Dooley Communications was very pleased to work with Global Wind Group Inc. to help the local company unveil a major installation of vertical-axis wind turbines today in Rosenort, Manitoba.

We helped coordinate the media relations and social media efforts for the company and were happy to get coverage on CTV Winnipeg (watch it tonight), CBC Television (last night), CJOB, CBC Radio Noon, BobFM, CFAM and the Golden West Media network, Altona Echo and the Emerson Southeast Journal.

 Here are some photos from the event.

Here’s our news release:

The RM of Morris first to feel the winds of change

RM of Morris will unveil the first ever vertical-axis wind turbines installed on a Manitoba public service garage

Rosenort, Manitoba, June 24, 2009 – The RM of Morris has become the front line in the battle against greenhouse gases and airborne pollution from fossil fuels thanks to an innovative Manitoba company specializing in renewable energy.

This morning Global Wind Group, Inc. unveiled an installation of three new roof-mounted, vertical-axis wind turbines on the Morris Municipal Public Service Garage. The installation is the first of its kind in the province and will generate enough energy to power the building’s geothermal heat exchange pumps, effectively giving the building a carbon footprint of almost zero.

“Global Wind Group is a North American leader in wind energy technology. We specialize in easily transportable designs that help urban, rural and remote communities realize green alternatives to fossil fuels,” said Alex Stuart, President of Global Wind Group. “The cost of non-renewable energy is only going to rise in the future. These turbines will play an important role in helping Manitoba meet its Kyoto targets.”

Dignitaries from around the province were on hand to help celebrate the occasion, including MLA Rob Altemeyer who brought greetings from Hon. Stan Struthers, Minister of Conservation; Herm Martens, Reeve of the RM of Morris; Alex Stuart, President of Global Wind Group, Inc. and Ernest Buhler, Chief Administrative Officer for the RM of Morris; and MLA Mavis Taillieu.

The Rosenort installation has three 1.2kW vertical-axis wind turbines delivering a total of 3.6kW of clean, renewable energy. That is enough to power a typical energy efficient 1,000 square foot bungalow. Global Wind Group turbines are well suited for mounting on roof tops and can exceed green building standards. The turbines’ vertical-axis design offers many advantages over traditional propeller style wind turbines, including silent operation, very little vibration, and no bird-kill. The wind turbine installation in Rosenort is an important step towards reducing Manitoba’s carbon footprint and is a symbol of our innovation in developing new sources of renewable energy. The new turbines now give many other locations around the province a new alternative for renewable energy.

The installation was partly funded by a grant from Conservation Manitoba Sustainable Development Innovations Fund. The fund supports and encourages processes, practices, materials, products, substances or energy that avoid or minimize the creation of pollutants and waste, and reduce the overall risk to the environment and human health.
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Adam Dooley
For Global Wind Group
Phone: 204-291-4092
adooley@dooleycommunications.ca

About Global Wind Group (www.globalwindgroup.com)
Global Wind Group (GWG) is a Manitoba-based company that sells and installs durable, quiet and versatile vertical-axis wind turbines in Manitoba, Northwestern Ontario and Nunavut. In addition to providing wind testing services, the company helps its clients identify, and apply for, available rebates, to achieve cost-effective solutions for their energy needs. GWG is a leader in vertical axis wind turbine technology and wind-energy generation. The company is member of a the Manitoba Chapter of the Canadian Green Building Council, Manitoba Environmental Industries Association (MEIA) and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities.

I marvel at my bookkeeper. She was at her desk the other day swiftly and effortlessly moving through my receipts, dispatching them to their correct resting places. If it were me, I said, my back would be a giant knot of stress.

It’s not that bookkeeping is especially hard, but it’s hard for me. I’ve never studied it. I do it infrequently and reluctantly, and usually only after I’m finished an already hard day’s work. I recognized I needed a pro to do it right, so I hired her.

She looked up at me, smiled, and said it’s the same for her with writing.  She’s gone to school to be a bookkeeper; she’s done it professionally for years; and she likes the nature of the work. But when she’s called upon to write something, she freezes up and needs to struggle mightily to get her thoughts down.

I know very well how important good writing is and how hard it is to do. I learned the craft first as a journalist, working for a series of newspapers in Southwestern Ontario where I was called upon to write 20 to 30 stories per week. That boot camp taught me how to churn out lively, error-free (or very close) copy quickly. I learned how to write in a variety of styles. I mastered how to write leads and how to lay down words in a way that helped my readers get all the way to the end of the story.

Armed with those skills, I moved into the corporate world where I discovered how rare they were. Even as a junior in the communications department, I was commonly cleaning up the writing of senior executives and board members. They couldn’t get their tenses right to save their lives. They excelled in using the latest business buzz words (and thought themselves erudite for doing so). Spelling was bad. Styleguides were non-existent. And don’t get me started on the difference between passive and active voices. As skilled as some of them were in their own fields - law, accounting, sales, management - they were incompetent as writers.

One of my colleagues was notorious throughout our organization for his inability to conjugate even basic English verbs. His work was embarrassing, but he was a prolific senior executive. Barely literate letters went out under his pen to our suppliers and customers. A grade school student could have done better. The result was ongoing harm to our corporate reputation.

I recall the effect his letters would have on employees in particular. His memos were so garbled and full of inexactitudes and obfuscations that they regularly caused the rank and file to huddle together to decipher their true meanings. My department staffers would tiptoe into my office, close the door and ask for a translation. It was an ongoing distraction that needlessly hurt morale and productivity.

I’m a firm believer that the quality of a firm’s communications is a measure of its whole. If its marketing and public relations tools are bad, what are we to make of its accounting, its finance, its logistics, its governance, its human resources, etc.?

So the next time you’re putting together a communications piece for your organization and you’re cursing the stress it’s causing you, ask yourself if you’re a writer trying to be a bookkeeper. If the answer is yes, then pick up the phone and call a pro. Whether it’s a speech, an annual report, a blog or a newsletter, we’ll make sure your message is communicated effectively.

For companies, brands, organizations and people that ever doubted the value of social media as a powerful means of communication, the events of the last week in Iran must be an eye opening experience. Since the Iranian government has expelled almost all foreign correspondents the only news getting out of the country is being sent via social networks, namely Twitter.

What makes this particular situation different is that the content being shared on social networks is not remaining just on the social networks. Images and videos from inside Iran are being broadcast on television channels around the world – from CNN, to the BBC, to CBC.

The world is seeing the Iranian situation through the eyes of the Iranians. The news is coming from people living the event, not just reporting on it. This new free way to share information instantly around the world is forcing the Iranian government that has been accused of illegitimate actions in the past, to take notice and tread a little more carefully (witness the call for a review of some election returns by the clerics who run things there).
Some people and news outlets have called this the tipping point for Iran. Many feel that if ever Iran was going to throw off the cloak of old world thinking and reenter the world stage as a positive contributor that time is now.

Recent movements for positive change - the falling of the Berlin wall, the solidarity movement in Poland, the end of apartheid - have all come by way of people coming together, joining in the fight for change and slowly gaining the upper hand. It took communication; it took people understanding and drawing strength from their neighbours. With new technologies that enable anyone, anywhere in the world to instantly share their experiences through photos, videos or even their own voice, these movements now have the ability to do in days what used to take years.

It is hard to imagine this happening so quickly had it not been for Twitter, the killer social network with the silly name. Almost over night, a world that looked down on Iran has come to hope for it, to hope for its people. Some say that this could have all been possible without social media and they are right. Major change has happened many other times in our history without social media. However, a big contributor to the movement in Iran gaining momentum so quickly is because the people inside the country did not feel alone, they knew their messages were and are getting out and the people of the world are listening.

Many people are calling social networks a trend, and some aspects of it are trendy. There will always be a newer, hipper social network to be a part of, but social networks will always be there. The opportunities for communication that new media affords the world are just to great to ignore.

If you’re unsure how new media and social networks can benefit your business or organization, give Adam Dooley a call at 204-291-4092. We’d love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you to discuss the potential.