Why Bats Rule in the UK

The campus itself might’ve been what drew me to the May Fest Grounds Tour at the University of Nottingham – it’s vast, sweeping, and dotted with stately buildings and huge trees, many of which are more than three centuries old. Leading the small but eager group was Grounds Maintenance Manager Martyn Lloyd, who hadn’t planned on staying at UON for 25 years, but initiatives in United Kingdom environmental policy precipitated some unconventional practices which have kept his interest. 

For starters, they don’t mow the lawn – at least, not very often. And it’s not really a lawn. The Downs – a patch of several acres on the north side – has been allowed to grow without seeding or herbicides for several years. “For the first two years after we stopped mowing, the grass grew way too long,” said Lloyd, whose looks and manner seem rather more like those of an insurance executive. “But we left it alone. After that, the wildflowers and other plants grew in and now keep the grasses naturally short.” I’d been walking through this field for a week on a paved path and it never occurred to me it was in any way untended. Its texture is lush, dotted with flowers, and far more engaging to the eye than mere grass. Departing from the traditional, prim, English-garden aesthetic, the Downs is a gently rolling meadow upon which wild birds forage and students often relax and play sports. Its upkeep is thousands of pounds less per year than a traditional lawn, and when local farmers mow it twice a year, they use the clippings to feed livestock.

Although “not-doing” might be at odds with a traditional British work-ethic, it seems to produce quite good results on the UON campus. Fallen dead trees, to cite another example, are seldom removed as long as they’re not blocking a roadway or heavily-trafficked path. Allowing them to rot where they lie creates a habitat for plants and fungi which nurture insects, which in turn feed birds and, most important, bats.

Bat numbers have drastically declined  all over western Europe in recent times because of habitat loss and pollution. Fortunately, scientists have been able to demonstrate that some bats are keystone species, meaning that if you lose them, because of their interdependence with so many other kinds of plants and animals, it would cause significant damage to the ecosystem. (Honeybees are another keystone species, as are African elephants.) The problem and its projected consequences inspired a willingness to provide international protection for all European bats (intentionally killing them can be imprisonable), and this order, combined with a willingness to appropriately manage the campus, now makes it possible for nine species of bats to flit freely through the night skies at UON, and roost in the hollows of its ancient trees and buildings.

To me, the most interesting part of all this is how UON’s biodiversity action plan ingeniously leverages the bats’ ‘keystone-species’ status. By doing things to the campus which are known to nurture and protect bats – and not doing things which would threaten or compromise them – Lloyd and his department can be certain of making life good for a wide range of other species who benefit directly or indirectly from the bats’ presence, or who share their environmental needs. This centering of an environmental policy around a single, influential group of species provides a way to measure the overall quality of the environment cost-effectively and relatively quickly. Threats are more likely to be detected and dealt with before they do irreparable damage. But how to communicate these benefits effectively to the public in order to build and maintain their support?

The answer to that question came during a conversation with another person whose work involves surveying protected species, including bats: Mark Woods, a Senior Ecologist at BSG Ecology, the company that prepared the Biodiversity Action Plan for UON. According to their website, BSG provides ecological consultancy for a variety of clients such as property developers and government agencies to ensure that they comply with environmental law and local, national and international biodiversity policies.

Woods noted how UON’s policies and campus management help to market its environmental credentials and promote the campus as a sustainable and attractive place to study . The campus has become a showpiece of open space in the City of Nottingham, which is one of Great Britain’s greenest cities, maintaining over 200 wildlife-friendly areas within its boundary. Woods and Lloyd both mentioned that universities are a critical element in scientific outreach to the public, who often respond by raising funds and providing volunteer labor to support new initiatives. In the often-torturous relationship between science and the public, is this one of the less-bumpy places? If so, what can be learned from it?

During the year, citizens are invited to assist with nighttime bat surveys, sometimes led by Woods, who’s also a part-time lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, and member of the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. (Other activities on the UON campus include counts of scarce plant species, wildlife walks and bird surveys usually run by local experts.) The surveying teams use a handheld bat detector to convert the flying mammals’ high-frequency echolocation calls to a sound within range of human hearing. The frequency and type of call enables identification of the species. It’s a relatively risk-free adventure in nature which connects members of the public with science, but Woods says he rarely if ever mentions science during bat surveys. Likewise, Lloyd never mentioned science during the grounds tour, even though we were hip-deep in it the entire time.

As in grounds-keeping, is “not-doing” part of effective science communication? Woods: “Don’t mention science. Let people get interested in what’s in front of them because that’s what gets them hooked. The environmental studies, the evolutionary evidence, the biology and chemistry, can all come later, once they really want to know how nature works.”

On Spending the Night at Heathrow, Part One

Britain is unseasonably cold this Spring, so the walk to catch a speeding Nottingham city bus in late May feels like early March. Public transportation is plentiful in the UK, but not what you might call intermodally connected, so the bus leads to another walk, followed by a fast but crowded three-hour train ride north, to Manchester. Since the trip has been almost completely paid for through a generous grant from the University of Nottingham, I get to look out the window at rugged Midlands farms covered with herds of sheep instead of worrying about how much money I’ve spent.

The author, during a more sanguine moment of travel.

This long journey back to my home near Kansas City is the latest physical manifestation of an intellectual trip that’s lasted over a year, learning about the esoteric topic of the relationship of science to the public. Through a number of suggested readings and occasional conversations with members of a distinguished team of academic advisors, my preconceptions have been shattered and replaced by a bewilderingly complex sociological mind-hole I’d never imagined existed. When I occasionally glance back at my previous simplistic assumptions about it, I get a weird feeling of superiority combined with stupidity. Do scholars ever get that feeling? Do they seek it out like caged lab rats hooked on heroin?

This thought reminds me to prepare myself for unanticipated changes in my travel plans, a mental exercise I find useful on long trips. Looking past my reflection in the train window to where the aforementioned sheep are calmly grazing, I feel quiet confidence that I can endure whatever lies ahead.

The train deposits me at Manchester Airport, a relatively small regional facility which, despite everyone’s description of it as ‘friendly’ and ‘easy to navigate,’ involves 2 escalator rides, 2 elevator rides, and a rapid 10-minute saunter through a glass walkway that doubles as a wind-tunnel to get to the ticket counter. All this, combined with at least three stops for the purpose of turning completely around with a puzzled expression on my face.

In addition, Manchester Airport is packed with travelers – after all, it’s a bank holiday here, all the schools have just let out, and in the US, it’s the beginning of Memorial Day weekend. What I couldn’t yet understand at this point is that these conditions are gradually pushing against each other like giant weather cells to create a supercharged travel environment in which the slightest disruption will dramatically alter any plan a naïve traveler is foolish enough to harbor. And then some.

When I finally arrive at the British Air ticket counter, the line is already two hours long and growing like a mushroom in a pile of shit. The question on everyone’s lips is, “What’s happening?” and although BA has dispensed a representative to provide information, she and her clipboard are surrounded by a dozen concerned faces asking questions. Remembering to stay flexible, I move to the end of the ticket-counter line, where a middle-aged Australian woman informs me that there’s been “a runway incident” at Heathrow Airport in London, where most of us are heading. In the absence of further information, murmurs of terrorism and disaster percolate along the line at the ticket counter. But as things go among travelers banded together by the fear of death or inconvenience, by the time I get to the front of the line, I’ve learned the names of the Australian lady’s grandchildren as well as the fact that an emergency landing of a British Air jet has precipitated the closing of two runways and the cancellation of dozens of flights, including the one I was supposed to catch from London to Chicago O’Hare.

“Why cancel a day’s worth of flights?” a loud local man queries the people standing nearby. “Why not just push the one airplane over to the side and keep the others moving?” I patiently explain that if they don’t know the reason for the landing, officials must assume it’s a ‘crime scene,’ which requires they leave it where it is until a government safety team gives the green light. This twig of knowledge I’ve undoubtedly plucked from the back of a cereal box or a reality TV program appears to stem a tide of indignation that had been rising quickly and I feel relieved to have thought of it, true or not. The last thing we need now is a riot.

The ticket agent at the BA counter in Manchester has one of those impossibly affected manners of speaking one expects from a character in farce, but he’s nonetheless able to reroute me to the states on a Virgin Atlantic flight to London and then United to Newark. He’s having difficulty getting me to Kansas City or even Chicago from Newark and I’m tempted to tell him I can take it from there – just getting to the states at this point somehow feels like “home.” Astoundingly, on his final plunge into the data reservoir, he heroically retrieves a next-day flight from Newark to Kansas City. Fantastic – I’m all covered! Except for the fact that my Virgin Atlantic flight leaves in 45 minutes.

In spite of my headlong rush to the second ticket counter, followed by a slalom-run through security, Virgin Atlantic (inexplicably operated by Aer Lingus) is delayed leaving Manchester by over an hour in order to collect luggage from several other airlines. Passengers (including Chatty Australian Lady and Loud Local Man) continue the conversations started in the ticket-counter line as though reunited with old friends. I do my part to contribute, aided by snacks and drinks from the cabin crew, but my resolve to be at peace with the unexpected has slowly begun to unravel.

From Manchester to London is only slightly bumpy from the turbulence of a strong East wind, but our plane is late anyway. Desperately, horribly late. And upon landing, as the flight-time for Newark looms closer, the stakes escalate because by now every flight and every hotel room are undoubtedly booked. If I don’t make it onto United 115, I’ll likely be spending the night at Heathrow – a public facility which has evolved into one of the weirdest places in the world.  

(To be continued.)

Jean Pennycook, Penguins and the Scientific Agenda

Also published in Infozine.

Onstage at the KC Zoo’s lobby auditorium theater, Jean Pennycook is dwarfed by the towering IMAX screen. Even her slides about penguin research occupy only a fraction of the visual space – an apt analogy for her work, which itself occupies a tiny sliver of the vast universe of all human science.  

Pennycook is part of a group which studies “factors regulating population size and colonydistribution of Adelie Penguins in the Ross Sea,” a decade-long project with a budget well under two million dollars. The job begins in mid-October when she departs from central California to live four months in minus-10 degree cold, two and a half months of which are spent sitting on a rock watching penguins. All day, every day.

Even to a couch-potato like me, it doesn’t sound fun: After a brief period of staging their gear, the team moves from the larger research station to the field station, where the living room for four people is about the size of a small mobile home, containing a propane heater which she admits “doesn’t make much difference if you’re standing farther than two feet away.” The food there is dried, canned or, of course, frozen, and they’re not allowed to leave behind any trace of their presence – not even a drop of urine. Thus, when they depart, all the gear and human waste (collected in little blue bags) is flown out by helicopter.  I can’t help secretly wondering, while she describes this, if, after 75 days with no showers, it’s hard to tell the field researchers from the little blue bags.

Seeing Pennycook in person – an attractive, middle-aged woman with a burst of red hair and a slightly worried expression – it’s difficult to imagine she’s got what it takes to tough-out four months in the last real wilderness left on our planet. But it makes perfect sense when you learn that she taught high school science for “a long time” before taking a fun trip to the very deep south to see what 'real' science is like.

Twelve years passed and she’s gone back every time, having abandoned what most people regard as normal life. Her school district in Fresno, California, sensed that having an active researcher (an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at that) on the science staff might be a good thing, and allowed her to stay on as a developer, teaching teachers and putting curriculum together. But unlike other school personnel, she’s also obligated (and apparently delighted) to present penguin research in dozens of public talks each year at zoos, schools, colleges, church groups, Rotary clubs, scout troops, and pretty much any other venue where people want to know more about penguins or living conditions in Antarctica.

Why is it important to know about that part of the world, I ask. “Antarctica’s a very important continent as far as our climate. Because it’s covered with ice, it reflects a lot of solar radiation. And as that ice gets smaller and smaller, that radiation isn’t going to be reflected – it’s going to be absorbed, which means our world will continue to heat up more. So the amount of ice is very important.”

That was the part of her answer I expected. But then, she said something that surprised me: “The other thing about Antarctica is that it’s an untapped continent as far as resources. Right now, nobody’s allowed to do anything with the resources, but that could become more and more important as time goes on, I believe.” She went on to say that something about the fact that it has no internal borders, no military or indigenous people, but I was back on the “resources” part. What did that mean? Which resources? The ice? Was there coal under the ice? Or oil? Do penguins poop out gold nuggets? Or are they, like one of my college roommates, an amazing and endless source of natural gas?

Jean’s statement about the importance of Antarctic research pretty much sums up what modern science is all about. Scientists like to say their work is not political – that the knowledge they produce has intrinsic value. But who determines the agenda? By what mechanism is it decided to learn about the factors affecting penguin life or, alternately, whether precious metals are cached a mile beneath their rocky  nests?

The enterprise of science, which drives human beings to the farthest reaches of existence, is the most powerful and transformative that humans have ever developed. But is the science that warns us of environmental threats to adorable penguins also the same science that created the environmental threats? If so, then this is a many-headed dragon, one that brings delightful gifts and also terrifies and kills, all under the banner of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, as though mankind had no motive other than curiosity.

The NationalScience Foundation wisely requires that the research it funds, including that of the team Jean Pennycook is part of, disseminate broadly the methods involved and the knowledge acquired. And Pennycook, a born teacher, takes obvious pleasure in doing so. But is this arrangement part of a larger program – one that delivers products to you (knowledge of penguins, pictures of the Martian surface, replacement organs, nuclear energy, etc.), with the implicit understanding that you won’t ask to become part of the process of deciding what comes next?

Bring On the Yawns: Time to Expose Science’s “Dirty Little Secret”

Also published on Infozine and in the Making Science Public blog. 

As a visiting fellow in the “Making Science Public” project, I’ve had a great first week at the University of Nottingham, filled by conversations with social science scholars and capped off with the events of May Fest – a day in which the local public received (among other things) a sustained exposure to science. As I elbowed my way through the overstuffed hallways of the Portland building on Saturday morning, the presence of eager crowds playing with exhibits of zoology, microbiology, chemistry and more, strongly suggested that science has many fans. This conclusion, though, reminds me of a question relevant to a study of the relationship between science and the public: Does science need more fans?

Dr. Philip Moriarty, a professor in the university’s physics department, would likely argue that it does. When I was fortunate enough to visit with Moriarty earlier this week, he proudly gave me a tour of the lab which occupies much of his attention. It’s a room about the size of a one-car garage. In one end hunkers a huge, gleaming metal object comprised of conduits, chambers, wires and instrumentation:  an ultrahigh vacuum, low temperature scanning probe microscope.

Moriarty introduces me to his colleague and collaborator, Dr. Adam Sweetman, who’s seated in front of a bank of monitors which bristles with graphics so complex, they make the Big Board in Dr. Strangelove look like an Etch-A-Sketch. Their work involves testing and understanding the bonds between atoms. Moriarty, who’s gifted at explaining science to lay audiences, freely confesses that their work is basic research, the kind with no known practical applications. Not that it will never have any – in a relatively short time, what Moriarty, Sweetman and other nano-researchers discover may help to make machinery such as solar panels even smaller and more efficient. But a relatively short time in science could be years.

Today, Sweetman’s job is to sit for hours and note tiny fluctuations on the shifting graphs in front of him, indications which will help them figure out whether they’re seeing those atoms they wish to study or merely the tip of the observing instrument itself – a super-tiny filament whose nose is made inevitably of atoms. One of the screens appears to show a collection of ping-pong balls suspended in tomato soup, but the picture seems badly out of focus. “See that?” asks Moriarty. “Those are atoms. You’re looking at atoms on the screen.” This is very cool in itself, but the atoms aren’t moving much. On another screen, the atoms are rendered in black-and-white. It’s a completely different image. As we watch, there’s a slight shift and both Moriarty and Sweetman take note – they’re seeing what they want to see.

As Moriarty explains the workings of the microscope – a half million-dollar instrument which can be purchased ‘off the rack’ these days – I can’t help but notice that parts of it are covered with what looks like aluminum foil, hunks just big enough to wrap a chicken in. Research budgets aren’t close to what they were five years ago when the university bought the microscope, so I can’t help wondering if this is some low-tech ‘patch’ made necessary by lack of funding. (Moriarty tells me later, however, that it’s purely for helping to rid the system of condensed water so the vacuum inside it is unpolluted. Apparently, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland also uses this technique.) With money being so tight, people like Moriarty and Sweetman are under pressure to produce something usable, something private enterprise can license and manufacture, a piece of knowledge that will create revenue which flows back to the university.

But today, in the lab, there’s no sense of urgency, just a quiet hum of the microscope as Sweetman watches patiently, understanding the screen’s fluctuations because he’s done this for a long time and he knows what he’s doing. In thousands of other labs and field projects across the scientific landscape of the UK and beyond, researchers are performing other monotonous jobs, and this is the reality of science which often escapes the public – unglamorous, long-term investigation.

Moriarty and I move to a nearby coffee shop on campus and sip Americanos. (Apparently, no one in the UK drinks brewed coffee anymore.) Moriarty reveals a deep concern about a study by another scientist whose conclusions seem unjustified. The quality of the peer review, he feels, is suspect, and the researcher won’t produce all of the original data as Moriarty has requested. Even the journal which printed the researcher’s paper is stonewalling further inquiry. This lack of transparency has plagued science for a long time. The National Academy of Sciences in the US has recently expressed concern about increasing instances of fraudulent research findings. Tight budgets, Moriarty agrees, are forcing many scientists to fudge results in order to get published.

One key to solving these systemic issues might lurk in the hidden truth rather than the visible lies. Despite the science most lay audiences are familiar with – a universe of glossy TV shows, websites, fairs, books and periodicals – science’s ‘dirty little secret’ is that most scientific research produces no breakthroughs or exciting finds. In fact, it isn’t meant to. In order to be verifiable and useful, science is mostly about learning what doesn’t work. It’s about dead ends and back-checking and cross-checking threads of research. It’s about being wrong WAY more than being right. And when money is tight, as it has been increasingly for years, the unglamorous but essential work performed by 95% of scientists is becoming harder to fund.

During our conversation, I suggest to Moriarty that this eventuality is partly the fault of science itself, at the institutional level. The culture of science has for generations programmed the public to expect big breakthroughs and amazing miracles in medicine, physics, exploration, and any brand of science which doesn’t require too much work to understand. It’s worked for decades to keep the public on the hook, while presenting scientists as genius wonder-makers, always on the verge of something game-changing.

The emphasis on the products of science – instead of the process – has denied the modern public a source of knowledge that would help them become more discerning consumers. And today, the public has become more ignorant instead of more sophisticated (if only because science is so much more complex), and therefore easy to misinform about issues such as climate change, early-childhood vaccinations, even evolution, one of the best-understood bodies of knowledge in the world.

Moriarty is dubious at first: “When I talk to schools about science, I don’t want to tell them that it’s boring.” But being a good scientist, he’s willing to consider it. After all, science is about results. 

Communication 101: No Risk, No Repetition

Chicken! You made that marketing video for your company - and spent thousands of dollars and four work days - and got 214 views on Youtube. 'What went wrong' you ask? 'What the hell happened' you want to know? 

Simple - you wussed out!! You didn't take any risks at all!! You committed the cardinal sin of internet video - you were boring. 

Hey, I don't NEED to watch your marketing video - my friends on Facebook send me about a hundred videos a day and even though some of them are just stupid, I watch them BECAUSE someone took a 15th of a second to send them to me, WHICH MEANS at least one thing in those videos made them laugh, cry, gasp or be disgusted enough to pass it along. Your video, no one passed along. Not even your mom. Dude, would it have killed you to be a little creative? Take a little risk? 

You see, if I may, there's this one tiny, little thing to keep in mind about the internet:

IT'S. NOT. TELEVISION. 

It's interactive. 

Which means no one has to look at your video, especially when there are a hundred thousand things to watch that are more interesting. Nevertheless, I want you to MAKE ME WATCH.

So, if you're selling storm doors, have someone drive through one. 

Selling loans? Show someone in a leprechaun suit giving away money for free at a shopping mall like a drunken idiot.  

Selling fish? Make one sing 'Take Me To The River.' (Full disclosure: I STOLE that idea.)

Or you could do something inspiring and uplifting: 

[Examples under construction.]

Yes, you have to take a risk. You have to show me you understand my sense of humor, my attitude about life, my overpowering ennui, my fears, my ambitions, my insincerity, my inhibitions, my uncertainty about my sexuality, my laziness, my desire to be great, my greed, my love for the color orange. Show me that you get me. And make it amazing. 

And you know what's even more amazing? That I have to tell you to do it. 

Communication 101: Penetrating the Audience Brain Portal

Communication 101 is a random series of statements about business and marketing communication which may or may not occur in coherent order. Or make sense. Or be useful. Thank you.

You know what makes a joke work? It's not the punchline, it's the setup. (It's a real art and I come from a long line of very good joke-tellers.) You have to prepare the listener just right in order for the payoff to work. Likewise in video, if you prepare an audience appropriately, they'll buy whatever you're selling. But preparation includes making the emotional connection which allows them to hear the content. If you don't get them to trust you, they simply stop listening. Most mistakes are made in the first few seconds. 

Your video needs to say the right thing to make your audience relax. But finding that target is usually hard, and hitting it dead on is even harder. 

To properly visualize this challenge, remember how Luke Skywalker popped a missile into the only vulnerable port on the Death Star in Star Wars IV - a tiny hole two meters wide on a sphere the size of the moon? (Come on, geek out with me for a minute!) Well, that's about what it's like to find the perfect sales handle on a video - the one that penetrates your prospect's protective shields of fear and suspicion and ignites the deeply-hidden impulse to buy. But doesn't that make you want to find it even more?

"the perfect sales handle on a video ... ignites the deeply-hidden impulse to buy"

(If you're now thinking about that egg-and-sperm video you watched in 8th grade health class, don't worry. Your odds are better than those of one random sperm in 140 million.)

To more fully appreciate how audiences decide things, I recommend a very readable and popular book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for psychological research into rational decision-making. In his work, he discovered two systems of thinking which guide the human brain. 

The first, known as System One, is highly active and efficient - it runs all the time unless you're asleep. Among its functions are jumping to conclusions, making snap decisions based on little or no evidence, and responding quickly to new situations based on what's worked safely in the past. System One loves celebrity spokespersons, attractive human models, and easy choices. It can't solve complex problems or think critically. 

The second is called System Two. (The names provide a clue as to why brain scientists are world-renowned for their work in brand identity.) System Two thinks critically. It challenges assumptions, searches for factual evidence, and conducts complex activities. Doesn't that sound like a great system to have running in your brain? One problem: it's incredibly lazy and inefficient and after it's worked for a short while, it demands sugar - like a kid who's been promised a bag of M&M's for doing chores - and then shuts down.

Kahneman's research appears to confirm everything grifters and magicians have known about human nature for centuries (later prostitutes and ad people) - Smart more or less sleeps unless properly motivated, while Stupid guards the door. 

"(Critical thinking) works for a while, demands sugar, and then shuts down"

What communicators can take away from this is the firm knowledge that video, with its colorful moving pictures set to music, is without doubt the preferred medium of System One. And it's loved by advertisers because it's the most likely to make a sale without having to wake up System Two. 

But even with a really flashy video, your message might not penetrate unless the audience hears their trust-message first, a combination of pictures and sound that rings their bell and says, "Hey, these are cool people who made this. Relax and trust." Or, "You can be sure of keeping your job at this point." Or, "We understand your fear of pain and humiliation - here's another way to avoid it." 

Even an off-center hit on the audience 'portal' will get you partway in. With research (such as surveys, informal conversations, cornering subjects in the washroom to demand answers), we can discover how prospects truly feel about our offer. And once you know what they need to hear from you, all that remains is to say it correctly. 

The Tao of Pancakes

Had a wonderful time recently, making a promotional video for Chris Cakes of Louisburg, KS. At first glance, Chris Cakes is a catering service that shows up at your event and makes and serves delicious pancakes. However, unlike anyone else, they also flip the pancakes onto your plate from several feet away (if you want them to) and in fact, they own several Guiness Book world records for these tricks!

(They also do hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, barbeque and other stuff. Chris Cakes, as they like to say, is not just for breakfast anymore. PLEASE NOTE: they do not throw meat.)

Owner Steve Hamilton is a perfect fit for his business - the rare combination of business savvy and showmanship, with a gentle yet piquant sense of humor that infects everything Chris Cakes does. Steve's spirited, funny and reliable Kansas City crew serves probably a million pancakes a year at schools, churches, businesses, community events, private parties (I could go on, but it would take hours). As you can probably guess, fundraisers are a big part of it.

They're so good at serving their customers that most of their business comes from referrals and return customers. Until recently, they didn't even have to think much about advertising or marketing, but then it got so they couldn't handle all the out-of-town engagements (they keep getting calls from Virginia and Maine and Arizona and everywhere else) and Steve decided to open franchises in several other states.

That's why they made the video - to hand out on DVD and to post on YouTube and their website for their new franchisees. At last report, business was up twenty percent - pretty good for the middle of a recession.

Steve thinks we did an excellent job of capturing the essence of his business. We both wanted the video to be more "raw" than polished and I think it works - at any rate, it was great fun to make something that diverges so completely from the more button-down corporate stuff that normally butters our bread.