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pumpkin carve-off 2014 ~ group 1

After a hiatus in 2013, Pumpkin Carve-Off makes its triumphant return! Take a peek at your first set of pumpkin masterpieces. I like to call this grouping Famous Characters and Their Related Google Searches. Cast your vote at the bottom of the post to help determine the winner of the 2014 People’s Choice Prize!

(For more information on how this competition will go down, click here.)

. . .

tonya’s queen elsa of arendalle

tonya's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

tonya's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

You may remember Tonya from Ginger 2013. She worked at the bakery where I did my work term for baking school, which means she saw me lift 50 pound bags of flour like they were NOTHING.

Tonya wrote: I have been to Walt Disney World three times in the past four years, my shelves are filled with endless memorabilia and as of right now, there are currently 42 Disney films sitting on my movie stand.

Yowza. That’s a lot of Disney. This probably isn’t the best time to mention that I haven’t seen a Disney film since 1978.

I present to you, Queen Elsa of Arendalle! Frozen has undoubtedly become the most popular animated film to date and I absolutely fell in love with it when I saw it. I was drawn to Elsa’s strong personality and confidence once she decided to be her true self and admire the love she has for her sister Anna. Also, she has to be the most beautiful character I have ever seen! Drawn by hand and carved with love, I hope you enjoy my creation.

Enjoy it? I love it. It is so delicate and pretty! I really like the contrast of the blue snowflakes on the white pumpkin. And that photo of Pumpkin Elsa lit up like a beacon in a snowstorm? Nice touch. Of course, I haven’t seen Frozen. I looked it up on Google, but stopped reading about the movie after I got to the word fjord. See, I had to look up fjord, and that google search led me to a page about ice segregation (fascinating), which led me to a page about ice lenses, which led to a search about pingos (aka hydrolaccoliths), which finally led me to Pingu. Have you seen Pingu? I think you’d like him – he’s a claymated penguin. His best friend is a grey seal named Robbie.

Anyhoo, I love this gourd!

. . .

natalie’s peppermint pusheen

natalie's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

natalie's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

Natalie writes:

I originally planned to carve a ballerina into my pumpkin, but I didn’t want to come off as desperate, so I decided to carve my spirit animal, Pusheen, instead.

Because I had to carve it a full week before Halloween and I was leaving town the next day, I followed this advice from the website TheKitchn, who told me that spraying the pumpkin with peppermint soap would extend its life. Surely this would keep Pusheen safe for the week until I returned and put him out for the trick-or-treaters to see.

Unfortunately, the peppermint soap expedited the rotting process and my pumpkin was covered with mold within two days so we won’t be able to display it for Halloween after all…

Oh boy! Let me begin by saying that I adore Pusheen. ADORE. And I adore this minty fresh, uber clean pumpkin. The wee whiskers! The happy little catbrows! Who cares if the kids in your neighborhood see it? They’ll be out setting stuff on fire tonight anyway.

Thanks, Natalie, for the lesson in not trusting the interwebs. That said, I did a Google search and learned that a gentle cleansing inside and out of the pumpkin with a mixture of bleach and water (1 tablespoon beach, 1 quart of water) and a thin coating of petroleum jelly works well for pumpkin preservation. Of course another site recommended white glue…

Anymew, I love this pumpkitten.

{Natalie blogs here – check it out! You can trust her.}

. . .

aaron’s oogie boogie

aaron's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

aaron's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

Natalie also sent in an entry for her husband. I’m assuming he doesn’t know how to use email. (Not to worry, 2.0 hasn’t figured it out either.) Natalie included the following note with Aaron’s entry:

Mr. Eats (Aaron) also wanted to submit a pumpkin this year. He carved Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas. When I asked him if he would like to say a few words to send in with his pumpkin he said “It’s a pumpkin. It’s Oogie Boogie.”  I think he choice of a sinister villain from a Tim Burton movie shows that he truly does have the dark and twisty tortured soul of an artist.

I don’t know what an Oogie Boogie is, and I’ve never seen a Tim Burton movie, but damn, that’s a fine looking pumpkin. Sinister grin, creepy eyes, and a hat that desperately needs rearranging? It’s a classic, scare-the-crap-outta-the-kids-on-the-street type deal. I’m assuming that this is especially true now that it has rotted from the inside out with a peppermint coating. Dark and twisted indeed.

You’ll be happy to know that I did a Google search of Oogie Boogie, which lead me to a search about Ken Page, which led to a page about cabaret, which ended in an hour spent watching Liza Minnelli on YouTube. Time well wasted, if you ask me. Thanks, Aaron.

. . .

alison’s stay puft marshmallow man

alison's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

alison's pumpkin | movitabeaucoup.com

Alison, who you may remember from Ginger 2012 or Pumpkin Carve-Off 2012, writes:

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is, in my opinion, one of the scariest movie villains of all time. How could something so adorable be so murdery?

Actually, I’m pretty cute and murdery. Just sayin’.

Now, Alison threw in the following quote, and if we’ve learned anything today it’s: I don’t watch movies. So, I didn’t know what movie the quote was from, but I didn’t Google it because if we’ve learned anything else today it is: I can’t get out of web searches once I start.

Alison continues:

Dr Ray Stantz: I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft!

Dr. Peter Venkman: Nice thinkin’, Ray.

The artistry in this particular masterpiece comes from stealing my dad’s old “Scully” hat from his RCN able seaman days in 1965 and converting it into something Stay Puft would wear. I’ve included a shot of my dad wearing the hat in its proper context. This hat, I should point out, is sized 7 3/8, which is HUGE. My dad’s head is HUGE. So I had to find a pumpkin that was proportional. This one cost me TWELVE whole dollars and is heavier and more ungainly than my 40lb corgi. So the real amazingness is behind the scenes, as I had to scoop out this massive interior where the flesh was about 6″ thick.

Side-note: the Beaucoups are a family of unusually large heads. That’s probably why I like this pumpkin so damn much.

I lit it with some battery-powered white LEDs, and Stay Puft’s “tongue” is an orange knitted dishcloth. While you can’t see it very well in the shot, the blue and purple scarf in the background is the same colour as the crossed streams the Ghostbusters used to kill Stay Puft in one of the greatest movies of all time. But you’ll have to take my word for that.

Ah, it was Ghostbusters! Thank goodness I didn’t Google it, because I’m betting there’s A LOT of information about that movie online. I DID look up crossed streams, which led me to this video which includes the quote from above, the crossed streams AND the roasting of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And Alison, I’d say you captured the essence of that scene perfectly. This pumpkin sums up all that is best about Halloween: big heads, marshmallows and creepy pumpkins.

Is it just me, or do those pumpkin eyes kinda follow you wherever you go?

{Alison blogs here – check it out! She DIY’s everything. Even hats.}

. . .

Cast your vote below! The overall winner of online polling will win the 2014 People’s Choice Prize!

Repeat voters are blocked by cookie and IP address.
Polls close at 8 am AST, Saturday, November 1, 2014.

Click here to see the second grouping of Pumpkin Carve-Off 2014 entries.
Click here to see the third grouping of Pumpkin Carve-Off 2013 entries.

5 Responses to pumpkin carve-off 2014 ~ group 1

  1. Maureen | Orgasmic Chef October 31, 2014 at 8:28 am #

    Voting group 1 done. It wasn’t an easy choice.

  2. shannon October 31, 2014 at 9:23 am #

  3. Willow @ Will Cook For Friends October 31, 2014 at 4:10 pm #

    Gaa! I so meant to carve a pumpkin this year! But then two days ago, I overheard my husband talking to someone on the phone and he was like “yep, I took Friday off since it’s Halloween”, and I was all “what what WHAT?!” so yeah, no pumpkin. That said, the entries this year are fabulous so far. That Oogie Boogie man? Spot on. (How have you never seen Nightmare Before Christmas? Full of weird characters and creepy singing and dancing, it seems right up your alley.) But then the Stay Puffed Marshmallow man, I mean, what could be creepier than that? So hard to choose!

  4. natalie November 4, 2014 at 12:24 am #

    hold on, can we go back to the part where you don’t know what an oogie boogie is?

  1. Please vote for my pumpkin! | Ali Does It Herself - November 2, 2014

    […] You can vote for the entries in my group here. But make sure to check out the other entries in the other groups as well! […]

Leave a Comment


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West Coast to Wellington

8 01 2010

Boxing day was an early start for the Tongariro Crossing, 19.4km across the volcanic landscape of Mt. Ngauruhoe and Mt Tongariro. The start was packed with fellow trampers, although not quite the 1000 people that do this walk every day in peak season! The going was fairly easy for the first few miles until we started ascending to the saddles of the volcanoes, when it started to get a bit blowy!

By the time we’d scrambled up the scree slopes to the peak of the Red Crater we were having to almost crawl to stop being blown off the edge! We had incredible views thanks to the fine weather, all the way over to the West coast and later North over Lake Taupo. The storms had put us off doing this 2 years ago and we’re glad we hadn’t attempted it as it would be pretty miserable in the wet! A few hours later we’d finished in plenty of time for our shuttle pickup and a well deserved reward of fishfingers, chips and beans, DVD’s, wine and cake at our hostel!

The next day we left National Park and drove West along the ‘forgotten highway’ until we reached Whangamomona, a town so remote they’d declared themselves a Republic in 1989! We had lunch here in the only Hotel and collected another stamp for our passports before returning to New Zealand and the West coast.

The West coast is dominated by the massive Mount Taranaki, a volcano we caught a glimpse of from the heights of the Tongariro Crossing a few hundred miles away. It was now completely invisible however – the local weather is forecast by the following rule: If you can see the Volcano, it’s going to rain. If you can’t see the Volcano, it’s already raining! The latter was true for the next few days so we didn’t spend long around here, briefly checking out New Plymouth which was voted the best city in NZ last year. It was hard for us to see the attraction as everywhere seems miserable when it’s tipping it down, plus most of New Zealand grinds to a halt over Christmas and New Year so there’s nothing open anyway!

Following the Surf Highway around the coast we visited Wanganui, or Whanganui – the inclusion of the ‘h’ being a topic of National debate, and then back inland towards the University town of Palmerston North where we settled for a couple of days over New Year. We managed to keep ourselves awake for New Years Eve, joining the masses in the town square for a concert and the shortest fireworks display we’ve ever seen!

Further south were the towns of the Wairarapa – lots of cafe’s, although finding one open was still a struggle, 2L tubs of ice-cream, a round of golf, the cinema and walks around the Forests kept us busy although the highlight was Stonehenge Aotearoa – a working replica of the Salisbury stone circle in someone’s back garden!

The 90 minute tour was excellent, explaining how the calender works, plus a bit of astrology and astronomy too – apparently most people, including Zoë, have a different star sign to those commonly published in newspapers etc.. something to do with us using 2000 year old star charts and the wobble of the earth!

For the last few days we’ve explored the capital Wellington, touring the impressive Parliament buildings – the whole thing being mounted on shock absorbers due to the fault line running 400m away! They also have the unique system of being able to write to the Government and be guaranteed the opportunity to address the Select committee on any subject – no filtering, screening or censorship and while doing so have absolute freedom of speech with immunity from prosecution etc..! We also took plenty of photos and weren’t accused of being terrorists!

The rest of our time in the city was spent in other museums, botanic gardens and replenishing our personal library in the 2nd hand bookshops. Wellington has also been host for the last 10days to Unicon – the World Unicycle Championships! We managed to catch a bit of the Trials competition by the waterfront which was pretty impressive – try jumping a unicycle from the roof of a shipping container over a 6ft gap onto a fork-lift truck! Zoë was cringing at the lack of safety harnesses!

I’d have liked to witness some of the other events on the program, including unicycle hockey and rugby, the downhill races and yesterday’s cross country marathon! We’re out of time on the North Island however. I’m writing this as we sail over the Cook Strait on the old Pride of Cherbourg ferry to Picton where we spent Christmas a couple of years ago.

We have no plans for the South Island so far – we want to check out the top of the Island for job and house potential but as it’s also a very popular summer holiday destination we may postpone our investigation and head south to avoid the hordes!

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A Great Walk on Stewart Island

2 02 2010

The Catlins are very rugged with plenty of untouched wilderness. All along the coast trees and undergrowth grow plastered flat against the hills thanks to the continuous buffeting of the wind. We took a couple of days travelling along the coast, visiting several impressive waterfalls and cold but picturesque beaches before reaching Bluff and the southern tip of the South Island.

Bluff is the gateway to New Zealand’s third main isle, Stewart Island. This is largely now a National park with the one small town of Oban, home to around 400 permanent residents. This was to be the location of our first attempt at one of New Zealand’s 8 ‘Great Walks’. The Rakiura Track is a circular route through the coastal bush, 36km in length, and is normally completed in 3 days. We were pretty confident we could make the step up from long day walks to this relatively short multi-day tramp and set about packing our backpacks with stoves, waterproofs, 3 days worth of food and sleeping bags. Next came the ferry crossing across the Foveaux Strait, notorious for being one of the roughest stretches of water around. Thankfully the water was pretty calm so we arrived in Oban still full of our hearty breakfast!

In roughly 12 months of ‘backpacking’ in the last couple of years we’ve somehow managed to avoid carrying our fully laden backpacks more than a couple of miles. So the first hour or so of the trek was a bit of a shock to the system and revealed that 12km a day carrying our 65 litre bags was not going to be as easy as we imagined! We plodded onwards though, spurred on by the thought that the less rest we had, the sooner we would reach the hut, shelter from the pestilent sandflies and have a nice cup of tea! 4 hours later we were first arrivals at the beachside hut and settled down for some well earned rest.

On the path approaching the hut I’d spotted a white tailed deer before it bounded off into the undergrowth. A few hours later we spotted that white tail again as it emerged from the bush in front of our hut. This time however it wasn’t bounding, but was being carried as a deer rucksack on the shoulders of a father with his two young boys, and was no longer sporting a head. Before we could think about getting some free venison for dinner, they were off, paddling out of the bay in their rowing boat leaving us with our spaghetti and carrots!

Day 2 started off slowly, allegedly a 6 hour trek due to the elevation change over the hills. Our shoulders and legs didn’t take long to start throbbing as we began ascending several miles of steps! We reached the peak in good time for some expansive views over the island and sea beyond but plowed on eager to settle down for a proper rest once again. Several other trampers had caught us up a few hours later so we spent the evening chatting with them, from life in New Zealand to possum killing techniques!

We woke to rain on our last day but fortunately it didn’t last long. Our legs were like wood for the first half hour but we soon got into our stride and even forgot about the weight of the backpacks after a while. Early afternoon we arrived back in Oban, successfully completing our first multi-day hike! We had a few hours to kill before our return ferry so rewarded ourselves with hot chocolates and cakes, and later a big portion of succulent blue cod and chips!

Back on the mainland we’ve headed into Fiordland for a couple of days rest! As one of the wettest places on earth we’ve been surprised by the baking hot sun! Currently in Te Anau we’re planning a brief return to Milford Sound, via what is probably the most spectacular road in the world! Following that we’ll be spending some time in Queenstown where we may have recovered enough to do some more walks!

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City split wide open

Party hearties abandon driver to heart attack…

Three men holding key positions in one of India’s biggest private sector companies were on their way to a party at their boss’s swanky Cuffe Parade home, when driver Goverdhan Vaidya, who is in his mid fifties, suffered a cardiac arrest.

The men asked him to stop the car, which was at Cooperage, helped him out and sat him down on the pavement.

Then, they got back in the car and drove off to the party, leaving a breathless Vaidya holding his chest in excruciating pain.

… Man who gets him to hospital and gives him life

Three men holding top jobs in one of the country’s largest private sector companies were on their way to a party at their boss’s swanky home in South Mumbai at 9 pm on October 12.

At the wheel of the Honda City was driver Goverdhan Vaidya.

Hanging on: Goverdhan Vaidya was discharged on Thursday after three days in the ICU at St George Hospital. For daughter Sunita, getting her dad back  home is her “best Diwali gift ever”.

At the Cooperage junction, Vaidya, who is in his midfifties, felt the first symptoms of a heart attack.
“When I think back, I had been feeling uneasy for a while. But at the Cooperage junction, I felt terrible. It was impossible to drive.

My chest hurt like it was being beaten by a thousand sledgehammers and I couldn’t breathe properly. I told the three men in the backseat that I needed to stop for a while.”

Left to die

Seconds after he parked at the curb, Vaidya slumped over the steering wheel. “I saw the men open the door and drag me out of the car. They made me sit on the pavement.

I could barely register what was happening, as I felt really ill and I was sitting with my head on my knees, holding my chest.

Just then, I felt the car zoom past. I looked up and saw the men drive away, but I was in such severe pain that I couldn’t even shout at them to stop and help me,” said Vaidya, Enter Vijay Shekhar, who works with a TV channel.

Guardian Angel: Vijay Shekhar got Vaidya to hospital in the nick of time.

“At first glance, I thought the man wanted to defecate, but I looked closely and realised he was in severe pain. He was holding his chest and I knew he was having a heart attack.

I had seen the car zoom off and I asked the man for their phone number, so that he could be hospitalised.”

Vaidya managed to give him the number and Shekhar called, but it went unanswered. Shekhar’s wife Shobha, who was also with him, gave Vaidya Disprin, known to be effective during a heart attack.

To hospital

“I realised he had to be hospitalised immediately, as his condition was worsening every minute and we took him to St George Hospital in my car,” said Shekhar.

Doctors at St George, who were treating Vaidya, said, “His condition was very bad and he was breathless. It was a cardiac failure and had he not been rushed to hospital, it could have proved fatal.”

Meanwhile, Shekhar’s wife who had been continuously calling the men, finally got through two hours since the incident. “I told the man that his driver had been hospitalised after a heart attack.

But unbelievably, the man was reluctant to listen to me. I had no option but to threaten him with a police complaint, and sure enough, it worked,” said Shobha.

Reluctant return

The three men came to Cooperage where the Shekhars were waiting. “The men told me that they couldn’t be bothered with the police threat, as the party they were at was attended by several senior cops,” said Shobha.
In fact, said Shobha, “they behaved as though they were doing us a favour”.

And by way of explanation for abandoning the driver, the men pointed out they did not know him. He was the replacement for the regular driver.

“We left him on the streets so that he could get fresh air and feel better,” said one of the men.

Meanwhile, Vaidya, who has been discharged yesterday, is recuperating at home in Thane, out of danger.

“We were very scared when Shekharji called us and said my father had been hospitalised. He seemed perfectly fine when he left home in the morning and look what the night brought.

And I can’t believe people would actually abandon a grievously ill man to go to a party.

I thank the family who saved my father by hospitalising him. The fact that my father is well now is the best Diwali gift we can hope for,” said Sunita (25), his daughter.

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One Response to “City split wide open”

  1. Anuradha Khanna Pentapalli Says:

    It was really very nice of Vijay Shekhar and his wife to help out the driver. I pity the 3 men for having lost their conscience.

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text:
Gender & Sexuality Resource Center opens, new Financial Vice President confirmed

MILWAUKEE (Nov. 29, 2012)- On November 29, Marquette University Student Government Senate hosted a presentation by Dr. Susannah Bartlow, director of the new Gender and Sexuality Resource Center on campus. Senate also confirmed Cole Johnson as the new Financial Vice President for the 2013-14 year and approved several student organization funding allocations.

In her presentation, Dr. Bartlow mentioned that the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GRSC) opened August 1, 2012. The center is located in AMU 425 and is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Bartlow expressed that the space is open to all students. For the academic year of 2012-13, the GSRC has plans to emphasize three main focal points of the center:

  1. To have a space that supports both scholarly work as well as building a social community around gender and sexuality.
  2. To promote healthy sexuality and awareness on gender-based violence prevention.
  3. For LGBTQ support and additional resources.

Additionally, the center will be consulting with Marquette on “what this center really means” now that it is finally open to the students of Marquette.

Dr. Bartlow then opened the floor to questions and comments. Senators expressed concern over the location of the center, being that students don’t always visit the fourth floor of the AMU. Dr. Bartlow agreed, and said that they are continuing to put out publication in order to let students know of their location.

When asked about having a counselor on duty in the center, Dr. Bartlow said that for this year, they’re running on more of a “support & refer” system. The center is working closely with the counseling center in order to make the students who visit the center feel helped and supported.

The center can be found on Twitter @MarquetteGSRC and students are encouraged to contact with any questions or suggestions.

After the presentation, Senate moved into the officer reports.

President Arica Van Boxtel will be speaking to the Board of Trustees next week on issues facing our campus, such as 1. Space concerns on campus and 2. The overall climate when it comes to diversity amongst students and faculty at Marquette.

Communications Vice President Alex Lahr announced that Communications Vice President applications are now available for the 2013-14 year. Applications are due February 8, 2013.

Financial Vice President Brittany Riesenbeck informed Senate that the fiscal year 2012 Audit has begun for the Marquette University Student Government.

Senate also voted to confirm Financial Vice President nominee Cole Johnson to the position for the 2013-14 year. Johnson is a sophomore majoring in Accounting and Finance. His main goals for the fiscal year of 2014 would be to help students become better informed of the SOF application process, advise MUSG on ways to utilize the reserve funds, and to work with OSD to encourage unity between the two offices’ approval processes. Johnson was inducted to the position with a majority vote.

To close the meeting, Senate approved a student organization funding allocation package for Spring Club Sports allocations greater than $2,500 per the MUSG Constitution. The allocations passed with a vote of 23-6-0.

For more information on MUSG’s news and events, visit or contact the MUSG office, AMU 133 and follow MUSG on Facebook and Twitter.

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text:
Announcing MIDiA’s Streaming Services Market Shares Report

coverAs the streaming music market matures, the bar is continually raised for the quality of data required, both in terms of granularity and accuracy. At MIDiA we have worked hard to earn a reputation for high-quality, reliable datasets that go far beyond what is available elsewhere. This gives our clients a competitive edge. We are now taking this approach a major step forward with the launch of MIDiA’s Streaming Services Market Shares report. This is our most comprehensive streaming dataset yet, and there is, quite simply, nothing else like it out there. Knowing the size of streaming revenues, or the global subscriber counts of music services is useful, but it isn’t enough. Nor even, is knowing country level streaming revenue figures. So, we built a global market shares model that breaks out subscription revenues (trade and retail), subscribers, and subscription market shares for more than 30 music services at country level, across 30 countries and regions. You want to know how much subscription revenue Spotify is generating in Canada? How many subscribers Apple Music has in Germany? How much subscription revenue QQ Music is generating China? This is the report for you. Here are some highlights:

promo slide2

  • At the end of 2016 there were 132.6 million music subscribers, up from 76.8 million in 2015
  • In Q4 2016 Spotify’s subscriber market share was 35% and it had $2,766 million in retail revenue
  • Apple Music was second with 21 million subscribers at the end of 2016, a 15.6% market share and it had $912 million in retail revenue
  • In 2016 Apple was the largest driver of digital music revenue across Apple Music and iTunes
  • The US is the largest music subscription market, which Spotify leads with 38% subscriber market share
  • The UK is Europe’s largest streaming market, which Spotify also leads
  • China’s subscriber base is the second largest globally, but it ranks just 13th in revenue terms
  • Japan is the world’s third largest subscription market, in which Amazon has the largest subscriber market share
  • Brazil is Latin America’s largest music subscription market

The report contains 23 pages and 13 charts with full country detail as well as audience engagement metrics. The dataset includes four worksheets and a comprehensive methodology statement.

Streaming Services Market Shares is available right now to MIDiA premium subscribers. If you would like to learn more about how to access MIDiA’s analysis and data, email

The report and data is also available as a standalone purchase on MIDiA’s report store as part of our ‘Streaming Music Metrics Bundle’. This bundle additionally includes MIDiA’s ‘State of The Streaming Nation 2.1’. This is our mid-year 2017 update to the exhaustive assessment of the streaming music market first published in May. It includes data on revenue, forecasts, consumer attitudes and behaviour, YouTube, app usage and audience trends.

Examples of country graphics (data labels removed in this preview)

promo slide7

New Report: Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services

Today MIDiA Consulting is proud to announce the release of a white paper commissioned by Universal Music entitled “Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services”.  The report, written by myself and MIDiA Consulting co-founder Keith Jopling, provides an unprecedented analysis of telco music services, taking a critical look at what has and had not worked to date and a series of models and recommendations for the future.  We interviewed a host of telco music executives to get a deep understanding of what telcos need out of music services to make them a success and combined this insight with data from consumer surveys and music service trials as well as case studies and best practices.  We think it is pretty much the definitive piece of work on the topic (!) and we invite you to download it here: Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services – FULL REPORT.  You can also download an executive summary version of the report here: Building the New Business Case for Bundled Music Services – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

Here are some of the key findings of the report.

The consumer shift from downloads to streaming is the most important digital music market trend since the advent of the iTunes Music Store.  Before streaming services telcos struggled to find a way in which they could compete in a market dominated by Apple, restricted to selling DRM locked downloads that of course would not play on Apple devices.  Subscription services changed all of that, with the leading streaming services all pursuing robust telco partnership strategies as well as a number of download subscription services.  There are now nearly 50 telco music service partnerships live in six regions across the globe.  With 40% of streaming consumers now paying to stream, generating $1.2 billion in trade revenue in 2012 the opportunity is clear.

Music Bundles Across the Globe

However it is clear that many of the hurdles that telcos faced in the last decade continue to pose challenges.  These include music not being a priority for many telcos, internal business casing getting in the way of building compelling services and the wrong success metrics being used.

The new success stories of telco music services are those that make music a strategic priority.  This is not some sop to the record labels, but a reflection of what it takes to make music strategy a success. If a telco just adds music to a long list of Value Added Services (VAS) it will wither on the vine.  But if a telco puts a music service front and centre and positions around it then success is far more likely.  Success stories that have followed this approach include Telia Sonera’s hard bundle with Spotify in Sweden and Cricket Wireless’ Muve Music in the US.

Streaming by the Numbers

The Role of Promotional Offers

For all the obvious synergies of telco music bundles there is a real danger that hard bundles that make music subscriptions free or feel like free to the end user run the risk of devaluing the proposition.  Yet it is also clear that consumers need to be able to ‘suck it and see’ before subscribing so promotional free trials and limited period bundles present a strong balance of value to the consumer, cost effectiveness to the telco and protecting the integral value of music for artists and labels.  The market data for free trial is compelling: half of one month trialists convert to a paid subscription at the end of the promotional offer period.

Customer Satisfaction, the New Music Service Opportunity

An entirely new aspect to music bundling that we dive into in the report is the role of music subscriptions in driving customer satisfaction across a telco’s wider business.  Even the most edgy, cleverly positioned challenger telco is ultimately a provider of important products but not usually a consumer passion point.  Music though has that brand passion secret sauce and partnering with the right music service can enhance the telco’s own brand and customer sentiment.  Smart integration of music into the customer journey and integration with customer satisfaction measurement tools, particularly Net Promoter Score (NPS) can enable telcos to create a customer satisfaction halo effect.  With music converting satisfied music subscription customers into highly vocal net promoters with satisfaction benefits felt across the full range of a telco’s services.

Bundled music services did not get off to the best of starts, but now their time has come, giving telcos the opportunity to assume centre stage in the digital music marketplace.

For more information on the research please feel free to email us at info AT midiaconsulting DOT COM.

About MIDiA Consulting

Midia ConsultingMIDiA Consulting is a boutique, media industry focused consultancy that delivers practical, results-driven outcomes.  MIDiA stands for Media Insights & Decisions in Action. Our mission is to help media and technology companies develop purposeful strategies quickly through market understanding, clarity of vision, and workable innovation.

We help media and technology companies make sense of the changes that digital market forces are bringing about. And we help them make profits from digital content.

Why Google Needs to ‘Do an Apple With Motorola’ to Make Play a Success

2012 has been a fantastic year for smartphones, with penetration pushing past the 50% mark in key markets such as the UK and US (some estimates even put US penetration as high as 70%).  Apple’s iPhone is the leading smartphone in most key markets but Google’s Android Operating System (OS) has much larger market share: c. 70% compared to c. 20% for iOS (Gartner estimated global market shares to be 64% and 19% respectively back in Q2 2012).  But these market share statistics can be misleading, particularly when it comes to understanding the digital content and services marketplaces.

Android Fragmentation Complicates Content Strategy

The fragmented nature of the Android landscape is well documented but close analysis of key metrics reveals some startling trends with significant implications for content providers (see figure):

Of course there are many mitigating factors, but that simply does not matter from a consumer perspective nor indeed from a content owner’s perspective.  Both iOS and Android have got vast App catalogues (750k and 650k respectively) and both have vast numbers of apps downloaded (35 billion and 25 billion respectively).  Both also have huge installed bases of devices: 450 million iOS devices and 600 million Android devices.  But there is only one clear leader in paid content: Apple.

Looking just at music sales, Apple’s music annual music sales (based on the last reported 12 months) equate to approximately $4.00 per iOS device, compared to just 50 cents per Android device.  Apple wins in part because of its longer presence in market, but more importantly because it exercises complete control of the user journey in a closed ecosystem.

The Importance of Closed Ecosystems

The success stories of paid content to date are closed ecosystems: iTunes / iOS, Playstation, xBox, Kindle.  Though the controlled nature of these ecosystems may limit user freedom, they guarantee a quality of user experience.  In these post-scarcity days of content, the quality of experience becomes a scarce experience which people are willing to pay for.  Google simply cannot exercise that degree of control because of its pursuit of a less-closed (but not wholly open) ecosystem strategy.  It depends upon device manufacturers to determine the user experience and also gives other value chain members much more control, such as allowing operators (Vodafone) and retailers (Amazon) to open their own Android stores, as well as, of course handset manufacturers (Sony).

Smartphones with Dumb Users

In a pure mobile handset analysis this doesn’t matter too much.  But from a content strategy perspective it matters massively so.    The problem is compounded by the fact that that as smartphones go mainstream the user base sophistication dilutes.   With so many consumers increasingly buying smartphones because they are cheap and on a good tariff, rather than for their smartphone functionality we are ending up with a scenario of smartphones with dumb users.  (I am indebted to my former Jupiter colleague Ian Fogg for this phrase). This factor arguably affects Android devices more than it does Apple devices because a) they are more mainstream b) they are often cheaper.  This matters for content owners because the more engaged, more tech savvy smartphone owners are also the ones most likely to pay for content.

Google Needs to ‘Do An Apple’ and Not ‘A Microsoft’

With growth slowing in the digital music space, it is clear that new momentum is needed.  Google is potentially the strongest opportunity to bring mass market traction to the digital music space, but currently its music strategy, and paid content strategy in general, is falling short due to all of the reasons outlined above.

Google does however have an incredibly strong set of assets at its disposal, in terms of installed based and growing adoption.  If Google is serious about making its Play strategy a success then it needs to start putting itself first.  Back in the early 2000’s Microsoft expected to be the dominant force in digital music because Windows Media Player was the #1 music player and Windows DRM was the industry standard rights protection.  But instead of pushing ahead with a bold Microsoft music offering it relied upon its hardware and services partners to do it for them.  Just as Google now is sensitive to the concerns of its commercial partners, so Microsoft was then.  Of course Microsoft lost the battle and their softly-softly approach was powerless to fight off the rapid onslaught of iTunes.   Microsoft eventually realized that it needed to go it alone, launching Zune, but it was too little, too late.  Interestingly there wasn’t much of a backlash from commercial partners when it did so. Launching a standalone music strategy was actually compatible with being a platform partner.

Now Google has an opportunity to learn from both Microsoft’s mistakes and Apple’s success by turning its recently acquired asset Motorola into a closed Play ecosystem to rival iTunes.  This doesn’t preclude Android partners from continuing to build their own devices and app stores, but it does create a paid content beachhead for Google, from which it can build a base of highly engaged digital consumers who will quickly learn to value the benefits of a high quality, unified content and device experience.  In a Motorola ecosystem Google can truly allow Google+ and Play to become the glue that binds together its diverse set of valuable assets.  Without it though, Play will continue to struggle for relevance in a fragmented and confusing Android user journey.

Mobile Music, Beyond the AppMobile Music, Beyond the App

Yesterday I delivered a keynote at the Music 4.5 Mobile music conference.  My presentation was entitled ‘Mobile Music: Apps, Ecosystems and the Cloud’ and here are some of the highlights.

I’ve been a music industry analyst for more years than I care to remember and I recall my first mobile music experience being on a Wap 1.0 handset with a monochrome screen and no graphics.  Mobile music has obviously come on a long way since then but it remains hindered by the recurring error of trying to do too much too soon.  Mobile seems to be perennially burdened with developers’ aspirations being one step ahead of what contemporary mobile technology can deliver. Witness the continually delayed arrival of ‘NFC payments are about to go mainstream’ as a case in point.  Mobile music’s poster child Shazam, was itself far too early to market.  I remember being demoed the tech by the founder a decade ago.  It took the advent, many years later, of the iPhone and the iTunes App Store to enable Shazam to become the runaway success it currently is.  Most start ups aren’t lucky enough to manage to wait for the pieces to fall in place.

Mobile music is undoubtedly going through an unprecedented period of buoyancy, perhaps even prosperity, driven by two key dynamics: the rise of smartphones and the app boom.  46% of UK consumers have a smartphone (see figure 1) which at first glance presents a great addressable audience.  But as my former colleague Ian Fogg observed, as smartphones go mainstream we end up with the quasi-paradoxical situation of smartphones with dumb users.  (By way of illustration one panellist referred to a customer request supporting for his HTC iPhone). Most new smartphone users don’t even use a fraction of the functionality on their devices and this creates big problems for music strategy.  Because mobile music apps are inherently the domain of the tech savvy, not the tech-daunted majority.

It is easy to think that the future of mobile is apps.  But as a cautionary tale consider that UK ring tone revenues plummeted by 32% in 2011.  Once ring tones looked like the future of mobile music.  Things change, and quickly so.

Apps are just one step in the evolution of mobile

Mobile Music has had more than its fair share of false dawns, largely because of wrongly set expectations.  The App revolution appears to have finally kicked mobile music into market maturity, though in actual fact it is just one more step on the journey.

One of the key reasons apps have been such a runaway success (Apple just announced its 25th billion App download) is because they play to the unique characteristics and strengths of mobile as a channel.  They deliver fun and convenient experiences that are typically also social, location sensitive and instantaneous.  All integral parts of the mobile phone’s DNA.

All of which is great of course, but there is a risk that the current infatuation with Apps is a focus on form over function.  Apps may have driven a paradigm shift in mobile behaviour but they are in the end just software.  They are a natural part of the evolution of the mobile platform and experience. They play just the same role as software does for the PC.  But of course we don’t excited about having McAfee and Excel icons on our desktop (see figure 2).  The reason why it feels so different for Apps is because of the channel strategy, namely App stores.  There’s just one place to go and get every type of software you could want, all of course with the same billing details and some guarantee of quality of experience.  A far cry from the PC experience of searching the web for the right software, reading reviews and creating a new user profile on yet another online store, hoping that the retailer is safe and secure.

The history of mobile music to date can be broken down into three key stages (see figure 3):

  • Stores
  • Apps
  • Access

A lot of consumer got burned in that first stage of mobile music stores, finding themselves subjected to poor quality experiences that paled in comparison even to the supremely average contemporary online stores.  The main mistake made was to expect too much from the rudimentary technology that was available: handset memory and screens were both too small and connectivity was far too slow and patchy.  WAP 1.0 and GPRS simply weren’t music delivery technologies.  The first stage of mobile music development failed because mobile tried to be a ‘mini-me’ PC music and was doomed to never stand up to the test.

The wave of the current App boom has lots of force left in it yet.  But when it finally does subside, the marketplace is going to be left realizing that Apps are the tool not the endgame.  The next stage of mobile music will be putting into practice what the app revolution has taught us about what mobile should be, what role it should play and where it should sit.

Value chain conflicts

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of launching a mobile music service is the conflict across the value chain.  In highly simplistic terms there are three key constituencies in the consumer mobile value chain: the handset makers, the carriers and the retailers.  Of course sometimes one entity can play two or even all three roles.  Each wants to own as much of the customer  relationship as they possibly can.  Throw music in the mix and suddenly each of those stakeholders is busy trying to leap frog the other (see figure 4).  This of course is what Nokia found themselves up against when trying to take Comes With Music to market: the carriers simply saw Nokia trying to circumvent their own heavily funded digital music services and yet Nokia was still asking them to subsidize those very same handsets…

The mobile music service value chain has become a complex place to navigate, with not only competition but also a diversity of business models each with their own unique twist on carving up the revenue pie (see figure five).

Value Chain Conflict Translates into Consumer Confusion

But value chain conflict doesn’t just impact business, it hits consumers as well, with an increasingly confusing mish mash of music brands on any given phone. And then of course there is the added complexity of ecosystems and operating systems.  Consumers are inadvertently being forced into make bets on their long term mobile future.  Once a consumer has opted into an app store ecosystem, paid to download apps over a 2 year contract, uploaded their music to a locker, saved their playlists etc it becomes very hard to move.  Not so much velvet handcuffs as clapped in iron chains.  Add to that the complexity of handset operators developing their own app and music service ecosystems within each of the OS siloes (see figure 6) and an increasingly complex picture emerges.  All of which skews the field to music services which are not tied to any single operating system fiefdom.  Perhaps the biggest winner out of all of this mobile music fragmentation will be Facebook?  Currently quietly collecting the world’s most comprehensive set of music service user data, come the end of the year Facebook will be uniquely well positioned to act as cross-service, cross-OS conduit.  Spotify might be making a play for being the operating system for music (I say the API for music, though that’s probably semantics) but Facebook could become operating system for music *services*.

The Future’s Bright, Probably

There is no doubt that mobile brings a huge amount to the digital music equation, making music discovery, acquisition and consumption more immediate and fun than it has ever been.  With the help of the likes of TopSpin and Mobile Roadie it has become the ideal conduit for deepening direct to fan relationships.  And though mobile will play a key part in cloud focused music services it is the app developer community which has transformed mobile most. While paid mobile music services remain mired in internecine value chain conflict, Apps have transformed mobile as a music channel from an awkward, underperforming curiosity into something vibrant and truly differentiated.

Tablets add important context.  They turn the conversation from mobile music strategy to connected device music strategy.  (They  also do a better job at most music experiences than phones).  In fact talking about mobile as a separate channel is no longer that instructive, rather we should think about mobile as one consumer touch point in an integrated channel and platform strategy.

But, once again, it is crucial to consider that Apps are the enabler, not the objective.  Remember, ringtones were the future once too.  The challenge for developers is to navigate through the wild west gold rush, and establish long term learnings from the App boom experience.  Think of the App economy as one big market research project (that’s certainly how Apple views it).  When the wave subsides the mobile music landscape will have changed forever.  Artists, labels, managers, developers, carriers, handset makers all need to work together to ensure that that future is as positive a force for the music industry as the early signs suggest it could be. The depressing alternative is that we look back in 5 years at the App era as another ringtone bubble.

Music Subscriptions: Dead or Alive?

[Please note that this post first appeared on the Forrester Consumer Product Strategy blog.  Over the coming month or so I will be migrating all of my activity there.  I will soon be posting new information here for you to amend your feeds and subscriptions. Thanks]
Mark Mulligan[Posted by Mark Mulligan]

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Real Networks yesterday announced that they intend to spin-off music subscription service Rhapsody as a stand alone business. Rhapsody has long been held up as the best of breed music service, but in the age of Spotify and Comes With Music it and other premium rentals have increasingly struggled to maintain relevancy.  Spotify and Comes With Music each may have

fundamental business issues and are very different offerings, but they both provideunlimited music free at point of consumption.  Once you have that proposition in the marketplace selling 9.99 rented streams looses its shine, however good the discovery and usability may be.

This time two years ago Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo had about 1.8 million paying subscribers between them.  Since then Yahoo got out of the game (passing its subs onto Rhapsody), Napster got sold and the total count is now around 1.3 million. So just as the music industry is meant to be booming online, its premium tier sheds over a quarter of its value across its heavyweight proponents.

The simple fact is that charging 9.99 or more a month for music that often only sits on your PC is not a mass market value proposition.  It’s great for aficionados but mass market consumers aren’t used to buying music that way.

So is this the end for subscriptions?  No, not at all, in fact they’re doing better than ever, it’s just the old guard that is struggling to keep pace.  A new generation of subscription services are being built that place portability at their core and that often hide some or all of the end-cost to consumers.

Let’s take a quick look at the numbers, here are total paid subscribers by territory (all numbers are approximate):

  • Europe: 1.25 million (key players: Spotify,Vodafone, Napster)
  • US: 2 million (key players: Rhapsody, Napster)
  • ROW: 5 million (key players: Melon)

That gives a global total of about 8.25 million, which is promising though still short of where they need to be.  If subscription services are to help digital music break free of the iPod orbit and go mass market then two things need to happen:

  • Premium subscriptions need to be unlimited MP3
  • Mass market subscriptions need to have channel partners such as telcos and device companies hide some or all of the cost to consumers i.e. subsidized subscriptions (For the record I think the ‘cost to consumer’ price point for unlimited music should be 3 euros/dollars/pounds  a month.)

The first generation of music subscriptions may have been niche also rans, but the next wave – given the right business models – could be much more important.


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» Events
october 14, 2017
View all events for this month
The waterfronts are host to more than 40 events annually including some of the region's top signature festivals. Explore our month to month calendar for events and activities.
Please note that there are no official Tall Ships Nova Scotia event in 2018. For sailing/boating related regattas and events, including the Route Halifax Saint Pierre Ocean Race,  please check our calendar as we continue to update.  We also welcome visiting vessels, which can range from tall ships to research vessels, periodically through the year as part of our Visiting Ship Program. These visits, and any free public access times, are posted on our social media sites. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Interested in hosting your event or community walk/run on the waterfront? Please complete our event request form.

Bluenose Ghosts Festival

Dartmouth October 5 – October 31, 2017

This annual spooktacular event hosted by Alderney Landing on the Dartmouth waterfront takes place on October 5-7, 12-15, 19-22 & 26-31.

Harvest Moon Festival

Halifax October 14 – October 28, 2017

The Historic Properties Courtyard will be completely transformed into a country farm in the fall this October! The Historic Properties Courtyard…

Nocturne: Art at Night

Halifax October 14, 2017

Celebrating 10 years in 2017, this is an annual evening of art and wonder  bringing art and energy to the streets of…


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Afrihost Mobile web traffic routing issues resolved

At the start of April, several Afrihost Mobile customers complained on the MyBroadband forums that they were unable to reach a number of sites.

These included Reddit, npmjs, Drupal, Jalopnik, Gizmodo, Fastly, and NYTimes.

Reddit’s apps were also unable to connect.

Afrihost confirmed on 13 April that certain APN users in the Cape region were affected by the issue.

One user stated that their service worked fine inland, but when they travelled to Cape Town they couldn’t access Reddit.

Another noted that all of the affected sites appeared to use Fastly’s delivery network, and that use of a virtual private network service like Tor provided a workaround for the problem.

Content delivery network

Afrihost told MyBroadband that the issue was specific to sites delivered over Fastly.

“Fastly, a content delivery network used by sites like Reddit, Disqus and others, recently launched a local presence in South Africa,” said Afrihost.

“We discovered that their local point of presence was not accepting our mobile IP addresses in some instances, which made certain content unavailable to those users.”

Afrihost said its network team has been in contact with Fastly to address the issue, and any other issues which may arise in the future.

“We believe this issue has been resolved,” said Afrihost.

Now read: Crystal Mobile vs Afrihost Mobile – Price comparison

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The Motivation/Burnout Cycle

If you have ever set goals and then given up on them, then you are already familiar with the vicious Motivation/Burnout Cycle.  It seems nearly universal that people decide to make changes in their life or their work, try really hard, even achieve great results, and then out of the blue become overwhelmed and quit.  New Year’s Resolutions often end in a brilliant crash and burn just because of that, trying too hard.

Understanding this cycle gives us the tools to defeat it, or at least not feel as bad if we have been defeated.

Motivation: You know what you want, you have figured out what needs to be done to get it.

Action:  You put your plan in action, you are determined to succeed.

Progress: Your work is paying off, you can see results.

Trial: Something interferes or makes working toward your goal hard.

Absence:  You decide either consciously or unconsciously to take a break.

Burnout: You can’t dig up the motivation to return, the thought of resuming all that work is daunting.
To escape the burnout period in the cycle you have to work up new motivation, using new goals and methods.  Returning to a method that has “failed” in your experience seems like a waste of time and has negative feelings associated with it.

How to Break the Cycle

Take baby steps.  Often the biggest reason for failure is that you have bitten off more than you can chew.  By taking smaller steps you can ease into a new project or lifestyle without upsetting the balance of your life.  If you want to, say,  write a novel, but you haven’t sat at a computer for years, you might want to set a daily goal of an easily attained word count or number of minutes.  You can always increase them later when a good habit has been formed.

Enlist help. If you are the only one cheering yourself on you’ll run out of momentum.  By having someone to hold yourself accountable to, you are more than twice as likely to succeed.  For writing there are countless critique groups both live and online.

Reward yourself. Identify milestones along the way that once reached you can reward yourself.  For my fellow writers, this can be the completion of a chapter, a certain number of words written, or working everyday for a predetermined number of days.

Throughout the course of any project there will be ups and downs.  There will be times that quitting is a huge temptation.  Know that this is normal.  By understanding that sometimes things will get rough you will be better able to adjust your goals to keep moving forward.  You may need to adjust your goals to be smaller for awhile until you feel ready again.  Whatever you do try not to stop.  Starting over again is far more difficult than slowing down.

Go for it!

About Jodi

I'm an aspiring novelist working in fantasy and suspense, for now. I also have two pretty awesome blogs! and
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2 Responses to The Motivation/Burnout Cycle

  1. ericjbaker says:

    I think my goals gave up on me.

    Seriously, this is an important subject for the lonely art of writing. It’s hard not to feel like a fraud or a fool sometimes.

    • tsuchigari says:

      Amen. I lost count of how many times I’ve restarted with a new set of goals. One of these days my characters are going to move on to a more productive writer and desert me entirely!

Comments are closed.


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Traverse City National Cherry Festival Vacation Planner 2015

Since 1968 the Traverse City National Cherry Festival has been celebrated as a week long event that celebrates cherries, cherries and more cherries in Traverse City. It is one of the most popular Northern Michigan events each year. The festival has upwards of 150 events ranging from music to Northern Michigan food and drink tastings. Plan your Northern Michigan vacation for the National Cherry Festival with our travel ideas that will help you take in the entire National Cherry Festival experience. Learn more at

Family Fun

Round up the whole family and head to downtown Traverse City to enjoy a day filled with family fun activities at the Traverse City National Cherry Festival. Camp out on Front Street while you and the kids watch the flags twirl and the bands play during either of the two parades. Another option is to spend the day browsing souvenir tents and munching on some fantastic food at the Festival Open Space. Or you could head down to West End and be amazed as the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds take to the sky to perform approximately 40 maneuvers.The free Air Show is on July 4th and 5th at 1:55 pm. Finally you could have some real family fun as you all try and compete to become the next Cherry Idol!

Bay Side Music Stage

More than a week of music performances, all on a stage located directly next to West Bay brings together artists of all genres. While Charlie Daniels Band and “Weird Al” Yankovic are this year’s headliners, there will also be a performance from Michigan’s own Gunnar & the Grizzly Boys. Catch a breeze right off Lake Michigan while your rock out at one of or all of the eight nights of great shows.

Foodie Events

It’s not just about individual cherries, but also the wonderful foods and dishes that can be made with cherries. There are numerous homemade cherry dishes being served up by many local Northern Michigan restaurants and chefs. Foodies can grab a bite at the Open Space, attend one of the farmer’s markets to buy some unique ingredients or purchase tickets to one of the food events.

Adults Only

Whether you’re parents who would like a night out, or a couple looking for special Cherry Festival date-night ideas, the Cherry Festival definitely has what you’re seeking. One option is to let loose and act like you’re eight again as you try your hand at a pie eating contest. Another choice would be entering the exclusive beer tent and enjoy some cold beverages, many Northern Michigan brewed, while looking out at the beautifully scenic bay. Or you could have a romantic evening underneath the opening or closing ceremony fireworks.

Runners, to Your Marks

Lace up your running shoes and head to the start line of one of these classic races in Traverse City:

  • Meijer Festival of Races: Since 1973, the original Traverse City footrace has seen over 50,000 participants cross the finish line. Join in for the 5k walk/run, 10k, 15k, or Half Marathon. Learn more at
  • Cherry Mile: The new and improved Cherry Mile presented by the Traverse City Track Club is a fast paced competition made up of elite runners, high school runners and for the first time 200 runners from the community. Learn more at
  • Fifth Annual Carter’s Kids Festival Fun Run: Local celebrity Carter Oosterhouse will start the one mile race for kids of all ages along the National Cherry Festival’s Touchstone Energy Junior Royale Parade route and then meet at the finish line with fanfare. Learn more at

Cherry Festival Lodging

There are plenty of amazing Northern Michigan hotels to choose from, however, we’ve mapped out the ones closest to the downtown festival.

Parking and Public Restrooms

Since most of Traverse City’s Front Street is reserved for festival activities, parking is very limited. Therefore it’s important to know where the closest parking spaces and public restrooms are, check them out here:


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Five Outdoor Winter Adventures to Try in Traverse City

Although this Midwest resort town has won a lot of recent admirers for the quality of its cultural and culinary scene, the top winter attraction here in Michigan’s “True North” is still the Great Outdoors. Once the snow begins to fall across this glacier-carved landscape, it becomes a sparkling white playground for outdoor winter sports—and that’s where the fun is.

Here’s a small sampling of suggestions for would-be winter visitors to Traverse City:

Racing Down Kingdom Come

If you’re a downhill skier, you already know that Northern Michigan doesn’t have the long, powdered runs of Colorado or Utah—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some challenging slopes in this part of the country. For instance, take a drive over to Shanty Creek Resorts, this region’s premiere full-service winter destination.

Shanty is a 4,500-acre recreational complex near Bellaire, in the beautiful Chain of Lakes region—about 30 miles northeast of Traverse City. SKI Magazine rated it the Midwest’s number-one destination in value, dining, lodging, weather and après ski activities.

The resort offers 43 trails spread over two distinct ski areas, and the most challenging runs are located at its southeastern edge on Schuss Mountain. If you think Michigan skiing is ho-hum, try making a run down Kingdom Come, a black diamond trail with a 450-foot vertical drop that starts steep and keeps on getting steeper. (Schuss was rated “Best Downhill Terrain in the Midwest” by readers of

If downhill skiing isn’t your thing, Shanty has a lot of other outlets for your winter urges, including six terrain parks, an alpine tubing area and 30km of Nordic trails.

Night Skiing at Timber Ridge

Want to try a different twist on Nordic skiing? Here’s another idea: skiing at night. There’s something about nighttime that makes cross-country skiing an entirely different experience, simultaneously intimate and more adventurous than it is in the daytime. To glide silently through an open stand of hardwoods in the moonlight, with the new snow glittering like diamond dust as it drifts down from the branches, is to experience a rare and secret beauty.

The best way to experience this magic is to get out on a clear night with a full moon and a sprinkling of brilliant winter stars. But since that’s not always possible, the next best thing is to seek out a groomed, well-lighted trail. One of the best in the area is at the Timber Ridge RV & Recreation Resort, headquarters for such local winter events as the North American Vasa Festival of Races, the Bigfoot Snowshoe Race and the Iceberg Triathlon.

Timber Ridge has several big advantages for the novice night skier. First, it’s located on Hammond Road—very close to Traverse City itself, less than 15 minutes from most local hotels and restaurants. Second, it offers equipment rentals and advice, so you can enjoy yourself even if you didn’t bring your gear along for the ride. Third, it’s conveniently connected to the immense Vasa Pathway system, with its 60 kilometers of deeply wooded, beautiful trails, just in case you’re feeling extra adventurous.

Snowshoeing Sleeping Bear Dunes

Snowshoeing is easy and fun—and it’s one of the best ways to enjoy the beauty of the Traverse City area in winter. It’s hard to match the quiet thrill of coming around a corner on the trail to see a herd of deer raise their heads, steam snorting from their noses as they look at you and silently bound off into the trees.

Snowshoeing is an especially good way to enjoy one of the area’s most beautiful landscapes—the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which has a special, secret loveliness in winter. The park’s 13 trails range from 1.5 miles to 22 miles in length and offer opportunities for snowshoers of all ability levels.

Lots of first-timers head directly to Empire Bluffs Trail—when you emerge from the woods onto that high bluff, with the broad, blue sweep of Lake Michigan below you like a giant polished turquoise, you’ll feel as though you’re the first (or last) person on Earth. But there are even better trails farther north, like the Bay View Trail in the hills around Thorson Road.

On Saturdays during January and February, you can even explore the trails with a National Park ranger. Guided hikes begin at 1 p.m. at the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center in Empire. For information and maps, or to make a reservation for a guided hike, call the Visitor Center at 231-326-5134, ext. 328.

Tubing Mt. Holiday

Snow tubing has all the thrilling speed of a toboggan run or a sledding hill—except that you get to sit in the middle of a big soft inner tube and ride down a groomed hill where there are people keeping an eye on you. And when you get to the bottom, there’s a towline waiting to take you back to the top so you can do it all over again.

Small wonder, then that snow tubing is one of the nation’s fastest-growing winter pastimes. What other “sport” requires little more of you than the ability to sit down, hang on tight and do a little high-pitched screaming as you hurtle downhill on a large inflated rubber donut?

Traverse City’s own Mt. Holiday Ski Area, just east of town, has a dedicated tubing park, and it’s a steep one, which appeals to a lot of thrill-seeking tubers. (They bill it as the area’s fastest tubing hill.) It also has an express return lift that helps you make the most of your allotted time.

Fat Biking on the Vasa Pathway

Fat bikes or snow bikes are specially-adapted mountain bikes with large tires capable of cycling on snow and sand, and they’ve turned cycling into a four-season sport in Traverse City. Fat biking is the answer for a lot of people who don’t currently have a winter sport or are looking to try a new one. There’s no learning curve; you just get a bike and ride.

But don’t just ride on a slushy sidewalk. The big thrill in fat biking is to get out into the woods and see how those big wheels deal with conditions in the back country! After some sticky years as newcomers to the local trail scene, fat bikes now have several dedicated trails. A good one for beginning riders is Traverse City’s new Winter Sports Singletrack Trail, a 15-kilometer trail that’s part of the huge Vasa Pathway system.

Reached by its own trailhead off Supply Road, the Winter Sports Singletrack is a groomed path through the Pere Marquette State Forest with plenty of challenges: sand, switchbacks, steep slopes, and close trees to squeeze through. (Careful, though—it’s not a purely dedicated track, so you may encounter other users along the way.)

There are plenty of other awesome sports you can try in a Traverse City winter—cold-weather kayaking, snowboarding, iceboating (yes, it’s a thing. Check out this video), to name a few. But this ought to give you a good start!

–Press release provided by Traverse City Tourism

Click the cover to read MyNorth’s Traverse City Vacation Guide!

More Traverse City Winter Activities


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Harvest Dinner Series at Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay

  • This event has passed.

March 12, 2014
6:30 pm - 9:00 pm

The Inn at Black Star Farms
10844 E. Revold Rd.
Suttons Bay, MI United States

Black Star Farms

Executive Chef Jonathan Dayton and Event Coordinator Stephanie Wiitala invite you to an evening fully inspired by the best of the harvest along with a food and wine experience like no other.
Meals are for people 21 and above.

The Harvest Dinner series kicked off in February this year and you have 11 months of opportunity to experience the best of Leelanau county’s seasonal harvests. Menus: TBD

Tickets for the 5 course wine paired dinners are limited to 30 guests. Cost is $100, all inclusive of tax and gratuity.

Tickets are also available at www.MyNorthTickets.com, by calling 1-800-836-0717 or by stopping in at the new MyNorthTickets office, located in downtown Traverse City at 125 Park St., Suite 155.

Suttons Bay is the quaint little village about 15 miles north of Traverse City on M-22.


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ResetView: All | FeaturedAdd Your Own

Consultative Sales Home Improvement

Traverse City, MI

Posted on March 7, 2018

Apply Now

About Consultative Sales Home Improvement

Jobs in this category are responsible for: selling and servicing customers within one or more departments including Home Improvement, Lawn and Garden, Tools, Sporting Goods; maintaining knowledge of products and using this knowledge to assist and educate customers on options available; providing customer assistance; and delivering a positive customer shopping experience. In general, pay for jobs in this category is based on a fixed hourly rate of pay plus potential commissions based on sales; however, the compensation structure may vary by department or store.

Job Function: Sales

Payroll Location: 02180: Sears Traverse City MI

Store/Unit: 02180

Sears Req Type: Hourly

Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Vet.

Employer’s Job# 918636BR

Please visit job URL for more information about this opening and to view EOE statement.

Job at a Glance

About Sears, Roebuck and Co.

How to Apply


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Do Not Be Afraid ! / The Ultimate Hope.( post # 531)

Despite the turbulence and the uncertainty of the time ,”do not be afraid.”
Everyone of us is afraid of something .Afraid of our jobs,relations,schools,the future,sickness,afraid of the unknown,persecution,afraid of old age and afraid of death.

Rejoice for  Christ said .”” Do not be afraid,for l will always be with you no matter what happens to the end of time.I will never leave you or forsake you . Even though the future is uncertain , you can be absolutely sure of your ultimate destination .l will hold you by your  hand and afterward l will take you into heaven.””

(( Knowing Christ is the greatest knowledge ,the treasure of all treasures.Jalal Michael Sabbagh- ))

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Let It Be?

I’ve been struggling with acceptance.  Many experiences have led me to feel that it is the most profound of spiritual attributes.

Katherine Mansfield says

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.  So suffering must become love.  That is the mystery.

In my bones I know this is true, but acceptance is not my best thing.  How one holds this deep spiritual knowledge and yet finds the force for intense action is the mystery and the fact that I want to embody.

So, when I came across this video, my rage that this man had to do this because we cannot come together as decent people to take care of each other, was matched by my wonder at the choice, the rightness, the beauty, the twisting in my belly about all that I cannot fix or control, that he chose Let It Be.

For now, with or without rage, perhaps we can help.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.


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Customer SERVICE Lessons to be learned from the #UnitedAirlinesAssault

Without exaggerating it brought tears to my eyes when I initially saw the video of the elderly men being dragged through the airplane, while bleeding from his mouth and screaming. The violence in the scene is extremely saddening!

How can a PAYING CUSTOMER be treated in this manner? What was his offence? Having bought a ticket from United Airlines, all he wanted to do was to take the flight he booked and payed for, right?!

Also, after reading up on the story and finding out that he is a doctor who explained that he needs to see patients the next day, therefore cannot be late for work and refused to VOLUNTEER to leave the OVERBOOKED plane, I was even more shocked about the entire incident.

So what Customer Service lessons can be learned from the #UnitedAirlinesAssault ?

  1. OVERBOOKING a plane is BAD FOR BUSINESS, as it will (always) leave somebody behind – a paying customer who will think twice of choosing the company again!
  2. ASKING FOR VOLUNTEERS to leave the plane is ALSO BAD FOR BUSINESS, as customers expect the service to be completed not to be asked to stay back!
  3. VIOLENTLY FORCING A PAYING CUSTOMER OF A PLANE, to allow personnel to take the freed-up seats is REALLY, REALLY BAD FOR BUSINESS, as the world is watching and reacting to it (e.g. #Shitstorm #UnitedAirlinesMottos)!!!
  4. LACK OF EMPATHY FOR A VIOLENT INCIDENT, is BAD FOR BUSINESS TOO! Even if a laaaaaaaate apology follows the initial ‘not our fault’ statement!

Dear United Airlines,

Would it have been possible to book seats for personnel initially, to avoid this situation in the first place?

Would it have been possible to book a ticket for the VOLUNTEERS or personnel on another airline, so that the passengers / personnel would arrive at their destination still on time?

Would it have been possible to NOT VIOLENTLY FORCE A PAYING CUSTOMER of the plane?

4 Customer Service quotes that may INSPIRE YOU #UnitedAirlines

“The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them — preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” – Richard Branson

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos

“Make the customer the hero of your story.” – Ann Handley

“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They DO expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” – Donald Porter

What did You think of the incident? Leave me your comments below.

All the Best,

Naomi xxx

P.S.: Treat ALL your Customers & Clients with RESPECT!

How to create Good…Better… BEST Customer Service

How serious do you take your Customer Service?

In this post I will deep-dive into the topic of customer service, to Increase Your Know, Like and Trust Factor!

8 Ways to Make Your Costomers Love Your Business

Am pretty sure you know, Customer service starts with your advertisement materials and website were customers get clearly detailed information about the offered products and /or services.

When a customer calls your information hotline, they should receive a warm greeting and the information they require at the time and should have the opportunity to book or cancel a consultation. If a customer sends a query email, make it a rule to respond no later than 24hours later, as the level of patience has become lesser and lesser the more popular new media has become. Let your customer or clients be able to book or cancel a consultation via email too.

The Top 5 of Responding to Customer Queries

  1. Enable customers to submit feedback via email or directly to a member of staff
  2. Ensure customer comments and feedback is always welcome
  3. Respond to negative feedback promptly and efficiently
  4. Listen to customers and meet their needs wherever possible
  5. Always deal with customers in a friendly and approachable manner.

If you offer an initial (free) consultation, be honest what you can or cannot deliver, before the customer books the service he/she wishes to purchase. After the service has taken place, send out a survey questioner for customer feedback. You might want to increase survey participation by offering something in return, for example a free service, en entry into a specific prize draw etc.

Do not sell any products or services that your customers doesn’t need or want, despite making a quick sale, the customer might feel ripped off and not come back for further business, as there is no return of investment.

In case of a complaint look into the case and try to resolve the problem within a specific time frame.

How to create Business Policies and Procedures for Outstanding Customer Service

Write down and plan your principles, policies and procedures of your organisation, include;

  • How the ‘Meeting and greeting’ of customers or clients should be
  • Plan how to handle ‘Feedback and complaints’
  • How to handle ‘Issues of public concern’ and how they are addressed / dealt with
  • How to ensure ‘Confidentiality’, consider laws and regulations you have to adhere to
  • How to create consistent ‘Quality’ and anything in regards to your products / services

Take your detailed list of principles, policies and procedures and incorporate them in your business documentation, for example your;

  • Business plan – mission or vision statement
  • Organisation handbook
  • Advertising material
  • Website content

Keep a Procedure Protocol in your Organisation handbook ready for your employees of individual contractors. Regularly analyse any feedback, for example the customer survey questionnaires, to spot issues early, and to address them promptly.

I hope this post on Customer Service was helpful to you and your business; if so please Like & Share.

I welcome any comments you might have.

All the Best,

Naomi x


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Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

Ayla, a five-year old Cro-Magnon girl is the sole survivor of an earthquake that  destroys her family’s camp – leaving her homeless, orphaned, and nearing starvation. Only discovery by a band of Neanderthal nomads who call themselves “the Clan” saves her life, when at the urging of Iza, their medicine woman, they adopt her as one of their own. But of course Ayla is not like the Clan, and the differences, both physical and cognitive, will have devastating consequences.

Having heard of the Clan of the Cave Bear series from many friends over the years, I always intended to read the books but only got around to it in the last year, having heard a sixth book was being published. I love historical fiction – well researched, meticulous historical fiction – and in that regard Clan of the Cave Bear did not disappoint. While more recent archaeological evidence suggests the portrayal of the Clan may not be entirely accurate (they may in fact have been able to speak, for example) this was discovered after the original publication in 1980.

While I greatly enjoyed reading it and have gone on to read books 2 and 3, with plans to finish the series, I also did not love it as so many do. Perhaps, as so often happens, it was ruined a bit by years and years of people telling me it was the best book ever. That’s hard to live up to.

I found the violence and mating descriptions overly repetitive, to the point that they were almost embarrassing to read.They just didn’t seem to fit, as if forced into the narrative somewhat. It’s hard to explain; any readers out there agree with me? I also have very little time for any theory of genetic memory, so the idea of the Clan having a shared, prehistoric memory turned me off a little. I can stretch my imagination quite far if you can convince me even a little bit that something is possible. If I believe it is impossible, you are out of luck.

Still, as someone who loves history, and was recently fascinated by the chance to visit prehistoric hominid sites in Africa, I was thrilled to find a novel that focused on pre-homo-sapien humans, and treated them as people, not animals, not merely half-humans.

If you love a historical saga as much as I do, you really should check this out. And if you are a biology grad who is sticky about genetics, just glaze over the shared memory bit, and remember that it is fiction, after all.

Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: Bantam; Reprint edition (Nov 1 1984)
ISBN-10: 0553250426
ISBN-13: 978-0553250428

One thought on “Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

  1. I read this series a few years ago, and enjoyed it. I don’t think it is the “best book ever” but did enjoy it enough to finish what was then the whole series. I have been getting copies of the series (I need the Valley of Horses and the last release) so that I can refresh my memories before reading the last book.

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This is not a writing post: Thoughts on Troy Davis

I’d like to take a moment to discuss the state of Georgia’s recent execution of Troy Davis (September 21, 2011 at 11:08 p.m. Eastern Time).

Yes, I know. This is a writing blog.

But I am a political person, and I can’t let this go.

I would venture that, like me, the vast majority of people who rose up to decry this exercise of capital punishment had no idea who Troy Davis was before this week. You’d never know that by watching the news.

We, as a culture, put on a good show of loving justice, though we each have our own ideas of what exactly that is. More than this, we seem to love the chance to rail against injustice. Maybe it’s because this is an easier path–a quick flash of indignation and rage, a little seething and grousing after, then back to our regularly schedule program. I’m not blaming anyone for this cherry-picked approach. Because once you start looking, really looking, you’ll see injustice everywhere. This is our world. And living with eyes open to this is exhausting. I know this from experience.

This is a blog about writing, a blog about the creative process, a blog, ultimately, about imagination.

And this is where I fail you.

Because I cannot imagine how the execution of Troy Davis was just. I cannot imagine the world as a better, safer place because one man is no longer in it. It doesn’t even matter that he was very likely innocent of the charges which led to his conviction and execution.

A man died last night to feed the machine.

Each of us has the individual responsibility of deciding how this does–or does not–effect their life.

And the wheel spins on.

3 thoughts on “This is not a writing post: Thoughts on Troy Davis

  1. I think everyone has those moments in their lives where they rally behind something seemingly out of nowhere not because their passion to do something is being cherry-picked, but because something sparks them to look up and realize that they can no longer sit by and do nothing. That’s the situation I found myself in with Troy Davis.

    A couple weeks ago, as you said, I had no idea who he was. But then someone posted a petition on Twitter and it got my attention. I don’t go looking for these things, and maybe that makes me a lazy human, and maybe I am at times disappointed in myself for it. However, I know how far down that particular rabbit hole goes. I live my life and try to do what I can when I can.

    I don’t know what it is about this Troy Davis issue that hit me so hard but it’s still in my thoughts repeatedly this morning.

    1. Yeah, that’s an awfully deep rabbit hole. I know some people, very well-meaning people who seem to live in a constant state of near outrage, ready to fly into “boycott ALL the things!” mode at the slightest provocation. And I don’t see that as any way to live, either.

      I really do hope that I am able to find my own path of moderation. That balance between awareness and ignorance, hope and cynicism, is one tricky bastard. And I suspect it will be a life-long work in progress for me.

      And I really don’t mean to be dismissive of people rallying beyond this incident. I agree–there’s something about this that caused a spark. And I really do hope that enough people DO something with that spark–that it sparks a fire to make some changes in an inherently unjust system.

      1. I didn’t think you were dismissive at all. This situation brought out a lot of strong feelings and there’s going to be tension and frayed nerves for a while. I really do hope that the feeling of sickness this brought on will be a lasting reminder and maybe a motivator.

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AFL Update: Nov. 2, 2017

Victor Robles homered and discarded his weapon* to cap off a five-run 8th as the Solar Sox torched the Saguaros, 8-5.
Lee said the bat went 6′ up and 6′ away from Robles.

Robles also walked twice and stole twice in his first two AB’s to finish 1-for-3 with a runs scored and three RBI. Defensively, he made five putouts while playing centerfield.

Taylor Gushue led off the 8th with his second fall homer and extended his hit streak to four games. The Mesa catcher also walked and had ten putouts (all K’s).

Kelvin Gutierrez went 3-for-5 with a run scored while batting eighth and playing third base, where he had no chances.

Jimmy Cordero got the benefit of the outburst for pitching a scoreless bottom of the 7th, striking out two and keeping his ERA at 0.00 for his second fall win.

Mesa scored twice in the 9th to offset Dakota Bacus’s ineffectiveness, as the “white ninja” let in three runs on five hits and no walks over the final two innings.

The Solar Sox return home to host the Saguaros this afternoon, then travel to Scottsdale tomorrow to finish out the fourth week of the 2017 AFL season.


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Home Front Page Humans get “turned on” by touching robot

Humans get “turned on” by touching robot

We're quickly approaching an era where the issue of "sex robots" might become a real possibility.

Turns out that sex robots might have some scientific merit. In a recent study, researchers found evidence that humans are “turned on” by touching the perceived private parts of a robot, such as its buttocks.

While sex robots have become a part of popular culture, especially in movies and other media dealing with the future, the study marks one of the first efforts to determine whether or not the average person could be aroused by interacting with a computer.

Conducted at Stanford University, researchers placed finger sensors on test subjects and had them interact with a 2 foot tall robot that somewhat resembles the Michelin Man. While the robot does have the rough shape and proportion of a human, it is clearly not human like. Six women and four men when involved in the eyebrow raising study, and were asked to touch the robot in various places.

When test subjects touched non-private areas, such as the robot’s hands, no reaction was found. Once the test subjects touched “private” areas, researchers recorded an increase in moisture on the test subject’s fingertips. Such an increase in moisture has already been associated with heightened sexual arousal, suggesting that people can, in fact, be turned on by interactions with robots.

Researcher Jamy Li claims that the study “shows that people respond to robots in a primitive, social way.”

If people can experience heightened sexual arousal with a 2 foot tall robot that does not closely resemble a human, can you imagine what reactions will be when humans interact with robots that actually resemble humans?

With robotics advancing at breakneck speed, it may only become a matter of time before this issue moves from being a quirky question among scientists to an issue we actually have to confront. Are there potential ethical ramifications? Or could their be legal issues if robots resemble people, such as movie stars?


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What do Sociologists do for fun?

Here’s one thing we do:

On a weekend at the beginning of April, eleven folks from the Department of Sociology and Social Work traveled to Long Beach, California to attend the Pacific Sociological Association’s 86th annual meeting, entitled “People, Place, and Power.” Not only did we make the trek to present our own research, but also to learn about the research of colleagues in the discipline.

While in Long Beach, we were lucky enough to run into some alumni from our department, such as Susan Bell Murray, a graduate from our B.S. program in Sociology in 1988 and currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at San Jose State University, and Stephanie Williams, a graduate from our B.S. program in Sociology and currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice here at NAU.

For your enjoyment, here are some photographs of our departmental members being scholarly (and celebrating and well, even resting).

Please find below a list of all the formal research presentations made by members of our department, both graduate students and faculty.

Lou Baker, “Transgender outside the city: Transmasculine identity and the non-metropolitan gender experience.”

Amanda Brand, “From Locked Doors to Locked Screens: Sexting as a GenderedPerformance of Sexuality and Privacy.”

Sean Boylan, “The Drug War, Social Movements and the Repeal of Cannabis Prohibition: Changing Public Opinion.”

Katherine Everhart, “Everything but the Funnel Cake: Cultural Expressions and the University of Puerto Rico Student Occupation.”

James Kirkham, “How Much Can We Take: Craft breweries explosion and the power of local markets.”

Yvonna M. Luna and Anne M. Medill, “Faculty-led study abroad: Reflections on students’ cross-cultural engagement.”

Kooros Mahmoudi, “How to Choose, Navigate, and Align your Graduate Program with your Career Objectives.”

Joe Martin, “The Cost of Freedom: Homelessness as a Nomadic Lifestyle.”

Dick Skeen, “Sexuality: Meaning Webs and Their Evolution.”

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USD ЦБ — 57,29 +0,05
EUR ЦБ — 70,74 +0,28
Brent — 70,36 +2,21%
March, Saturday

Question of the week

Will the russian Turkish stream be launched, or an apology to Erdogan is not enough?

poll archive

News // Поиск по тегу 'energy minister'

Energy Minister of Azerbaijan has died in Turkey

Azerbaijani Energy Minister Natig Aliyev died, said General Consulate of Azerbaijan in Istanbul.

09 June 2017 , 16:04Neftegaz.RU0

Ground broken for Russian-financed 1.4 GW power plant

The construction of a 1,400-megawatt thermal power plant financed to the tune of €1.2 bln by Russia started in the city of Sirik, southern Iran.

22 February 2017 , 16:10Neftegaz.RU0

Russia's energy minister: No oil production cuts on table

Russia's energy minister said there are no proposals on the table to cut crude oil production, though a move to hold levels steady is under review.

23 September 2016 , 14:11Daniel J. Graeber0

New Energy Minister Faces Australian Cost Challenge

Gary Gray, a former Woodside Petroleum Ltd. corporate affairs chief, has been named Australia's new Minister for Resources and Energy following a cabinet reshuffle of the country's governing Labor Party.

29 March 2013 , 10:02Neftegaz.RU0

Neftegaz.RU context


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Neil Gunn Circle

August 20, 2009

Edinburgh Book Festival

Filed under: News — harenet @ 7:26 pm

In a panel with Stuart Campbell entitled Literature and Culture Dairmid Gunn will present a different side to Neil Gunn. Monday 31st August at 4.00pm in the Peppers Theatre. Details are on the Book Festival website:

August 5, 2009

Neil Gunn Lecture 2009

Filed under: News — harenet @ 12:04 pm

Owen Dudley Edwards will give the 2009 Neil Gunn lecture at Eden Court, Inverness at 7pm on Wednesday 7th October. Eden Court Box Office: 01463 234234.

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