January 1, 2012

[DonnaFlood]

January 1, 2012

Today being the first kicks off the same life style we have had for all the 54 years of our marriage. Older family dwindles down now, and new ones who are younger walk through, instead. Things never change as far as folks suffering through life's challenges with impossible solutions. All we can do is offer a cup of coffee, a piece of cake, and
a tidbit of conversation. I've found folks are happier with that than with a full course meal.
I'm trying to make a list of those I have not seen and known in a while, special people who have brought me a kindness or two. At least I can send a card, or call if I can get them at home. I did call one person yesterday and she was so precious with her thank you for my call.
Little did she know I was the one who is gifted with her
personage. She told me her singing voice is gone and she no longer plays the guitar and sings. I was sad to hear that.
My long time neighbor's house next door burned and I had not the opportunity to see him to express my regrets. Yesterday we ran into each other at the store and he was okay. He said the contractors were building a whole new house, inside, and he was good with that, and so was I. Another neighbor remarked at how non-commital and unconcerned he was about his loss.
"Osages are like that!" I smiled as I shared this bit of questionable knowledge about that tribe with her.
My cousin (brother, Ponca relationship) Steve Pensoneau, won the election for a place on the council and I'm happy for that. The way Ponca government is set up no election makes any difference anyway. They have to have a quorum to pass anything and usually there are never four people who can agree or vote on anything, so the same old, same old goes down.
Steve is a good person, though. This is what he wants and I wish him success as far as he can achieve it with antiquated government constitutions patterned off the same government that is so in trouble in the U.S. now. I'm always way out on the limb with no interest in what they do. My own family government teeters, too, with constant need for shoring up on this or that front which leaves me exhausted and having no inclination to manage anything else., certainly not something as big as a great stumbling bear.
One brother said, "I didn't know what Sis meant about my being "naive," in thinking I could make a difference in tribal affairs. I now know."
Another brother made the comment that the nation of Poncas were ungovernable? At least this was his experience. This seems like a more astute observation to me. And so it is as we learned in Al-Anon, Accept the things we cannot change.”
My love and hopes for the instituting of a government under our King Christ Jesus remains in my heart. Then is when we will see "a wonderful counselor," and a "Prince of Peace," who will rule with love.
"Stand still a little while," we are told through the scriptures, "while I fight this battle for you."

[Alastair]

Re: January 1, 2012

I often think that it the young people that will take us forward as it is they that are having to take the brunt of the word's woes right now. Unemploymet of the young is at record proportions in the West and the burdens of health care and pensions with a growing aged population are only going to get worse.

In this online world we seem to be stalled on where it will take us. While social networking is taking up a greater and greater percentage of our online time I really don't see it as doing anything for business or tourism and that is where the jobs are. Our marketing people in my view have totally failed to understand the web and see having their own web site as being their only real outlet to the web population. I personally think they've all shot themselves in the foot with their totally useless web advertising campaigns. The web is meant to be the greatest communication tool we've ever had but marketing people have an astonishing lack of being able to communicate over it. They seem so stuck with page impressions and click throughs that they have failed to educate people about their companies.

While my focus has been on Scotland I would say the problems I see in Scotland in the online world are replicated by all other countries. Where are the large web sites that can promote tourism and business? What I see is that tourism sites mainly use their own web sites as their principle method of promoting themselves and yet the vast majority of them fail to make any significant progress or indeed get that much web traffic. I would guess if you really looked hard at their web traffic that most will come from the travel trade and their own staff. Apart from that traffic most others will visit because they are going there anyway. They either already life in the country or State, Province, etc and are checking to see what events are on. The next group will be people going there anyway to visit with friends or family or indeed going there for business. But note that they are going there anyway for one reason or another.

And so what the travel organisations need to do is to get themselves in front of people that right now have no interest in going to their area and that is where the travel trade has missed the boat. While doing my reasearch on the history of Scotland and also places around the world where Scots have settled I've never yet had any tourism company or organisation provide any information on their country or area. I've porfiled countries and places within many countries and yet never have I had any kind of respone from them other than "visit our web site" and no you can't use any information on our site as it's all copyright. How pathetic is that?

And when it comes to businesses in the industrial or commercial sectors they seem unable to provide any information about themselves other than "visit our web site". And how many times have I heard someone say "We're just doing a makeover of our web site". Like our web site isn't providing us much in the way of new business so there must be something wrong so let's do a web site makeover. They seem to be perfectly happy to spend the money on a makeover but fail to understand that web site traffic is actually in decline in general terms. More and more time online is being taken up by social networking and thus less time is being spent visiting web sites. And of course the growth in web sites is still huge but any new web site is seriously challenged to get ever 1,000 visitors a month.

In my view if a country or area really wants to promote itself it needs to tell us a story of the area and all the businesses in it. A few lines of description isn't going to do it. Then it needs to positively promote the area by ensuring everyhing on it is copyright free and even positively encourage visitors to take any information they want from it for their own web sites. Apart from the effort to produce oontent there is no cost to letting people take information for their own web sites and surely that must translate into more business for them.

Taking rhe Ponca lands as an example. There really need to be someone to go around every business in the area and get a story about them and their business along with pictures and videos. They then need to take hundreds of pictures and feature their town and cultural events. Having brought all that together they then need to spend their time sending out articles to any web site that would be interested in featuring anything to do with their business and tourism sectors. Spread the word as far as you can. That way many more people will learn of the area and all that is available.

That's real marketing. So why aren't the marketring people doing anything on this front. Right now I'd say that marketing as a sector are seriously challenged to be relevant in this modern world. None of this prevents you from having your own web site but there has to be a lot more involved if you want to use the web to promote the area.

Donna over many years has talked about the Ponca heritage but she's also talked about it to a bunch of Scots. I think the one lack in all this is telling us about how to get to the Ponca lands, where to stay and what to see and do. That is where marketing people should see the opportunity and persuade her to feature some of this information. We need pictures so we can see what's available. Why don't they hire a few unemployed people and send them out with cameras to take pictures and interview companies and organisations. They could them provide great story boards about the area.

We're simply not getting the amount of detailed information that we should be getting. And Donna simply can't do this work on her own so where are the people with vision and enterprise that could help her? I mean right now her work is being read by people from all over the world. I am sure before we started reading Donna's accounts and stories we'd never heard of the Ponca tribe. However because of her writings many of us have developed an interest in her heritage. We likely mention it to others as well and so the word has spread. And so in a small way Donna has let the world knw that there is a Ponca Indian Tribe. I'm sure as a result some of us have bothered to do the odd search to learn more and that's given some of these web sites some extra trffic that they'd never have had otherwise.

And so Donna is a rare example of what the marketring people should be doing and are not doing. So good on Donna. She's probably doing more for the Ponca Indian Tribe and their area than all the so called marketing people in the area are doing together.

So well done Donna and as we say in Scotland - Lang may yer lum reek!

Alastair