Results tagged “alabama” from Getting to Know Joe

Still a work in progress, but have been adding attractions from around a lot of counties in the Black Belt over the last two weeks to the site. Take a look at the new tourism website: www.alabamasfrontporches.org

Had some great fun on Thursday of this week when my buddy Ben Burford and I took a daylong trip to the Black Belt for a photo tour. Left around 6:30 in the a.m. and back around 7 p.m. Took around 400 photos. We drove down I-59 to Eutaw and left the interstate world behind for almost the rest of the trip. Stopped at several historic homes, dilapidated shacks, downtowns, had a typical lunch of fried, fried, fried fish as Ezells and then bounced over to Marengo County for a quick stop by my homeplace in Octagon, Alabama before heading to the historical beauty of Gaineswood, Bluff Hall and the general granduer that is Demopolis. A quick stop for some of the Bird family road art and on towards home.

Here's a collage of some of the photos. I've uploaded a few more to my flickr account here.

http://blog.al.com/scenesource/2008/08/windhams_wit_insight_revealed.html

Interesting article on Kathryn Tucker Windham from the Birmingham News.

Encounters: Photographs By Kathryn Tucker Windham. Jennifer Hunt Gallery. Through Sept. 20.

For those that do not know, Kathryn Tucker Windham is from the Black Belt near where I grew up. She's famous for her storytelling abilities--I remember going to see her frequently in Selma, Alabama at their annual Storytelling Festival. I'm not sure if they even still have it. What fun we had, though. On that note, I've started a new blog: it will be all about the Black Belt, particularly from a tourism perspective, but I hope to toss in all sorts of information relating to the place where I grew up. It is tied to a multi-year project I'm involved with for the University of Alabama: Alabama's Front Porches. I've talked about the website associated with this project before (www.alabamafrontporches.com), but the blog is new. There really isn't anything there right now (other than a duplicate of this story about Kathryn Tucker Windham's photography, but keep an eye out in the coming weeks for more content. And if you have ideas, please send them my way! The intent is to have at least one entry each week. They may be about a really interesting place to visit, a wonderful place to eat, some fascinating story about Southern foodways or just about anything that tells the story of Alabama's Black Belt in a way that helps bring travelers into our area. www.alabamafrontporches.com/blog

She recently celebrated her 90th birthday and really is an Alabama icon. Her stories--ghost stories in particular, but--but many, many stories that simply celebrate Alabama's deep south--are wonderful. Mama read many of them to me, and I have a nice collection of books by Ms. Windham.  You can find many of them at Amazon.com by clicking the link below!



Books by Kathyrn Tucker Windham

View Example Websites  | View My Print Portfolio

Overview:

My experience includes project and program management, website design and maintenance, writing, editing and print design. I have a particular interest in promoting ecologically sound tourism practices and provide tourism consulting, eco-tourism promotion and cooperation, historical/heritage tourism promotion and scenic byways program promotion and management to select clients. I have experience working as a staff writer/editor finding ways to best utilize advertising pieces that attempt to influence editorial content and as a consultant working with media professionals to push client-driven messages.

Primary objectives when working with clients include producing materials that provide a strong brand and leave the targeted market with a better, more positive understanding of the client.

Experience:

Owner, Watts Consulting, August 2000-present

Watts Consulting provides graphic and website design services for non-profit and for-profit companies with a focus on nature-based tourism, natural resource conservation and development and community planning based organizations. Other areas include working with the tourism industry in general and working on emerging concepts in traveler-oriented wayfinding. I also work with several for-profit companies including insurance, architecture and retail, providing print and website design and website maintenance.

Project Manager, Byways Marketing, Alabama Association of Regional Councils (AARC), December 2002-present

Coordinate work done to promote the Alabama Scenic Byways Program, develop initial marketing plan, encourage local community participation, assist in organization of Corridor Advocacy Groups (CAG's) and develop marketing and promotional materials related to the state scenic byways program. Speak at meetings (ranging from under 10 to over 100 participants) throughout the state on the merits of the program. Manage project work from independent planning firm HNTB. Write grants; currently a total of well over $500,000 has been secured for byways projects in Alabama from Federal Highway Administration funds.

Project Manager, Byways Program Development, Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham (RPC), July 2002-July 2003

Coordinated work done by consultant TEI Engineers and Planners, Inc. with RPC and with the Alabama Department of Transportation. Organized and led group meetings, built consensus and provided guidance in the overall development of the Scenic Byways Program Manual.

Project Coordinator, Scenic Inventory, Alabama Association of Regional Councils (AARC), March 2001-December 2001

Coordinated inventory of scenic roadways produced by all twelve regional planning agencies; finalized report; worked with political officials, state agencies, individuals and nonprofit groups to generate interest and awareness of project.

Executive Director, Scenic Alabama, June 1999-August 2000

Wrote draft state legislation creating the Alabama scenic byways program, worked with state legislators to pass byways-oriented legislation. Oversaw statewide operations including policy work, program development, public speaking, fundraising, grant writing, political lobbying and operations.

Assistant Editor, Weight Watchers magazine, August 1996-June 1999

Wrote articles concentrating on healthy lifestyles, researched story ideas, edited recipes for consistency and clarity, developed recipes, developed, wrote and edited a menu planner focusing on nutrition for each issue and represented the magazine at national conferences.

Editorial Intern, Southern Living and Southern Accents, January 1996-May 1996

Wrote and edited articles, conducted phone interviews, developed and edited recipes, assisted with reader phone calls, attended photography sessions, participated in taste-testing, and helped organize a photography exhibition of Southern photographers with Southern Accents and The Birmingham Museum of Art.

 
Education:

Auburn University, Master of Arts in English. Auburn, Alabama

1992-1997. Thesis option degree.

Birmingham-Southern College, Bachelor of Arts in English. Birmingham, Alabama

1988-1991. Completed four year program in 3 years.

Training:

Your Town Alabama, Designing Our Future

1999. Completed an intensive 3 day workshop held at Camp McDowell, Alabama on planning and smart growth in Alabama communities.

Interpretive Concepts Workshop

2002. Intensive 4-day workshop held in Stephens Point, Wisconsin on signage and general interpretation for tourism impact and usability, particularly as interpretation relates to scenic byway designation.

Scenic Byways Power Workshop

2003. Intensive 3-day workshop held in Charlotte, North Carolina on scenic byways management practices, from corridor management planning to facilitating group meetings and understanding intrinsic resources.

Rocky Mountain School of Photography Digital Photography Workshop

2007. Completed a 2-day workshop held in Birmingham, Alabama concentrating on Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Digital Photography workflow and manipulation.

Wayfinding/Wayshowing: Discovering the Path of the Tourist

2008. One day workshop targeting the growing interest in helping tourists find their way with websites, signs, maps and guides. In addition to attending the workshop, I worked with the Alabama Department of Transportation to organize and develop the agenda.

Software Experience:

I've worked extensively with the following software:

Adobe Dreamweaver, from Macromedia's version 2.0 through Adobe's CS4 (I'll be ordering CS5 really, really soon--once I feel like the major bugs have been worked out)
Adobe Photoshop, from version 4.0 through CS4
Adobe Fireworks, from version 1.0 through CS4
QuarkXpress, from version 3.2 through 6.5 (I have now abandoned Quark in favor of InDesign, a much better program for what I do and one that has grown to fit a need)
Adobe InDesign, from version 1 through CS4
Adobe Illustrator, from version 7 through CS4
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, from Beta 1.0 through 2
Adobe Acrobat, from 3.0 through version 9

I also have experience with the following programs: Microsoft Office suite including PowerPoint, Word and Excel. Apple's Keynote, and limited experience with current versions of WordPerfect. I have some experience using Adobe Flash and several components for Flash (notably the popular component Slideshow Pro) and experience using PHP and MySQL. I use Movable Type for my personal blog and also for several client websites, but I am scurrying away from Movable Type and towards wordpress as quickly as I possibly can. I have recently developed several client websites in wordpress and find it very user-friendly and a real joy to work with! I'm also working a little with Drupal.

I have experience working with both Windows and Mac OS computers (Windows from 3.1 to XP: I've steered clear of Vista (though I do hear some positive things about Windows 7) (Mac from somewhere in the 7.0 range through to Snow Leopard)

View my experience profile  |  View My Print Portfolio
The following are a reasonable portion of the projects I've worked on in the past 10 years. I use primarily Dreamweaver as my web development tool, with a very small amount of Flash. I use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks and the rest of the Adobe suite of products on most of the websites I develop. Recently, I've started developing some websites using the blogging/content management program Movable Type, but I'm finding WordPress to be more interesting and flexible for my needs. I've now got my eye on Drupal, but haven't gotten far with it so far.
	Web design and maintenance clients include the following: American Institute of Architects, Birmingham Chapter Lower Cahaba Heritage and Recreational Corridor (tourism website) Alabama's Front Porches, Southwest Alabama regional tourism site American Mining Insurance Company Ala-Tom RC&D Council Bibb County Tourism website (in progress) River Bottom Pine, Heart Pine Wide Plank Flooring Church Transporation & Logistics Brookside Alabama City of Brookside, recently converted to wordpress Alabama Communities of Excellence Birmingham Architectural Foundation Tyler, Eaton, Morgan Nichols (Court Reporters) Highland Park Neighborhood Association Veterinary Diagnostics and Cardiac Evaluations Sierra Club, Cahaba Group CAWACO RC&D Council (recently converted to Wordpress) The Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham Taj India Your Town Alabama Your Town Alabama Blog frequently updated blog CGH Insurance Group monthly online newsletter (now changed to the American Mining newsletter) Standard Fire Equipment Five Mile Creek Partnership (recently converted to Wordpress) Warrior River Clean Water Partnership Metropolitan Planning Organization of Birmingham Lee-Russell Council of Governments Hosting and Minimal Design/Maintenance Alzheimer's of Central Alabama Birmingham Historical Society Designed and/or Maintained by Joe Watts: The Alabama Scenic Byways Program The Alabama Association of Regional Councils