the participants got marketing industry speakers, workshops and testimonials from fellow students on their own in-the-field experience. Finally, they got to hear from us, revealing who the mystery case study would be.

UBC’s AdvertisINC (The first student-run, non-profit marketing agency in Vancouver) put on the Insight Conference, and they put on an amazing line up of speakers. These guys do good work. If you ever have the need to do marketing in Vancouver, consider them. They have Warner Brothers and Coca Cola as clients!

When it was our turn, we gave a brief 7 minute background on our organization, and then set them up with today’s question: How can Scouts Canada attract post-secondary young adults to become volunteer leaders?

They were given 50 minutes (which was unnecessarily cruel in my opinion) in their groups of 3-5 to come back with a plan. Then each room of three groups battled it out to advance to the final round. They were graded by industry professionals and Scouts Canada representatives on content, use of market segmentation, budget, how to differentiate from the competition, creativity, estimation and the presentation itself. Nine teams entered, three survived.
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Posted in Recruitment

1 Knight Stand

Posted on October 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

Ceili’s Pub Night

What are you doing October 29th, the Friday of Halloween Weekend?
You will more than likely be sitting at home handing out candy, or standing for hours in line for a club.

How would you like to cut through that line on one of the busiest nights of the year?

Ceili’s Irish Pub is offering us tickets to their “1 Knight Stand” party.
Not only do you get in, you go on the guest list. Meaning, no line up.
Now what would you normally pay for this kind of service? $30? $20?
Well do we have a deal for you.
For the low low price of $10, you get cover and the experience of walking passed hundreds and walking straight into the event.

Now call us crazy, but that’s not all.
We’ll even throw in the first drink if you get there before 9. That’s right, free booze.

So lets recap. You get:
Girls
The experience of walking past hundreds of others waiting in line, straight into the pub
Halloween costumes
Cover
Hot Halloween costumes
First drink
Hot girls and guys in hot Halloween Costumes
All for $10

Plus there will be a strong Rover community presence.

If you want in, and you’d be a fool to not want in, contact me for the hook up at Nick -at- pccrovers.com.

Ceili’s Irish pub is located at 670 Smithe Street, (Corner of Granville and Smithe)

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Posted in Fun and Games

Pepsi Refresh Project

Posted on October 11, 2010 | 1 comment

A few days back I posted this comment on twitter,

For the #pepsirefreshcanada I think that the Covenant House will use the money better, But I still have to vote for Scouts Canada Camps

which some took to be “brutal”.

There was a heated discussion going back and forth between some others while I was at work. While they debated the merits of different sides, I’d like to set clear my opinion.

When I made that comment, I was unaware of the $50,000 (50%) going to send 1,000 kids to camp. This is what I support. Making it easier for kids to go to camp is fantastic. We should be celebrating this win for our organization.

However, it is the other 50% that my tweet was about.
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Posted in Discussion

It starts with Scouts

Posted on October 9, 2010 | 1 comment

Last month Scouts Canada announced a new tag line and branding.

Out with “Creating a Better World” and in with “It starts with Scouting”.

Now I really liked the improvement in discourse “Creating a Better World” had over the last, last tag line, “Bring on the Adventure”.

“Bring on the Adventure” was ok in my opinion, but many of our competition could also claim the same results. It didn’t differentiate ourselves from everyone else. With “Creating a Better World”, we had an ideal that we held up for the world to see, and get behind. Its message spoke stronger to adult volunteers and senior sections than Adventure did, whom are our more difficult market to reach. We don’t have a problem recruiting young youth into our organization (That’s another article coming up soon), so we should take what opportunities we can to reach to our more difficult, yet more critical markets. Our organization grew up and publicly exclaimed we go beyond just fun and games.

However, it’s out with Orange, in with the five new Element colours. Yes, a Captain Planet parody is screaming from my head. Perhaps, that too, can be a future article.
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Posted in Discussion, Recruitment

Operation Assertion – Save the Carelton Hall : Denouement

Posted on October 4, 2010 | 1 comment

The Plan

On September 15th (yes this is almost 3 weeks ago), the proposal to keep the Carleton Hall, and to allow the proposed new hall committee to operate it, finally went before the Council Management Committee. The document, as provided, is available here: Carleton Hall Proposal v2 [.pdf]. Representing the team at the meeting was Mark Burge and myself.
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Posted in Carleton Hall

Sechelt Inlet Kayak Trip – Day 3

Posted on October 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

[slideshow]

A travel day.

Left 9 mile beach at 9:30 heading ultimately for Tzoonie Narrows. First stop was just North at Kunechin Point.As we were leaving a deer swam the inlet and landed south of us on some rather steep rock face. To top that off, as we were 50 feet out, our mink friend could be seen searching out beach campsite.

Took a short rest at Kunechin Point. HMCS Chaudiere is purposefully sunk here as a reef. Three buoys mark the spot for divers to explore. Next stop was Storm Bay, a tidal flat quite far in. First real set of structures on the Inlet we’ve come across other than fish farms. Stopped for Lunch (keeping constant vigilance on our kayaks and the rising tide) and then headed NE.

The tide at this point carries us almost effortlessly. We have to stop on the point before Tzoonie narrows due to it being peak tidal flow and not knowing the state of the narrows on the other side. As we wait, some go for a walk along the sea line towards the point to get a look. they left with bear spray, bangers and whistles. We are in bear country. They found a dead carcass of what they figure is a deer. While they went of on their mini adventure, I fixed the broken VHF radio with a chocolate bar rapper. A battery contact had fallen off and I replaced it with the foil. Macgyver got off easy with a paper clip.

Once the tide and wind settled down we launched and headed in. We setup camp on a beautiful jut out next to the narrows. Direct sunlight wasn’t going to last long due to the high mountains on the West side of the inlet. We used what time we had to take an invigorating wash down in the sea. Dinner was chorizo, ginger, bell pepper and polenta mash. The bear cache wire was broken at this site, so we struggled for hours to get something appropriate. I ended up having to climb (more like shimmy up) a tree to try to get this to work. That attempt failed when we couldn’t get the food high enough. We had to pull the horizontal cable back to it’s original side and go from there.

Pulled the star chart out at night, but the bright moon made it difficult to see many.

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Posted in Expedition

Sechelt Inlet Kayak Expedition – Day 2

Posted on September 7, 2010 | 2 comments

[slideshow]

Wake up without the need to travel.

Bliss.

Glenn & Doug shared their skills with us. Glenn covered light weight backpacking. Heard the tales of Bruce Knight who builds his own light weight gear. Backpack is made of parachute material, his sleeping pad is the back support and the poles to his tent are the structure of the pack. This was shown at a leaders club night. Glenn’s advice is to have only what you need. Before the trip split the gear into 2 piles. Need & Nice. After the trip split the gear into used and not used. Light weight packs should be aimed for 1/8 your weight.

Doug put on a brilliant photography skills session, covering classics for composition such as 1/3rds rule, power points, flashes and ISO. Learned about the brilliant option on camera for slow synch flashes which is used for low light conditions with one bright spot. Took lots of abstract photos I plan on framing onto my apartment walls.

Saw a mink (or similar) dash out onto the beach and dart back to cover midday.

Had a sharing meal that night. Brownies, freeze dried ice cream, barley risotto, polenta, chicken tacos, and sausage & pasta. Had a very relaxed campfire till late at night.

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Posted in Expedition

Sechelt Inlet Kayak Expedition – Day 1

Posted on August 26, 2010 | 1 comment

[slideshow]

We just made the 7:25AM ferry

The line was stopped in front of us. The staff asked how long we were. We clocked in at 40″ (kayak trailer), while the car behind us was 42″. On we went. The car behind us did make it on, but only by having to go on sideways.

We looked at a provincial park to launch from, but went with the government wharf. Took some time to get going, but we did beat the couple that had to go for gas. Most of the group went off to visit a shop nearby and returned (after more then enough time) with sandwiches, cat food & a pond net for fishing. Ellen (the wife that stayed behind to guard the parking spot) grew up in Spokane and ate oysters and muscles. Now why this is pertinent is a discussion about the red tide warnings. She was quite adamant that she grew up eating them for years during the summers, and never had a problem. Just before we launched a massive (30″?) canoe was trailer-ed in and launched.

One of the doubles did try to make a run for it. What will become of our fearless travelers?

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Posted in Expedition

Sechelt Inlet Kayak Expedition

Posted on August 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

[slideshow]

This is a triumph. I’m making a note here, huge success.

Over the next few days, I’ll be posting my log from the trip. For the most part it will be straight from sheet as I wrote it. As a note log it is point-form-esque and does tend to bounce around. I will try to edit in details that I realize are missing from my original thoughts to make a complete picture.

You can see all the pictures from the trip now, or you can see the choice ones that I’ll pull out for each post.

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Posted in Expedition