Results tagged “tourism” 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

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

Just finished putting together a new website for the Alabama Byways Program. It will continue to grow as more information is added, but here's a start. Designed in Wordpress!

Put these two brochures together for Southwest Alabama Tourism right before heading for Paris. It was a quick job, but I think they turned out looking pretty good!

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.

Update: just posted some of my favorite photos from the trip to my flickr account.

Haven't really been doing a lot of posting this week. Have been doing a lot of work. Trying to wrap up an annual report for the Alabama Association of RC&D's, picked up a nice new client this week, took a trip to the Black Belt to work on an Antique Trail along Highway 14--a three-day festival in the fall that I'll be developing a website for. To many irons in the fire....

Here's the Greene County Courthouse in downtown, Eutaw, Alabama. I do find the Veterans monuments in each county interesting--I consider the one in my home county of Marengo to be one of the better ones I've seen so far in my travels--but I may be a bit prejudiced. The courthouse is in disrepair and surely needs some love. More photos to come.

A trip to Bibb County last week netted a few good photos of the Cahaba River and the changing fall colors.

Well, it looks like I have gotten a few blogs up and running. Of course, there's this blog: Getting to Know Joe (I've been putting things out on this blog since I think around Thanksgiving 2007). Then, there's the Your Town Alabama blog: mostly, that blog's about grant opportunities around Alabama, information for the planning community, news about tourism and byways and the like. I really enjoy doing that blog--it gets pretty decent readership, too. And the newest blog is all about rural southwest Alabama called Alabama's Front Porches (where I grew up). It is particularly targeted towards attracting tourists to the area, so I'll be highlighting festivals, fun, food and all those types of things along the way. There will, hopefully, be a mix between personal writings about the things to do while in my neck of the woods along with the more standard press release type information. There's not a lot of information on the blog right now, but I plan to update it regularly, so keep an eye on it!

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

I don't normally post videos to my blog, but after the workshop on Wayfinding we had last week at the Barber Motorsports Museum in Leeds, Alabama, I ran across this video on signage. It seems to fit pretty well with what some people might think would be important on their scenic byways signs. Maybe not. Funny anyway!

It has been a busy week. Monday was filled with the usual Monday busywork, along with catching up  on several projects that are ongoing. Plus, I spent some of Monday on last minute details for the workshop we held at the Barber Motorsports Museum. Yesterday was taken up with a full day of a somewhat participatory workshop on Tourism-oriented wayshowing (helping travelers find their way to the places that they are looking for). It was a good workshop and we brought down a couple of people from the America's Byways Resource Center in Duluth, Minnesota. 40 people attended the workshop from around the state. We hope to have more.

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)

What a beautiful day yesterday was. I had a meeting just outside of Fort Payne, Alabama about the Lookout Mountain Parkway corridor management plan I'm working on with the Alabama Association of Regional Councils. Left early so I'd have a little time to explore downtown Fort Payne before the meeting.

After the meeting, we all drove the 5 miles on to the Little River Canyon National Preserve to see the 23,000 square foot JSU Canyon Center building that is currently under construction. I was very impressed (it isn't slated to open until early next year). The construction is really impressive--they are using geo-thermal heating and cooling and will have some really nice features. The construction really reminds me of some of the great National Park Service structures out west. One of the nicest things is that it was designed to really blend in with the environment around it. After that, I drove along a short section of the Little River Canyon rim. If you haven't been, you really should.

Lots of good stuff going on with Alabama's Scenic Byways program. Yesterday, we met to review grant applications for five projects and rank them according to a combination of factors. Very exciting to see the projects we've been working on since 1999 taking root in the local community and moving forward. Byways have some of the best potential to generate quality tourism in Alabama, particularly in the more rural sections. We also approved a logo for the byways program. Similar design to what I originally did, but we added an additional pine cone. Interestingly enough, in doing research on branding destinations, I've found that the general consensus is that people spend the most time and effort on developing a logo and a logo is one of the least important features of community branding.

Today, I'm off to Marion, Alabama to talk to the Cahaba Trace Commission about their interest in a scenic byway along their route. We're up to seven state scenic byways and three national byways, now, so the pressure to build the program is still there, but not as great as it was when we only had one. While in Marion, I'll take advantage of the trip and do a little photography of some of the architecture and landscapes for potential use on the Southwest Alabama Regional Tourism website: alabamasfrontporches.org.