Jan 11 to Jan 17

Hours worked:
Sunday- 3
Monday- 4
Tuesday- 6.5
Wednesday- 3
Thursday- 4
Friday- 4
Saturday-

Total: 24.5

Accomplishments:
1. Participated in our Green Passport planning conference call.
This is a project that was generated from my workgroup at the AKR-PWR Centennial Workshop in November. As a refresher, we made it a goal to offer ways for visitors to have green visits to their national parks, ie offset the carbon from their travels from home to the parks. If it’s an NPS goal to be carbon-neutral by 2016, why couldn’t we extend that challenge to our visitors?

-In a nutshell, we’d like to create a green passport booklet, where each park offers a collectable sticker. The purchase of a sticker for, say, $2 would offset 150 miles of travel. The sticker features a natural or cultural resource that is affected by climate change. Within the booklet, more information explains how this resource is threatened and what that park is doing to be climate-friendly.


-Initially, I was a bit hesitant with this project- it seems like such a grand project but when faced with the day-to-day tasks of our respective parks, how could we ever pull it off?

-But after this phone call, I think that this is both achievable and worth my/our time. Why?:
-I believe in the essence of the project, helping visitors go carbon neutral… not just educating them about climate change but also engaging them and being proactive
-It’s a good learning opportunity to see how projects are carried from inception to completion, at a more regional, long-term level.
-I get to work with staff from other national parks—and you know how I love collaboration and meeting new people. At the very least, there are 3 NPS people—David Grimes from Crater Lake, Tracie Pendergrast from Gates of the Arctic, and Jenny Matsumoto from Sequoia Kings—that I’ve been impressed by and would value a strong working relationship.

-Also, we’re all very conscious of our time and energy and are aiming for simple, achievable goals right now. David found a company in Portland that has worked with green tags for tours in Alaska—it’s a non-profit foundation devoted to carbon offsetting and they are will to do the design and production and distribution of these stickers. Essentially, all we’d have to do is help develop content, get permission to sell these in our stores, and help spread the word.

-We’d like to try this in some of our parks by summer 2010.
-We have another conference call at the end of February and I’m planning on visiting the
Bonneville Environmental Foundation during the George Wright Foundation week in Portland, and meeting up with David Grimes at CRLA when I road trip to CA in March.

Okay, I’m rambling, onto the other big project.

2. Made significant progress on the Junior Ranger Booklets
Sigh. Realistically, I’m 85% finished designing these booklets (first draft anyway). I feel like I’ve been working non-stop for the last two weeks on these pages, but can’t produce the designs fast enough to meet our deadline of today. According to our timeline, the designs were to be finished so everyone can provide edits by the end of the month so I can then go back and make those changes in time for our JR meeting on Feb 25. So I’m going to have to send out whatever I have by the end of today and then keep plugging away.

This project is a good learning experience for me. I know we never anticipated this project taking so much time and energy, but we’re going to end up with a product we’re all proud of. Also, this has been a good learning experience for me—picking up skills like long-term planning, finding ways to create more efficient designs and fine-tuning my gauge on how long a layout/illustration really takes. When I think about it, I’m actually pretty proud of my self-discipline in working from “home”. Thank you for your understanding and patience!!

And you know me, I’m a bit of a perfectionist and don’t like to reveal projects until they’ve met my high standard. But for the sake of working as a group and getting edits in, I’ve got to relinquish that expectation.










3. Guess what- flood damage was lower than expected (yay!) and we didn’t have to put out a newsletter (extra yay!!).

For next week, Jan 18 to Jan 24
1. Finish, seriously, the designs of the Junior Ranger booklets.
2. Meet for a lunch meeting with Shane Farnor from NPCA, to learn more about their Do Your Part Parks project and get his feedback on our green passport idea.
3. I’m assuming you don’t want me working on JR booklets between now and our Feb 25 meeting. Should I revisit projects like the Digital Image Library proposal? What are priorities for you in the next 4 weeks?
4. Even though you’ll be out of town, I’m still planning on visiting HQ on Thursday the 22. Followed by a Husky basketball game with Dave!