Least Crowded Channel

A while back, Tom turned me on to some great interviews on Mixergy.com, and in particular an interview with Tim Ferris – the author of The 4-Hour Workweek. One of the many great ideas that came out of that interview (just go listen to it), was the idea of exploring and using the least crowded channel for communication. Tim figured out that if he wanted someone’s attention, the best way to do that was to use a channel of communication that wasn’t already crowded and noisy. For example, if you want to establish a relationship with an A-list blogger, the easiest way to actually get on their radar is not by sending them an email. These people are getting tons of email. Instead, Tim made a point of attending conferences where there were a more limited number of interactions.

Of course, that doesn’t just apply to people on the A-list, or even the B, C, or D-list. And it also isn’t just that face-to-face meetings are better. If you’re meeting people constantly in real life, but you have a new account on Twitter, maybe that is the best way to approach you. I wonder if that is/was part of the beauty of Twitter – especially at the beginning. There weren’t that many people on it, and so it was an uncrowded channel.

Today, I had my own little Least Crowded Channel experience. I’m online. There’s Twitter and email and Facebook, and a woman today took the time to find my phone number. Huh. It’s not exactly like a face-to-face meeting, but I get fewer phone calls than I get emails, so it worked. She wanted to submit a testimonial to YosemitePark.com about her family’s long-standing relationship with Yosemite to celebrate her parents’ 69th anniversary (they honeymooned in Yosemite in 1940). Today. And she called me at 4:30 as I was starting to think about winding down for the day. But, she had such a sweet and beautiful story, that I couldn’t resist. If she’d sent me an email – I may have skimmed it before I left. Maybe. But I’m sure I would not have felt as compelled to stay a little late to put her testimonial up today – much less give it front-page billing.

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Other notes:

We had a most marvelous thundershower this afternoon with booming and rolling thunder that echoed off the granite walls and shook the windows and walls of my office building and, for a brief time, pea sized hail. This is such a spectacular event in Yosemite, and rare enough that half the office building was standing out in front of the building just soaking it in. C was too excited to go to the front door though – and she perched herself on an open window sill with a glass in her outstretched hand trying to catch some hail. Fun times in the marketing department! Then, an hour or so later, the sky cleared, and the sunlight was streaming in through my window and glaring off my computer screen.

I found Calipidder’s post on different kinds of bear canisters today, fueling the fire to spend money to upgrade our outdated backpacking gear. I am really excited to do some more backpacking this year. I realized it has been more than 2 years since I went on the training trip with the Mountaineering School, and I haven’t done it at all since. We started to make plans for some winter camping back in February to catch the firefall light on Horsetail Falls from Sentinel Dome, and then realized that our gear is scattered to the four winds, and some old stainless steel cooksets were re-purposed into lacquering cans during construction. Winter is hardly the best season to realize that your ‘system’ is missing a few key components. Tom proposes regular a mid-week overnights just to get our system figured out a bit. Sure would be fun…

We pitched our new Black Diamond Hilight tent in the living room over the weekend, and unfortunately decided that we were going to have to keep looking for tents. I had gotten a different impression of the ventilation system from the pictures online, and we found it a bit stuffy – even in the comfort of home. Next tent to check out – the Double Rainbow by TarpTent.

We were excited to find Steershead flowers in bloom again on the Dewey Ridge trail this last weekend. What cool and funky flowers! McGurk Meadow has a few small flowers in it, but it’s early for wildflower season at that elevation still, and there was a fair amount of snow on the trail (although never enough to obscure the trail).

Someone went into the river today – above Vernal Falls. The water is big, right now. Big, and beautiful, and DANGEROUS. Please be careful out there.