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Missing on Grouse: Anxiety, Terror and Frustration

The anxiety around the search for David Koch is painful to read on various blog entries.  An experienced outdoorsman who wasn't dressed for hiking, Koch went missing sometime after he took North Vancouver's Grouse Mountain tram last Wednesday evening.

By the time he was reported missing Friday, there was already anxiety about whether a proper search would be held, and whether an avoidable tragedy would in fact be avoided.

Being second-guessed, and dealing with agitated friends and relatives is standard procedure for search and rescue people.  The entries on a few blogs questioning the search methodology and calling for public pressure to maintain the search are an understandable response to a situation where nothing has gone as hoped.

From my vantage point, David Koch's family has done an amazing job of maintaining optimism, showing support for the search effort, and lobbying for an ongoing search.  And the volunteer searchers seem to have been relentless in their efforts to find the American publishing executive who drove straight to Grouse Mountain when he arrived on a business trip.

At least one Vancouverite shrugs off the search and rescue squad's explanation, and says the effort sucked, and appeared to be "disorganized and half-hearted." (See comments section of Shel Israel's blog and Darren Barefoot's blog, listed below.)

The call for untrained individuals to head into the rough country without training, survival gear and radios is scary. That's the last thing anyone missing in the mountains would hope for -- more people going missing.  The gondola, ski chalet and view of Greater Vancouver can make the mountain seem deceptively safe.  It's a mountain, with steep cliffs, ravines, slippery surfaces and many hazards waiting for even an experienced hiker.  Aside from walking the main trails, which the rescue crews have already done, there really aren't a lot of opportunities for average citizens to join in the search, without creating the potential for another rescue operation.  Most of the other work involves carefully exploring dangerous drop-offs, and widening the search to other, less obvious locations.

I think a lot of the frustration around this search comes from the fact that so little is known about what Koch did once he arrived on Grouse.  An experienced hiker, he would know to hold still and wait out the night, if he got lost.  However, it's not beyond imagining that he somehow became disoriented and for some reason didn't act like an experienced hiker.

The point is, no one knows.  When you're doing a search, you're usually trying to cover the most obvious locations first, then methodically eliminate other possible locations.  Any clues that would help you narrow the search would help enormously, but apparently there are no clues about where on the mountain he might be. By definition a West Coast mountain is a hard place to search, because there are just so many nooks and crannies where someone could be.

The helplessness no doubt felt by his wife, relatives and friends must be both terrifying and frustrating.  Anyone who has had a loved one go missing even for an hour knows the heart-stopping  fear that grips you as you run the possible scenarios in your head.  In this case, the good news scenarios have slowly been playing themselves out, and the temptation is to blame someone.  The family has resisted that impulse.

I pray the search continues as long as it can, in the hope that he can be found alive somewhere on the mountain. That's what search and rescue is all about: hoping that the next spot you check will  yield results, but not giving up easily when you still can't find the person you're looking for.

Shel Israel's blog entry has many comments from friends, relatives and a search member.
Darren Barefoot's blog also has some comments.
Vancouver Sun article published Monday.
Scott Robarts

See the Finish Line

When I'm trying to make a decision, sometimes I trick myself  into reacting to the decision, in order to figure out my gut reaction. Then, if my reaction is negative, I know that would be the wrong decision.

Playing tricks with your mind is how you get things done.

Jim Horton talks about pre-visualization as a proven method for saving time and money.  It's true.  Just about anything becomes easier if you head into it with a notion of how the end result should look.

That doesn't mean you have to stay rigidly locked into a predetermined set of actions.  But it means you can cut to the chase and focus just on the steps that will help you achieve your goal.  If, partway through, you realize you have to change the goal, your new goal should be that much clearer in your mind as a result of the analysis that helped you shift direction.

But most of the time, the clear picture you develop of the end result will be the one you keep working toward.

Taking Art to the Streets

  Hello, Mom? We're Busking! 
  Originally uploaded by Mutually Inclusive.

Every year the Cathedral area in Regina dusts off its dancing shoes and has an arts festival. Today the threat of rain wasn't enough to keep people away from 13th Avenue.

The buskers were out in force, and there were definitely deals to be had in the crafts booths.  Once a year, you say?  Pity!

Cathedral does its best to be bohemiam year-round, but it's only during the arts festival that its granola roots really show through.

Andrew K. on the fiddle.

A Published Poet Is a Lucky Man

  Victor Enns Book Launch - Lucky Man 
  Originally uploaded by Mutually Inclusive.

My friend Victor Enns was in Regina for a reading from his new book Lucky Man on May 18.

I've been waiting for this book to come out for the last 10 years, so was pleased to hear that Hagios Press was bringing it out.

Vic's incredible economy as a writer makes his observations on the life of a writer, father, husband, administrator, dreamer and survivor both immediate and compelling.

Victor writes and lives in Winnipeg now, but Saskatchewan still remembers him fondly for the rock solid job he did building the Saskatchewan Writers Guild into the best organization of its kind in the country.

Subscribing to Blogs Should Be Way Easier

I hate things that aren't self-explanatory, so I really hate the way you have to jump through non-intuitive hoops to subscribe to blogs.

There's an interesting proposal for linking to a mini-tutorial along with the button for subscribing to the blog's feed: The Usability of Subscribing to Feeds (Jeffrey Veen).

Thanks to Robert Scoble for the link.

Josh Hallett also talks about the frustration of trying to help people figure out RSS feed subscriptions.

Bloglines has some neat extensions for browsers that let you easily subscribe.  But for a total technophobe, even that step is probably too complicated.

Go Ahead and Force Me to Click Through to Your Blog

I was pleased to note today that Dan Gillmor's blog has switched to full RSS feeds, rather than truncated versions of the original posts.  Even before, at least Gillmor provided more than a few words of his posting in the feed.  Some blogs only provide part of the lead to grab your interest.

Sorry, most of the headlines and leads I read just don't succeed in teasing me to click through.  I sometimes wonder what an item might have been about as I quickly scan past it, but if I can't read more in my RSS aggregator, I find I rarely click through to read the whole item.

Oddly, I often find myself clicking through from a full-text feed in order to read an item in context, and see what else is on the blog.

I suppose that runs counter to the prevailing theory that the only way to force people to visit your site is to provide teasers, rather than your full content.

I think the best way to get people to visit your site is to produce compelling content, and make them feel like they want even more.

Allan Jenkins writes about his tendency to unsubscribe from blogs that don't provide full-text feeds.  B.L. Ochman responds in the comments section, saying her site is her main marketing tool.

I'm not militant about it, but I find I eventually unsubscribe from most blogs that provide a severely truncated feed, just because I don't find myself getting much out of the subscription.

Making Conferences Better

We've all spent too much time at conferences filling time when we wanted to be challenged, enlightened, or at least entertained.  Jeremy Wright calls for a little activism by conference attendees, and some better practices by conference organizers.

His suggestions include:

• Create an open room for attendees to host a 30-minute session on a subject of their choosing
• Replace panel discussions with interviews or interrogations
• When a panel is required, rely on audience questions, and keep the responses brief
• Provide wi-fi and an online chat room for feedback about the conference; adjust the sessions on-the-fly based on the feedback
• Plan networking sessions and events for people who don't arrive with their own group to hang out with
• Consider covering some expenses for conference presenters

Wright also links to a Stowe Boyd posting titled Death to All Panel Sessions.

Conference organizers have to remember that their customers make a large investment to attend (time away from work, travel, fees, accommodations), and they don't have a lot of options once they arrive.  Either the conference proves to be valuable to them, or they are out of luck.  Anything that can make a conference more welcoming, accommodating and valuable to the customer is worth trying.

Networking is traditionally something that is left to the conference-goers.  I like Wright's idea of making networking an integral part of the conference experience.

Book Reviewing Before the Book Is Written

I've been offering my feedback on a book about bloggers this week. No, it's not in bookstores. Check out Naked Conversations, the web site and sandbox for a book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

The chapter I"ve been commenting on is Chapter 7 - on public relations and blogs.

John Wagner, Robert French and Trevor Cook have also weighed in on the chapter.

Check out the book and decide for youself what you think.  And add your two cents.

Hey Bloglines, You Can Use My Link!

Whenever I subscribe to a new blog via Bloglines, I get a helpful list of other blogs I might be interested in.

I would love to have my blog included in that list.  Instead, I get urged to subscribe to Dan Gillmor's blog that he stopped updating on February 8 (which is about the date I started posting).

Hey, Bloglines!  If you're looking for current blogs to include in your promo list, mine is available. No charge.  ;-)

Accentuate the Positive

Lynne Viscio has the right idea with her piece Positive Deviance: Stop Focusing on What Went Wrong and Start Focusing on What's Going Well.

She explains that the tendency to focus on mistakes can sabotage change efforts in organizations:

"We see an 85 percent approval rating, and immediately begin unraveling the mystery of the 15% who are dissatisfied to win their approval in the future. While it is valid and valuable to shoot for an approval rating higher than 85%, the positive deviance concept challenges the conventional wisdom about the best way to get there. Positive deviance posits that understanding and reinforcing the hits may be more useful than deconstructing the misses."

Read the rest of her post here, or visit the CommLog blog about "the strategy and practice of communciations inside organizations."