ANLA; Mgmt Clinic, A Stick in my Side

There he was, sitting dead center-left side of the aisle in the very front row. The absolute maximum exposure spot to get the Presenter’s attention . . . the perfect spot.

Green Waste

The talk was on turning Green Waste into a positive, the speaker was from a German company GaLaBau Energy(BIOFerm), and sponsored by the ELCA(European Landscape Contractors Assoc.).

GaLaBau; as it became very clear to me, has gotten it together and come up with a terrific way to process all this waste material and turn it into usable fuel or electric energy . . . real cutting edge business.

Anyway, all of us go to thes conferences to learn, adapt, become smarter(I hope), be the guy back home who’s on the cutting edge . . . so we attend lectures, take notes, and ask questions.

Ask Questions

Look, I do some speaking and I think it’s great when attendee’s ask questions, search for more info, challenge some information considered more philosophical or opinion based than factual based.

When the audience member starts to inject their agenda, their philosophy, their local problems . . . that audience member crosses over a line. It becomes about them and not the presenter.

We do not spend over $1,000 dollars and 3-4 days of our time to hear about zoning regulations and “why this won’t work in my town in Illinois, blah, blah, blah . . .”  We do come to hear about cutting edge knowledge, ideas and possibilities.

Shooting ‘em down

So what happened? Around the 4th time or so when the audience heard something to the effect that this plant wouldn’t fly in “Somewhere, Illinois” because . . . bah, blah, blah.

I said loud enough from him to hear

Dude! we do not ‘care/need’ to know how you do it in Illinois. We ‘re here to hear the talk.

Or something very, very close to that.

Reaction time

So a few in the crowd chuckled, or smiled back at me, or just lowered the head momentarily. and Mr. Huber rolled on completely non-pulsed by the comment. The fellow from Illinois remained quiet for the rest of the talk.

Upon completion of the talk some in the crowd who knew me came over.

Rick you really shut that guy down.

Another,

Wow, you were pretty hard on that guy . . .

Also,

I expected nothing less, did he say anything to you?

Finally,

Well you must not like anyone from Illinois.

The guy who was making all the remarks did not look my way, nor did he say anything. Nothing else was said by anyone else, case closed.

Well, maybe not

Later I am walking through somewhere down a hall and someone who wasn’t even there walks up and says.

Hey, I heard you were pretty hard on some guy in the Green Waste talk, people are saying you really shut him down.

Yesterday morning, the last day of the conference, someone who I have known a long time, says to me.

Now Rick as your friend I just want to tell you to watch out because it’s getting around about how hard you were on a guy yesterday, and it’s not in a good way.

I just thought I’d let you know some folks are not happy and talking pretty negative about the way you were.

So there you have it. I spent 4 days of my time, over a $1,000.00 bucks to attend the Clinic and instead of listening to a guy bemoan, belly-ache, and whine about his zoning problems by telling him to can it . . . I am now the bad guy

. . . I need to be quiet(those of you that personally know me, know this is a impossibility).

My reaction,

Well guess what? I am not sorry, I would do it again. There’s a line and he went over it.

I cannot help if his feelings are hurt . . . maybe if we went back to winners and losers, keeping score, giving trophies only to winners and passing/failing people. The stick in my side could have taken it like a man, and there wouldn’t be such shock by my remark.

Will this hurt me down the road: as far as being hired to speak, at the Clinic in the future? I don’t know, heck this post may become part of the equation. But I do not regret what I said.

I do not take it back, nor do I wish I had just thought it rather than say it. Mr. Huber was delivering some great information, his company has great ideas, great goals . . . lofty ambitions to taking care of a very big problem . . . give me that any day over a lamenter in the crowd.

I love the ANLA Mgmt Clinic, it’s the best Conference in the industry and I will continue to attend, though I may be done as a speaker-I don’t know.

More about the clinic and some great info on sustainability, rain-water gardens, invasive vs non-native, and some final thoughts all yet to come.

All very postive events/talks/ideas.

Setting Landscape Boulders

Here’s one from the “old file” showing a 100 ton crane after a days work of setting some large stone boulders. Uh, of course they’re stone-they’re boulders.

This was back in Columbia, SC in the late 1990’s built into an embankment, the idea was too look like a tumbling waterfall cascading down this hillside.

The shelfs have been dug and today’s image shows the really large anchor stones already in place. How’d they get there? Stay tuned for those images.

[ A few of the lower boulders behind crane weighed in excess of 15 tons. ]

I will post images of boulders being set and a final look at the project in the next post.

An Appreciation of Stone (12)

posted, 10/12/06
Setting the Big Boulders !!!!

Now this is fun . . . . More shots of this project at my web-site.

Ascension, more Images.

posted; 07/22/06

[Moving a small one]

I posted about this project on Wednesday the 19th, and mentioned something about putting more photos online-well then go here if you have some time to kill.

There are images for the drawings I completed for the proposal and many shots of the job in action, including a traffic jam and the Fire Dept. hosing off quartzite.

What I wish for are some night shots . . .someday I’ll go back and hopefully take some.

Trac-hoes, 100 Ton Cranes, and VERY Large Boulders.

posted; 07/19/06

I have just put up what I am going to call a “project page” on my website. It concerns this sculptural piece that I named Ascension It is on a hillside going into a large city in South Carolina, and I had hoped it would look like whitewater tumbling off the hillside.

In the above photo you are looking at the quarry where the stone came from. A mica-schist for the outcroppings, big boulders, banks, etc. and a quartzite to represent the whitewater (lots of mineral deposits and flakes to make it shine –especially at night with lights).

Right now I just have a lot of images up and am going to add a narrative in a day or two. Two things will always stand out from this project for me. One—it took 3 times as long to prep as it did to execute the installation of the project. Two— it was a lot of fun, a lot of fun. I’d do it again, given the opportunity.

The above shot is the crane in action. We spent 2 full days just preparing the correct base for the crane and it’s outriggers to stabilize on. It’s good to be careful when moving boulders weighing as much as 13/14 ton.

Placing boulders-this one probably weighs in under 2 and a half ton — a mere lightweight. So safety at all times – which is really about being alert. While those guys are doing the final prep, the crane operator and I did a strange dance to communicate where and how I wanted the boulders placed.

The other nice thing about this was that it was not a pedestrian area so I had some latitude in placement. After all, my primary viewer was going by in cars at 40-55 mph making detail in placement a non-issue.

The city did a little bit of planting around the edges to soften the area, I would have liked to put in several hundred grasses but there was no budget for that sort of planting.

Final thoughts, it was a great challenge – especially logistically, but it was a lot of fun. I hope it brings a little bit of enjoyment to those that drive by everyday.

Ascension, from the Concept Drawing

posted; 05/00/06
This was the drawing I had to show the City Council to receive final approval to work the project. See previous post. This was back when most of my concept drawings were completed in black and white.

I would still prefer to do them all this way, but the client likes looking at renderings with color. Color helps with the visualization of possibilities.

Ascension, some big-time Boulder Work

posted; 05/00/06
This is a shot of a 11 ton stone going into a sculptural piece I did a few years ago in Columbia, South Carolina. A mass-grouping of stones on a hillside to give the appearance of a waterfall.