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Top Definition
Walking into a store (Asda, today) and impulse buying a stylish beanie without trying it on (in case it made me look a dick) only to get outside, try it on in the car and realise that I looked a dick, but £5 lighter.
I had a hatastrophe at the Wal Marts today; i could have spent that fiver on scratch cards and not looked such a dick.
by Radstock_Jon_Jon September 09, 2008
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subset: commoncrawl


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Since I started updating this blog at the beginning of 2012 it has been one of my ambitions to interview some of the people who have been influential in my continuing journey to become a better SEO. There are a handful of SEO's I've stuck with over probably the last 4 years or more, sure, my head's been turned now and again by the latest Guru/Ninja/Jedi but it's never for long, I always come back to my old friends.
It took me a while to come up with an interview "angle" because I didn't want this to just be a standard, here are some questions, let's get a bunch of SEO's to answer them. After making my to 5 list of interview candidates it came to me, I'll do a British theme! You can be the judge of how well I stuck to it..
I can't thank the 3 people below enough for agreeing to take part in this interview, they are all SEO's I highly respect and, as luck would have it they each represent one of the countries which make up "Great Britain"
Wales – James Edwards – Blog
I first came across James a few years back as one of the longest serving and most knowledgeable members on the UK Business forum's SEO section. You can find James by searching Google for "Google expert" and clicking on the top result….
Scotland – Shaun Anderson – Blog
The SEO blog over at Hobo is the reason I started to stalk Shaun, in my opinion it's one of most informative SEO blogs in the UK and I've recommended it over and over again. Shaun is a multi award winning SEO, including being voted "Most influential" UK SEO back in 2010.
England – Will Critchlow – Blog
Will is one of the most well known SEO's around due to his fantastic work with Distilled and also
SEOMOZ. I have to admit there were quite a few people I could have approached to represent England for this interview but Will was by far and away top of the list.
The Interview
Where are you right now?
Will: After we opened our Seattle office, I updated my twitter bio to say location: "somewhere rainy". Currently, my rainy home is London. I'll be in Munich for SMX in the last week of March and then back to London and then Boston for our linklove conferences.
Shaun: Greenock, Scotland – surely the home of search marketing in Scotland?
As with most things "Webby" internet marketing is dominated by our cousins across the pond. Fo you believe there are any differences in the way SEO is conducted between Britain and The US, are there some techniques which are more/less effective here? Do some things not translate well? (I'm thinking possibly around outreach, blogging, social interactions etc?)
Will: We opened up our Seattle office in early 2010 and NYC in mid 2011. I wouldn't say we have used dramatically different techniques for US or UK clients.
James: UK Buyers are a breed apart from US buyers, for that reason alone, the UK market have to be sold to differently. If we believe we are being sold to, even if we actually want to buy, we walk away. Classic case of being in a shop, cash in pocket, salesman comes up and starts the pitch with 'can I help you'? classic UK answer is 'no thanks I am just looking'. UK people love being sold to professionally but will rat out a sales pitch a mile away. For that reason alone, the off site promotion needs to be believable.
Shaun: SEO (or the celebrity of seo) is dominated by the US – and in fact, the only seo in the UK with anywhere near the same influence or audience of the top US seo is David Naylor. If you have been in seo any length of time – you know it's simple stuff that get results. So I'd wager SEO is conducted much the same in the US as it is in the UK.
all the major search engines Google being based out in California do you feel that British SEO's are at a disadvantage (or maybe even an advantage!) versus those closer to the epicentre in terms of roll out of new features?
Will: We are probably slightly sheltered (or exposed, depending on how you look at it) to this since we have a number of cross-Atlantic clients and SEOs in both countries.
There are a number of great looking events going on across Britain in 2012, which Internet Marketing conference you would recommend and/or which will you be attending?
Will: I'll obviously be at our own events (Linklove in late March and Searchlove in the autumn) and working hard to make those as good as I possibly can.
James: SES Londonis always a great event on many levels, a chance to catch up with old friends, meet new, attend some sessions, then back to the bar where all the real information is shared. I would recommend SES, but it can be a little out of reach for the pocket of some.
Another favourite is Internet World Earls Court April. This is a different animal and is better suited to the business person and is more of a fun gig. This year I have reeled myself in as I made a lifestyle choice.
Shaun: Thinkvisibility is the conference I go to. I like the people organising it, and the people who go to it. It's on a Saturday – it's quite a hardcore geek group. My hangovers are getting worse though – I might do the next one sober.
The British government currently has a policy of one in, one out with regards the implementation of new legislation. With that in mind what one thing would you like to be implemented by Google in 2012 and what you remove to make way for it?
Will: Do they? I thought we were still proliferating rules and laws…
James: In: Guaranteed top spots for any site I am connected with! Ok apart from that then I would like to see Google bring in a working geo locator, because every time I connect to a hotspot, I get rubbish local results. Quite why Google think I would like to see double glazing companies from London via Google Places, above Swansea companies Lord alone knows. Google are at risk of being too clever for their own good here, and while those on the inside know how to correct this, most people look at the SERP's and say 'what is THAT about'? Eventually they will leave.OUT: Spying on me, I would remove the content delivered as a result of social habits. Re-marketing drives me NUTS. I would ask Google to bring in a simple button that saysPERSONALISED RESULTS OF ANY KIND on/off
Shaun: I wish Google+ would go away to be honest. But more importantly for us seo – I think the desire of Google to produce more and more local results (those based on your query and your current location) will help local businesses to some limited degree, but may hurt businesses who are using organic results in Google to grow their businesses nationwide – and even worldwide. Eventually- if you want nationwide coverage – there will only be one realistic option. Adwords. I saw a serp with 3 organic results yesterday and the rest local results and adwords. – only one of these organic results was above the fold – the other two organic results was the last on the page. THis is probably the future – or at least – what Google would love to get away with. But frankly – it's not making search a better experience – not for me anyway!
Google's focus on ads and driving traffic to their own properties is pretty clear-cut in 2012 – it's a pity at the moment we need to the dance to their tune as they are realistically the only tune playing. I read two good articles very recently about two different companies (Google & Goldman Sachs) and something about those two stories seemed shockingly similar.
Continuing the political theme do you have any tips from working in coalition on a particular project? If the client has an in house technical team or maybe marketing and PR for example, how do you manage these relationships?
Will: All our projects are like this in one form or another. Much like any relationship, we believe the key is communication. We have an internal meme that "communication solves all problems" and it's been repeatedly proven true.
James: As WC Fields said 'anyone who hates kids and dogs can't be all bad' Never work with kids or dogs is the old acting mantra, and it is true of SEO/Internet marketing , that is to say, never work with anyone you can't work with!
The only way I have found to manage the relationships, is to talk early, and if there is any gut feeling of concern, no matter how small, WALK. The only person who will carry the can if things go wrong is the guy on the outside, and it is that guy's reputation that is being risked.
That said, most people are sensible, and if you can over deliver in private to these guys, then they will get onside with you. I find it always helps to explain the 'why' in any instruction, in short, sell the benefits to that person, and they can then evangelise it as their own. Let them have the glory
Shaun: Some teams are suspicious of seos – and with good reason. SEO isn't rocket science. An seos job isn't necessarily to bring seo secrets to the table – often it's more to advise you what not to waste your time and money on – in terms of improving your traffic and sales from search engines.
I don't do coalitions as I prefer to be the dictator. If I am in charge of getting more traffic from Google natural results – that is – it's my neck on the chopping board – I expect to be laying down strategy with the marketing team and website development team, being listened to, as far as Google goes. If I am not – I just see lots of wasted opportunities go-a-begging. I am a control freak. I have lost count of the number of press releases I have seen and I have thought "For f*&*^-sake WTF is the link to the client website in this article??" I mean – how hard is it to put a f*&^ing "http://" before a website url in a press release? These things get scraped and reposted etc etc…..That annoys me. A lot of web developers claim to know seo and I find myself telling them everything they think is important will have next to zero impact in their rankings. I think the only people a seo need answer to is the board, owner and marketing director – these are the people with the seo vetoes.
What are the best search related resources emanating from your country at the moment? Be it a blog, news channel, forum or something completely different.
Will: SEOgadget is one of the few SEO blogs where I read every post. Rich and the team are creating some great stuff – and he's just down the road so definitely one of ours!
James: I really like MajesticSEO it is an effective piece of kit. There are some good UK based blogs that have been around a long time, but I think recently Majestic has placed itself as an important element for internet marketers.
Shaun: From Scotland?
Post by Gaz Copeland
Image: creativedoxfoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


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Flames 2011-2012 Bright Spots
Kent Wilson
April 06 2012 11:18AM
There's just one game left in what will prove to be the Flames worst regular season since 2002-03. This off-season will no doubt be filled with tough questions, doubts and multiple post-mortems to be sure. Picking through the wreckage and attempting to define a new path forward has become one of my favorite summer acitivities.
All that said, not everything was bad news this season. A few bright spots emerged from the gloom that are worth mentioning
The Silver Linings
The Kipper Rebound
After perhaps his second worst season in Flames colors in 2010-11 (2008-09 stands alone at the bottom), Miikka Kiprusoff had a fine bounce back season that saw him float the team for a two month stretch while they battled incessant injuries. If Kipper doesn't play like a Vezina candidate through January and February, the Flames aren't battling for a playoff spot come March.
While those heroics now seem somewhat fruitless (and perhaps pragmatically counterproductive since a higher draft pick would be preferable at this point), his renaissance means he has reinvigorated his value on the trade market at just the right time for the organization.
This summer, Miikka's NTC goes away and his real salary (versus his cap hit) begins to drop. He'll be paid $5M next year and then just $1.5M the season. His cap hit will remain at $5.83M, but the reduction in real cash salary and the erasure of his NTC means he can be traded to just about anyone, and his contract is less risky.
The question of whether to deal Kipper at all is another matter, but the good news is it has now a more attractive option after such a quality performance.
Flames win the Regehr trade
I'll admit I was fairly underwhelmed by the return for former stalwart Robyn Regehr when Feaster moved him (and Kotalik + a second) for Chris Butler and Paul Byron. I'm still not thrilled a second round pick was included and I find Byron to be a completely middling prospect, but in the end I have to give the edge to the Flames anyways.
For two reasons: firstly, Butler is a young, functional top-four defender whose cap hit is incredibly reasonable (1.25M). The 26-year old caught a lot of flack this year for his occasional struggles, but the truth is he was technically playing way over his head on a top-pairing, shut-down tandem. He finished the year with the second highest average even strength ice time per game for the Flames and third most per game short-handed ice. That's a tough row to hoe for a guy who wasn't even a regular for the Sabres the year previous. So while he didn't exactly excel in his vastly tougher assignment, he was good enough for the Flames to assume they have a competent top-four guy on a cheap ticket going forward.
Reggie, on the other hand, had a terrible year. His addition has been roundly panned by Sabres writers and fans. Initially paired with sophomore Tyler Myers to start the year, the duo got their heads beat it in as the Sabres shut-down pairing. After 75 games, Regehr's even strength ice time has sunk to 15:54 per game - good for 6th amongst regular Sabre defenders.
Regehr is just 31-years old, but he's never been overly mobile or good with the puck. He's battled chronic knee issues for years and it looks like his strengths are starting to overwhelm his weaknesses. The Flames got out of that $4.02M/year contract at just the right time.
Backlund Gets Better at the Tough Stuff
This one will be controversial because Backlund's season was a disaster by most conventional measures. He battled injuries, bad bounces and lackluster output all season, so many are prepared to declare him a bust. The truth is, the kid managed to prove he can drive the play, even in tough circumstances.
Thanks to injuries and dearth of other options, Backlund frequently played against top-six opposition when he was healthy. He also started 44.6% of his shifts in the defensive end (only Tom Kostopolous had a lower ratio). Despite all that, the Flames out-shot the bad guys when Backlund was on the ice this year.
I'll put this in context that is easy to understand. In my piece the other day on why the Flames' scoring fell off, I noted the team just didn't generate enough shots this year. With that in mind, here are the shots for and shots against (per 60 minutes of ice) for the Flames regular forwards at even strength this season:
The Flames didn't finish very often when he was on the ice this year and Backlund himself needs to figure out how to put the puck in the ocean a bit more often, but he took a step this season that a huge majority of kids never take: keeping the puck moving the right way. Moving the play north was one of the Flames biggest weaknesses this season (check out all the top line players above), but it looks like Backlund, at 23-years old, has arrived as a functional NHLer who is better than average in terms of possession. Even if he only settles in as a 35-40 point centerman, the fact that the team outshoots the bad guys with him on the ice is a boon.
On top of all that, his rough season means the Flames should be able to re-sign the pending RFA at a very reasonable number this summer. I have had a number of opposition team fans inquire about the Flames potentially dealing Backs this summer for these reasons. Hopefully Cakgary does the opposite and inks him for several years at a bargain price.
The Return of Cammalleri (and the exit of Bourque)
Feaster's biggest "win" so far as the Flames GM is the Cammalleri/Bourque swap. Whatever malady that infected Bourque after he was re-signed by Calgary followed him to Montreal. He's been a disaster for the Habs, garnering five goals, eights points and a -17 rating in just 37 games. His contract extends for another 3 years after this one and it wouldn't surprise me if he gets bought out or demoted to the minors before it ends.
Cammalleri didn't turn the Flames around or anything, but he proved to be a far more useful piece than Rene. His underlying numbers were relatively strong down the stretch and he played well when asked to move from wing to center. Even with his early season struggles and fighting through injury, Cammalleri finished the year with 20 goals and 40 points in 65 games.
MC is overpaid at $6M/year, but his deal ends one season earlier than Rene and he is, by far, the more useful player at this point. He is a player the team can hang on to as they find a new path or a decent trade asset to flip for futures down the road.
The KIds are Alright
Calgary Flames prospects collectively had one of the best seasons I can personally recall. Not only did Sven Baertschi emerge as one of the best picks of his draft class (and the most exciting forward prospect in town for two decades), but numerous other youngsters met or exceeded expectations this year as well.
I was intrigued when the Flames drafted John Gaudreau in the fourth round last June, but by no means did I expect him to become a high impact player in college at just 18-years old. Calgary's most diminuitive draft pick ever scored 20-goals and 43-points in 43 games for Boston College this season, second only to 20-year old, former first rounder Chris Kreider (45 points). He was named the MVP of the Beatpot tournament and his club is considered the favorite to win the frozen four. It;s hard to ask for a better freshman season.
Former Calgary third rounder Bill Arnold is also a Boston College Eagle and a significant contributor. He doesn't have the offensive ceiling of Gaudreau, but it was another firm step in the right direction.
Max Reinhart led the Kootenay ice in scoring with 78-points in just 61-games played. That doesn't sound like a lot, but the Ice were one of the lowest scoring clubs in the league. HIs 16-year old brother Sam was second on the club with just 62-points. Only one other guy (Ismond) managed more than 50.By alla ccounts, Max was by far the club's most dominant forward in all situations. He will be turning pro, likely with the Heat, this coming October. Reinhart teammate and Flames third rounder Joey Leach was named the Ice's MVP during their brief playoff run as well.
Markus Granlund, brother of top-flight prospect Michael Granlund, was picked in the second round with one of two assets acquired in the Tim Erixon deal. There were some questions about the younger Granlund heading into the season, specifically his size and compete level, but he managed to stick HIFK Helsinki if the Finnish Elite League (SM-liiga) despite being only 18-years old. He scored 15-goals and 34 points in 47 games, a healthy number for a teen in a pro league. He also made the Fins WJC squad.
Michael Ferland was a guy who stood out to me during Calgary's pre-season last summer. A big guy who moved well and seemed to think the game at a good pace, I nevertheless could not have predicted his sudden outburst this season - the 19-year old went from a point-per-game player in 2010-11 to scoring 47 goals and 96-points in just 68 games this year. He finished second on the Brandon Wheat Kings in scoring to Mark Stone and 9th in the WHL. That's an incredible year for a guy who was picked in the 5th round, and mostly because he was willing to muck in the corners and drop the gloves now and then.
TJ Brodie Emerges
Finally, the organization saw TJ Brodie take the step from "promising youngster" to "full time NHLer" this year. The 21-year old acquitted himself well on most nights, due to his combination fo mobility and vision. Although not very big, Brodie held his own in the corners and in front of the net most nights and, aside from Mark Giordano, is one of the few guys on the Flames back-end who can either pass or skate the puck out of trouble.
Brodie was sheltered by Sutter this year, but he excelled in that role which is the critical first step for any young defender. He is poised to be a fixture on Calgary's blueline for years to come.
I agree with regards to Chris Butler. Butler is not a top 2 defenceman. He still has a lot learning to do and way playing against the top forwards in the NHL.
I like the fact the Flames got younger by bringing in Butler and Byron and were able to shed some payroll.
Say what you want about Reggie's lack of mobility, knee issues, he is a tough guy to play against. Other team's forwards didn't like going into the corners or behind the net with Reggie bearing down.
Even though Jay-Bo and Butler play top minutes, this is the softest top 2 pairing in the NHL. Not statistically based but physicality based, neither guy pushes any forward out of they way. I understand this isn't their style, but for one puck possession, offensive d-man should always if possible be countered by a physical, defensive,and mobile partner.
I do believe Backlund will rebound, the injury at the beginning of the season really hindered his progress. I am looking forward to Baertschi, he's ready to step into the NHL and will help this team offensively. The Cammalleri deal I also like but I hope he can stay injury free and become more consistent.
I love positive / optimistic articles and am glad to see you sign off on the Regehr trade at last.
I was pretty lonely on being ok on that one last off-season, mainly because cutting bait early, before a player enters that clear drop off year is imperative and in my view - Regehr had clearly lost a step in his final season in Calgary.
I still will stand outside the tent on Backlund though. I have my concerns that he has no scoring touch and is injury prone at this point. Hopefully under a new coach he can emerge into the type of C the Flames have hoped for.
After such almost a repeat of last year, I was somewhat dissapointed that we didn't make the playoffs and now we might even win our last game against Anaheim to put us in 12th or 13th. Personally I'd rather have us win our last game to end the season on a decent note but who knows.
I know Ferland exceeded expectations but I only see his ceiling being top 9 and same for Reinhart.
I think Backlund should be re-signed but I don't think he's earned anything higher than 2.5 or 2M$ per season. I'd also like to see Jones re-signed as well, I've liked his play tons and he's not a detriment to us, still reasonably young so I think there is value there.
There's more positives there then I realized an it seems like Feaster is doin ok... Won his two biggest trades and had a very solid first draft. I hope he reads the tea leaves right and moves Kipper in July. I could see a budget team like Columbus wanting that contract and being willing to part with a pick and a prospect for the bump up the standings he'd likely bring them.
Kipper should be traded, there is no reason to suspect that he is going to do this all over again next year. His resurgence has given us value to move him, last year we probably wouldn't have got much at all for him, this year we should get something decent.
I still don't know if we "win" the Regehr trade, but we did make out all right. Hopefully we can sign a Grossman or someone else this offseason and partner him with Butler so he is not playing top 2 D minutes. I like Butler as a good 3/4 option, that can spot time as a 2 guy.
Trading Backlund would just show the rest of the league that King is running this team and has no idea what he is doing. Backlund can be a perfectly fine 2/3 center with more potential. He was probably our best Two Way center and had low percentages scoring wise, once the percentages even out, he's going to prove a lot of Haters wrong(*COUGH* fan960 morning show *COUGH*).
We have some decent kids, not enough of the sure fire, can't miss kind like Backlund, but we do have something, which is better than the previous NOTHING we had. For me I'd like to see a line of Baertschi - Backlund - Aliu next year as our third. A pure young, fast and energtic line, something I don't think we've ever seen in Calgary in a long long time.
On the Regehr trade, I always liked it. In the beginning all that it hinged on for me was Butler becoming a legitimate and solid top 4 D. If he didn't the trade was a loss.
Moving Kotalik sucks because it brought in the negative value but the 2nd rounder and Kotalik cancel each other out, it is a win going forward and always was to me.
Regehr's age in his case was deceptive. In his final year and especially at the end of his final season in Calgary he was getting beat bad to the outside, the tunnel of death was closed.
At that point his biggest asset is gone and he is rapidly depreciating. Moving him during this season or this off-season would have been impossible. Due to his contract he probably has negative value of close to it.
So now just one year out the Sabres have two players with negative value - Kotalik and Regehr and the Flames have one for sure who is on great value and filling a role in the top 4 D.
It was always a clear win for me, as long as Butler became that legtimate top 4 D, which he has...
April 06 2012, 12:38PM
That play that led to that breakaway goal in the last Sabres game - what the hell was Regehr doing there?
Guy's dropped off a cliff.
Thanks Kent, decent not scorch the earth post on the Flames. We'll be seeing more doom & gloom about the Flames than there will be on Dec 21 2012. 1/ Kipper- I agree, Kipper is our best bet to get excited at this years draft & create dominos for this team. He has value, his NTC is gone & his actual $$$ become very attractive for some teams. I see serious interest from Tampa & Chicago & it would be really interesting to see how desperate Burke gets this June. Tired of arguing about potential value of the likes of Kipper & Iggy, bottom line is that there is value & its up to Feaster to maximize that value with teams that are more desperate than us (always more desperation when you are on the cusp of winning versus falling in Flames)
2/Regehr Trade- I for one thought we could have gotten a 1st rounder out of Wash or Detroit last draft for RR. but he was used for a larger salary dump which this team desperately needed. Byron, meh, who knows, I was hoping it would have been Adams instead, so I was ticked at the time. Butler is an excellent 5-6 dman & paid like one. He also has shown he can be a serviceable 3-4 pairing, that was unexpected. Problem is we have too many Dmen that play Butlers style. We sorely lack the mean nasty SOB's on the blueline. Brodie looks great but he doesnt fit that nasty profile, he looks more like a future Mike Green. That should be on Feasters number one docket via trade or free agency.
3/Backlund & Cammie- Backlund just had a rough year & to label him as injury prone is foolish after one full year. Do Oilers label Hall as injury prone & jettison him out after "2" years of injury filled seasons. Dont think so. Give him a chance & let him play and grow with eye of the tiger young guys like Baertsche. I dont mind putting a thug like Aliu with these two kids. Maybe we can develop him into a Steve Ott type of player, who can antagonize & create space & opportunities for our young more skilled players on this team. I like it. Cammi was a kick ass win win deal for us. He had a real tough year & still had 20 goals. He doesnt need Iggy to do this. I truly expect 25-30 goals from him next year.
4/ The rest of the Kids- Well even if we only get 1 or 2 pleasant suprises from lets say Reinhart or Ferland or someone else from system, thats OK. As pleaseant as it was to see the fresh young faces having success this year, there were by far too many Abbotsford players on this team at times this year. Hopefully next year we will be a little heathier & this trend doesnt repeat.
Sorry for the long post, I get excited with the thought & hope that the team does the right things and makes intelligent decisions.
Here isn't a bright spot, with Buffalo losing last night Florida clinches a playoff spot.
Which now means Jay Bouwmeester now surpassed Florida's Stephen Weiss, who was drafted in 2001 for longest active player with most NHL regular season games without a post-season appearance.
Kent, not sure if you were listening in on my phone call with my brother last evening - it's more likely my thinking is influenced a bit by your writing! - but our conversation matched your article nearly word for word. And yes, we were focusing on the silver linings! I agree nearly unconditionally with everything you wrote.
@Kevin R
Backlund took a knee injury in his draft year as well. That is why he fell so far in the draft…
His recent shoulder injury wasn't even from a hit...
I've heard it was from the game prior, alberts falling on him just aggravated past the point of no return.
1. Completely agree. Whether Kipper is traded or not, this past year has been a good thing for the Flames.
2. I can't fully commit to an opinion of Regehr because I'd like to have seen more of him. He faced the toughest QualComp of any "D" and had the second roughest zone start. Good QcompCorsi too. He's never going to score a lot and he lead the team in hits and was a close second in blocked shots.
You know what you're going to get with Reggie.
If...IF shedding salary for Reggie is the big benefit, then see point #4.
We faired better with Butler than I thought, but he's worth the 2nd rounder in that deal. Kotalik is a non factor. I still don't think we won that trade, as it was lateral at best.
3. Mikael Backlund's season was a near disaster. 41 games. Injured. 11 pts. -13! You yourself point this out. If his slight gains are a "silver lining" on a list of only 5 items.... damn that's depressing.
4. Cammy is too damn expensive. If getting rid of Regehr for salary was a positive.... getting Cammy is a negative. We now have the worst value top line in the league.
13million cap hit on 106pts and -22. Yikes. We aren't going anywhere but down with those two anchors. And that's without advanced stats. Brutal!
Rene had a tough time in MTL, but this was hardly a "biggest win". It was problems for problems and more of the same Ken King recipe from the last 3 years.
5. Totally agree.
April 06 2012, 02:38PM
Butler is only 25 there Kent, doesn't turn 26 till October this next season. The fact that he is a top pairing Dman (of course, that label is questionable) is a testament to how good he actually is progressing.
April 06 2012, 02:48PM
Kipper should be traded, there is no reason to suspect that he is going to do this all over again next year. His resurgence has given us value to move him, last year we probably wouldn't have got much at all for him, this year we should get something decent.
I still don't know if we "win" the Regehr trade, but we did make out all right. Hopefully we can sign a Grossman or someone else this offseason and partner him with Butler so he is not playing top 2 D minutes. I like Butler as a good 3/4 option, that can spot time as a 2 guy.
Trading Backlund would just show the rest of the league that King is running this team and has no idea what he is doing. Backlund can be a perfectly fine 2/3 center with more potential. He was probably our best Two Way center and had low percentages scoring wise, once the percentages even out, he's going to prove a lot of Haters wrong(*COUGH* fan960 morning show *COUGH*).
We have some decent kids, not enough of the sure fire, can't miss kind like Backlund, but we do have something, which is better than the previous NOTHING we had. For me I'd like to see a line of Baertschi - Backlund - Aliu next year as our third. A pure young, fast and energtic line, something I don't think we've ever seen in Calgary in a long long time.
That last line suggestion sounds good, actually. 2 playmakers in Baertschi & Backlund, one of which has shown excellent scoring ability, coupled with a big, strong physical guy who seems to have good enough wheels & hands to play with the other 2. I would still like to see Baertschi play in the A for a season , though with call ups.
Ferland and Reinhart could work well as a future 2nd line. If we could find a playmaking type for the RW to pair with them, that might work. We really lack RW prospects. Nemisz is the only I can think of.
That last line suggestion sounds good, actually. 2 playmakers in Baertschi & Backlund, one of which has shown excellent scoring ability, coupled with a big, strong physical guy who seems to have good enough wheels & hands to play with the other 2. I would still like to see Baertschi play in the A for a season , though with call ups.
Ferland and Reinhart could work well as a future 2nd line. If we could find a playmaking type for the RW to pair with them, that might work. We really lack RW prospects. Nemisz is the only I can think of.
I would have never thought of Aliu before last nights game, but listening to everything all the coaches had to say, what Aliu had to say and most importantly what Troy Ward had to say. The guy seems to have turned a corner. I don't think he's gonna be a guy who scores 25-30 a year, but he could be a good depth guy(on the 3rd) giving speed and an edge to a Backlund/Baertschi combo. As well Ward has been using him as a shutdown defender as well, combine that with Backlunds team best possesion numbers and Baertschi offensive flair(and according to Portland he's no defensive liabilty either) it could be a very interesting line, and work VERY well as a third line and give us depth scoring.
That could give all three NHL experience and depending on the learning curve they could move up the line up as well.
@Kent Wilson
That's fair if he is going to put up the same numbers as he did this year. I just factored in the fact that his shooting % has to improve somewhat. If Babchuk can make 2.5$ than what is Backlund really worth. Just jokes, just jokes.
How have Moss' advanced stats looked so far this year? I've considered him a non-factor this year I barely ever notice him but I suppose that might be a good thing as well. I see Moss as an anchor to a solid third line with guys like Jones and Stempniak.
Here's a good question: where in the HELL has Backlund been? Did they shut him down for the season? There's been no news on him since his injury, which seems worrisome.
As far as "winning" the Regehr trade, he really screwed the Flames on his way out. If the original rumours of a 1st rounder and Gragniani/someone else good were true, we got boned by Regehr refusing to waive his NTC (to the tune of a 2nd rounder). Good to see him getting roasted by the Buffalo media - his time here was done. Feaster made a good choice ridding ourselves of that pylon.
I'm a big advocate of a mini-rebuild. I don't think we're as bad as the Oilers were when they began. I would be sad to see Kipper or Iginla traded, but it's time to pass the torch (you're too old, no more rockin' for youuuuu) and I think we can still get something of worth for them to bolster our upcoming kids.
Despite what these BS prospect writers have to say, I think there are some good players on the way up. Baertschi, Backlund, Brodie (why are they all Bs?), Gaudreau, Granland, Arnold, Ferland, Reinhart - all looking good, and hopefully the Flames don't mess up their development when they jump to the AHL/NHL.
Oh, also.
It's been said by others before, but I think we need a new culture in this organization. Considering many of the scouts and whatnot are leftovers from the 90s and early 00s, it would be nice to see a new crew, one with a mentality and history of winning.
If that means kidnapping someone like Yzerman and brainwashing him into being our GM, I'm all for it. I don't think Feaster is the right man, and Sutter hasn't been the right coach. We need SOMEONE who has won SOMETHING in professional hockey. I hope to hell that Hartsburg doesn't get promoted to head coach, the Senators were terrible under him. There's a reason he was fired.
April 06 2012, 08:00PM
I love it! One thing on the Regehr section, though: his weaknesses have begun to overcome his strengths, not the other way around. ;)
Nice summary, and it's good to see a stamp put on the Regehr trade.
Good Article.
Forgot to mention Horak, but maybe you didn't. I know the stats are not really favourable for him, but he is at least a prospect that we found out can play in the NHL and will probably only get better from here. Depending on his development curve he could be anywhere from a 2nd to fourth liner. People forget he came right from Junior and was only 20.
Is there any chance you could calculate Kipper's scoring chance save% for this year and last year. I'm curious how much he improved by this metric year over year and how it compares to the change in ES SV%.
April 06 2012, 09:16PM
If Kipper is traded and Coach is resigned, this team will finish WORSE than they did the last 3 years.
The ONLY reason this team had a shot at getting to the playoffs this year was Kipper. He single handedly won them at least 30 games this year.
Feaster hands were tied with Sutter contracts until January of this year. Even now he still has Sutter's name on half the players. He's just barely starting to shape the team into how he wants it to look. He's WAY better at the draft, better with the media and other than Babchuk I don't have a problem with him.
Give him a chance. I agree though, I don't want to see Hartsburgh as coach. I don't even want to see Brent fired. It's just that the fans are calling for his head so management will unfortunately have to let him go. Also, I don't even think BSutter wants to be back with the Flames. Too much grief.
It may be time to say goodbye to one of Iginla or Kipper this season (obviously not both but I think you might see one go).
If Kipper is traded and Coach is resigned, this team will finish WORSE than they did the last 3 years.
The ONLY reason this team had a shot at getting to the playoffs this year was Kipper. He single handedly won them at least 30 games this year.
In other words, if Kipper didnt have a rebound sensational year, we would have had a lottery pick without having to trade Kipper or Iggy. He's 36 & this team needs to rebuild. Yes we will be worse next year if we trade Kipper, but we will be able to draft some new bright lights. How do you know Irving will be that much worse than Kipper? Trading Kipper can help put hope in truly having a team being able to compete down the road.
Baertschi for 5 games was the silver lining for this team. No offense to Iginla, I think with Baertschi he created a buzz and a level of excitement which hasn't been prevalent with this team for a number of years. Going forward, he could be the new face of this franchise. Hopefully, Feaster and company will build the necessary supporting cast to contend once again.
As for Kipper, to trade or not to trade. The logical choice would be to move him. Trade him at his highest value, however at what cost to the product on the ice. Whether the rumors are true or not, watching Schenn with Philly, I can't help to think how good he would have been in Flame's silks. Although trading Kipper would leave a huge void, I believe that Irving is ready to take the next step in his development. With or without Kipper, the Flames chances as a contender for a play-off spot are remote at best.
As for Regehr, I like that they traded him, however, for the trade itself, I didn't like the fact another 2nd round pick was going to Buffalo. Getting Butler was an improvement in mobility from the backend, however, far too often, him and JBo provided little resistant to moving bodies in front of Kipper. As well, the pairing of the two seldom resulted in scoring chances. Prior to injuries Brodie and Smith were playing much better.
Bourque for Cammalleri, I thought was another trade done in desperation, however, I don't think Feaster could have done better. If Bourque would have still been with the Flames I believe his contract would been harder to sell to other GM's. Unlike Bourque, at least Cammalleri has some jam to his game. Which leads me to Backlund. Like Cammalleri, Backlund must get past the injury bug from this season. Prior to his injury on his shoulder, I thought Backlund was finding his groove with this team.
The future may not seem as bleak as the hockey prognosticators predict for the Flames prospect pool. There is a number of young players on the cusp of proving depth in the organization. Yet outside of Sven, there is no other "elite" talent to push the current roster. Feaster has the chance at this years draft to provide further depth, but is he willing to take the chance to make a major shake-up with this team? IMO this draft, has a number of sleeper picks, like a Ferland or Brodie to be had, but can the Flames actually draft some more talent?
Lastly, finally, this organization will rid itself of Sutters. Silver linings - no more SUTTERS. While Brent did a good job with the team this year, again IMO, far too often not one player played beyond expectations on a consistent basis. Jokinen appeared to come around this season, but when the team needed him the most he was in the disguise of Bourque. Sutter responds well to the younger players, however, he couldn't get the veteran players to buy into his "system". If the Flames are going to choose to stay the course with Iginla, for Brent's sanity it would be best he move on as well. Again, maybe it will be refreshing for Iginla and company to have a new and fresh perspective without the same monotone from a Sutter.
Hey does anyone know where to find a free stream of the winterhawks game? I been looking for a bit but cant find it. Thanks everyone!
I concur with you re: Feaster + management/owners. It's like Kent said in his previous post (perhaps the Keenan interview?), where management and owners have their hands too deep into this mess of a team. Feaster just seems like the easiest target because he is the face of the Flames upper level bureaucracy.
I think another bright spot in the 11-12 season for the Flames has been Derek Smith. A cheap d-man who has been actually quite good. He doesn't score that much but seems to have a good handle on what's happening on the ice, especially before he was injured. It was a WTF moment when he was signed, but he's definitely a very capable bottom 4 defenceman.
The owners/King need to keep making disgusting amounts of money without holding Feaster's hand/gun to his head as he is on the phone with other GM's discussing offers.
The problem is even if they give Feaster 100% control on the hockey side, Iginla has a NTC, and unless he has finally realized he isn't going to win a Stanley Cup in Calgary, he'll never agree to be moved anywhere. I find it very interesting that Kipper NTC expires, what would he be worth at the draft? At least a 1st round pick? Also on the same note, if Kipper was dealt, this would solve our netminder issue. Irving steps in and Karlsson stays as backup, but you say a more even split like 50-30 as Irving gets eased in perhaps? This is all theoritical unless Kipper stays.
I agree, Derek Smith was an awesome signing. His best month was definately the end of December. Once he returned from his injury though I didn't notice him too much. I'd like to see a pairing of Brodie-Smith maybe as a bottom four option as well. Hopefully Brodie can make the jump to top 4 defenseman next year although that's probably hoping for a bit too much.
April 07 2012, 08:54AM
I liked your take on this list, except for your opinion of the Cammi trade. Yes, he is way too expensive and the Flames did trade a problem for problem, but I'd rather have Cammalleri over Borque period. His contact also expires the season before, so for me the cap hit is a wash, compared to Borque. It's not really fair to compare Reggie's contract with Cammelleri's.
April 07 2012, 08:56AM
So Kent, what do you think of Jay Feaster? Personally, I've liked what he's done (not only his player moves but who he's hired.)
I think he warrants a deeper analysis due to the constant 'Fire Feaster' remarks. I'd like to know, based on what?
Let's list his pluses and minuses and see the tally.
April 07 2012, 11:04AM
I liked your take on this list, except for your opinion of the Cammi trade. Yes, he is way too expensive and the Flames did trade a problem for problem, but I'd rather have Cammalleri over Borque period. His contact also expires the season before, so for me the cap hit is a wash, compared to Borque. It's not really fair to compare Reggie's contract with Cammelleri's.
Everyone keeps saying that Cammi's contract is over the year before Bourque's. Cammi's contract is actually over 2 years before Bourque's. So, that makes the trade seem even better, doesn't it. I feel bad for the Habs, 4 more years of Bourque.


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HELPER-Our beloved wife, mother, grandmother and longtime friend, Edith Massa Stavar, age 85, passed away peacefully July 6, 2010.
She was born April 9, 1925 in Helper, Utah to Louis and Mary Vaira Massa.
Married Karl John Stavar, Nov. 27, 1945 in Castle Dale, Utah.
Edith was a compassionate person who loved her pets and people, especially her "Sweetie" Karl of 65 years. She will be greatly missed by her family.
Survived by her husband, Karl Stavar, Helper; daughter, Karla Jean (Robert) Hatch, Bountiful; two grandchildren, Kim (Matt) Cook, Endwell, N.Y., Justin (Holly) Hatch, Moran, La.; five great-grandchildren, Kendall, Kennedy, Kearsten, Kamryn and Morgan.
Edith was preceded in death by her parents, three brothers, William, Louis Jr., and Frank; two sisters, Jennie and Louise.
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Year-round schooling no longer an option in Pasco
Pasco School District administrators say they are no longer considering multi-track, year-round schooling as an option to alleviate student overcrowding, after residents appear to have passed a bond to build new schools.
Pasco's $46.8 million bond is passing 61.72% to 38.28%.
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TIAA-CREF to manage California's 529 college plan
Posted by RJ & Makay on June 20, 2011
California has chosen TIAA-CREF to manage its college savings plan that contains about $4 billion in assets. The ScholarShare Investment Board that oversees the state's 529 program voted this past Monday to award the investment management firm a five-year contract. TIAA-CREF will replace current manager Fidelity Investments, whose contract ...Read More »


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Sustainability1 is often considered nice to do when convenient, but it can actually reward both the top line and the bottom line. Consider these results from three companies that embed sustainability practices throughout their operations.
The Dow Chemical Company, which created a Sustainable Chemistry Index, increased its sales of sustainable chemistry2 products between 2009 and 2010, rising from 3.4 percent to 4.3 percent of all revenue. By 2015, it expects such sales to be 10 percent of revenue.
SAP, which established 400 sustainability metrics embedded in its processes, saved $250 million between 2008 and 2010 in energy costs. It expects absolute energy consumption to remain at 2000 levels through 2020, despite continuing global expansion.
Intel saved $136 million in 2010 from 11 employee environmental projects, and the company includes environmental performance goals throughout its operations, extending to its global value chain.
Dow, SAP, and Intel share a common understanding of how to advance on sustainability over the long term: It is not a separate function or activity but a core value embedded in the company. The environmental and social impact of products and operations is integrated with how the enterprise creates economic value. Through strategy and systems that provide useful information and meaningful incentives, each part of the business understands how it contributes to the company's long-term success.
"We've matured to the point where sustainability is systematized in our business management and our operational execution," says David Kepler, executive vice president of business services, chief sustainability officer, and chief information officer at Dow.
At companies like these, sustainability is part and parcel of how the enterprise conducts itself. They embed sustainability processes, practices, and metrics throughout their operations, and they use technology to present information not collected before to influence business decisions and individual behavior. "We are using software to create transparency," says Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP. "We set targets for sustainability goals and make the progress visible to encourage awareness and personal accountability."
This issue of the Technology Forecast explores how sustainability can become an integral part of doing business and contribute to corporate reputation and financial results. This first article examines sustainability as an embedded enterprise value, driven by metrics and the technology to collect and share them. The second article, "Closing the loop on sustainability information," looks at software available now to collect and distribute data to help employees make decisions that weigh the environmental, social, and economic impacts on the long-term ability to sustain the business. The third article, "The CIO's next leadership opportunity: Sustainability," examines steps the IT executive can take to move the enterprise forward.
You can think of sustainability as a feelgood issue that you can support when it's convenient to do so. Or you can think of it as the emerging context in which businesses must operate as customers engage more with the concept of being green, as competitors adopt sustainability practices for business advantage, and as governments regulate behavior to reduce pollution and ensure long-term stocks of raw materials, or to seek more positive relationships between society and industry.
In PwC's 14th Annual Global CEO Survey (2011), CEOs saw big opportunities in making their enterprises responsive to social expectations. Whether they primarily sell to businesses, government, or consumers, half of the CEOs anticipated changes to their business strategies because customers are factoring environmental and social responsibility practices into purchasing decisions. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1
CEOs see big opportunities to make their companies more responsive to society's expectations:
Failure to broadly adopt sustainable business practices will tarnish corporate reputations, which happened inthe 1990s when the extensive use of child labor by apparel and other manufacturers hurt their reputations.
The lack of genuine sustainability practices will cause scarcity of essential materials (through pollution, depletion, and waste), from foodstuffs to fuels, from wood to water. This scarcity will raise the costs of inputs and limit the product and service options available. Failure to act now presents risks to the future growth and long-term viability of businesses.
Conversely, the adoption of real sustainability practices will burnish corporate reputations and, most importantly, allow continued economic and business success for the long term.
But how do businesses make sustainability part and parcel of how they operate, how they source, how they manufacture, how they distribute, and how they service? Addressing sustainability will require a behavior shift.
"A lot of companies still think of sustainability as: 'I have my business plan. How do I layer sustainability thinking on top of that?'" Kepler says. "Our view is that sustainable development is a combination of how you achieve economic value, along with how you integrate the environmental and social impact into strategy and operations." This prompts the need to internalize the concerns around environmental and social impact, which if kept external result in an approach where sustainability becomes a separate activity, layered on top of existing operations.
Dow created a new metric called the Sustainable Chemistry Index (SCI), which aggregates the economic performance of sales with the environmental and social impact, and is regularly measured and reported. This measure integrates the life cycle analysis and impact of products with business thinking and decisions, so ongoing actions result in a more sustainable manufacturer and solution provider. For example, business unit leaders include a review of their SCI performance as part of the business strategy review.
Similarly, SAP established 400 sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs) and embedded them in existing processes to create visibility of sustainability performance. "Every employee can go to the portal and see the computing stats, review the energy consumption trends in buildings, and discover printing data for every printer," Graf says.
The next step is to provide feedback on individual actions. "We are also looking at a project to see if we can break down our overall footprint on an individual basis," Graf says. "Such visibility changes behavior."
Among its methods, Intel links individual compensation to environmental performance, promotes employee sustainability groups, funds innovative environmental projects, and rewards employees who deliver significant sustainable impact. "A key role and challenge for the Intel IT sustainability program office is to start embedding sustainabilityoriented decision making, activities, and best practices throughout our daily business activities, so we can transition sustainability from a program to a mindset," says Chris Peters, IT director of the Industry Engagement Group at Intel.
The sustainability efforts of any one entity can have a limited impact and can put a business at a disadvantage if others in the value chain, upstream or downstream, do not act. Often the actual impact of any individual sustainability behavior is unclear, beyond those activities that have a direct cost, such as the purchase of paper and electricity.
The good news is that awareness of sustainability issues, coupled with customer pressure and government regulation, is causing entire business networks—value chains and crossindustry groups—to act together to adapt their processes to support sustainability. This joint action is becoming increasingly possible as standards emerge to measure and value the sustainability attributes involved, such as energy efficiency, carbon emissions, water usage, resource renewability, labor practices, trade practices, and social impacts.
These standards—and the underlying metrics—set the stage for understanding the impact of sustainability attributes, which means that individual businesses can make decisions that have a known impact across the ecosystem. For example, in 2007 Nike created the Considered Apparel Index to score the environmental attributes of its apparel. In 2010, it released a web interface to this index, called the Environmental Apparel Design Tool, which designers use early in the product creation process to inform design and development decisions and to reduce the environmental impacts related to materials, manufacturing waste, and garment treatments. The tool allows suppliers to understand Nike's approach to scoring apparel products for sustainability while providing feedback to Nike.
"A key part of the strategy is transparency," says Tom Sedory, IT director of strategy and sustainability at Nike. "Our efforts have to be visible to the industry to let others see, evaluate, use, and develop further."
Few people would argue against protecting the environment or responsible citizenship. But few businesses make decisions with environmental and social impact as a routine concern. "Sustainability should be embedded as a natural extension to the existing processes," suggests Jon Chorley, chief sustainability officer of Oracle Corporation. "It needs to transform from a project-based orientation to an operations orientation."
To achieve an operations orientation, PwC believes that companies will move through a maturity path along a continuum that spans compliance, obligation, efficiency, and leadership. In the process, they will embed sustainability in operations. (See Figure 2.)
Figure 2
The sustainability maturity path: as organizations embed sustainable practices in operations, they move along the continuum from compliance to obligation to efficiency to leadership. Information technology is an enabler of this journey.
Compliance with government regulations is a key external driver and the legally required must-do task. Regulations large and small will constrain decisions and options. Some are indirect, such as recent US federal regulations mandating greater light bulb efficiency that alter the products available for purchase. Others are quite direct, such as the carbon cap-and-trade schemes deployed in Europe, California, and Australia, and China's recent tightening of permissible emissions by commercial vehicles.
It can be difficult to assess the direct value for complying with regulations beyond avoiding civil penalties. But the economic and other impacts used to justify the regulations can be helpful in setting a common valuation for various sustainability activities, which then can create direct enterprise value. While compliance alone has been an adequate corporate response in the past, social attitudes toward sustainable practices will have more impact in the future. Just being compliant will not be enough, because regulations will be slow to catch up to market expectations and competitive reality.
Dealing with stakeholders' perceptions of corporate obligation to act is the second stage of maturity. It is typically associated with the large-scale impacts of industry and what to do about them. Larger enterprises attract the highest expectations, or obligations, to act.
PwC: When we think about sustainability, there seems to be a license to operate issue for businesses of a certain size and scope and in a certain industry leadership position. That is, the society puts the burden on those businesses to do certain things. Does that play into the thinking around sustainability?
GN: Absolutely. We have a lot of discussions about our license to operate because we have a significant manufacturing footprint, unlike some of the other ICT [information and communications technology] companies that outsource their manufacturing. We have large operations that use significant amounts of water, chemicals, and energy, and we are very aware of the footprint and relationship we have in the community.
You're right—when multinationals have such broad footprints across the world and operate in as many countries as they do, expectations are associated with the companies that are beyond just making a profit for their shareholders back in some other part of the world. It's about how you operate as a global citizen, and there are expectations around environmental issues, human rights, and social issues that are much different today from what they were 10 or 20 years ago. We operate essentially at the license and the will of the public, and if they don't want you there, as we've seen with governments in the Middle East, at some point you won't be allowed to operate. So it is something to keep in mind.
PwC: Intel operates in a supply chain with many other participants. You are a member of the EICC [Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition]. What role is that serving for Intel?
GN: We were part of the original group that helped put together the EICC, and we're heavily involved. For us, this really started around the supply chain and how can we set standards in the supply chain around human rights, labor, health and safety, and environmental issues.
Previously, we would audit a company and then several other brands would audit three or four times for the same types of issues. This was inefficient, duplicative, and disruptive to the company being audited as well. The vision, as far as auditing, is that an enterprise would perform an audit, and then those audits would be shared among the members so you would increase the efficiency.
A lot of the environmental focus was originally on compliance with environmental regulations, but it's starting to do more around broader sustainability issues. Now we're asking our suppliers many more questions about their actions regarding carbon, water, and waste, and we're incorporating that into our scorecards that we use to grade suppliers. Traditionally those things would've been about quality, cost, and availability; now we're adding pieces about sustainability issues.
PwC: A key trend in sustainability involves integrated reporting, so combining your economic, environmental, and social performances together. Is there value to reporting sustainability metrics in financial terms?
GN: Yes. Internally, we have been working on a value framework model with our finance people. We've brought them in early, and we've tried to look beyond traditional ROI [return on investment] to how do we move these decisions we make regarding sustainability from just risk management and operational considerations to creating shared value. To make operations more energy efficient and save money, that's pretty straightforward; you're going to do those things. But how do you account for things that affect your brand, goodwill, social innovation, market expansion, and identifying new customers? How do you measure the social value of the $100 million we invest annually in education? We're trying to figure that out. The challenge is to comprehend all these factors and integrate them into your decisions, when classic ROI alone may not be there on a product development issue or on an internal operational issue. These are some open questions we are wrestling with as we speak.
"When multinationals have broad footprints across the world and operatein as many countries as they do, expectations are associated with the companies that are beyond just making a profit for their shareholders back in some other part of the world," says Gary Niekerk, director of global citizenship at Intel. (See the sidebar, Sustainability and industry leadership.)
Even if their practices are not much different from others or not under their direct control, industry leaders are expected to "do the right thing" or risk reputational damage and lost business if they don't. Many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and brands that have a large impact on the market have been a subject of criticism for the labor or manufacturing practices of their suppliers. Enterprises that have taken appropriate actions have benefited from bolstering their reputations. Meeting the obligation by promoting sustainable methods becomes a source of differentiation from competitors. In meeting the obligations, companies can turn environmental and social challenges into new business opportunities. By seizing these opportunities, they shape the world and advance toward leadership.
Efficiency has been a key internal driver for sustainable practices and is the lowhanging fruit when moving beyond compliance and obligation. Waste of resources is costly. Reuse and reduction of waste reduces cost and creates new revenue streams. Efficiency in all forms reduces costs, and so it is no surprise that many organizations have promoted sustainability efforts that result in reduced direct costs.
Common examples include reduced energy usage in the data center, reduced water usage in manufacturing and office facilities, reduced paper usage in the office, and reduced material usage in packaging. These efficiencies reduce costs while also aiding sustainability through the reduced use of resources. Dow, for example, has saved $9.8 billion since 1994 from energy-efficiency efforts that required an investment of less than $2 billion.
Such efficiencies make sense with or without a sustainability impact, but pairing their contributions to the bottom line with their environmental and social impact creates an even greater incentive to support sustainability.
The fourth and most mature stage of becoming a sustainable business is market leadership. Sustainability leaders embed real, measurable, ongoing commitments to sustainability practices as a strategic differentiator, going beyond the immediate benefits of compliance, obligations, and efficiency. Sustainability is embedded when every part of the business makes decisions that intelligently weigh the economic, environmental, and social impacts on the long-term ability to sustain the business.
When embedded, sustainability actually becomes a key driver of innovation and growth. "We've evolved our use of the term corporate responsibility. We now talk about it as sustainable business and innovation, and it is a key to how we think about driving long-term growth," Nike's Sedory says.
In the 2011 PwC survey, 64 percent of the CEOs said that environmentally friendly products and services are an important part of their innovation strategy. (See Figure 3.) When linked to business strategy, sustainability becomes a core enterprise value. By becoming embedded in operations, sustainability objectives can become a part of long-standing measures of enterprise performance, such as profitability, innovation, growth, and industry leadership.
Figure 3
Of the CEOs surveyed, 64 percent see environmentally friendly products and services as an important part of their overall innovation strategy.
The leadership opportunity is not limited to enterprises, but extends to countries. "Energy [and other resource] management will likely become the basis for organizational and national competitiveness, with financial and market advantages accruing to those that systematically and strategically optimize their use of energy and resources," predicts Pat House, senior vice president of strategy at C3.
Compliance is an "outside-in" approach in regard to where the goals are established and how individual stakeholders relate to the topic. Engaging with sustainability to meet obligations, then for efficiency, and ultimately for market leadership transcribes a path that converts outside concerns into inside engagement. It becomes a meaningful component of every business decision.
IT is playing an important role in the transition from compliance to market leadership. "Technology is accelerating the use of sustainability as a driver of growth, particularly information technology, as it allows greater monitoring, independent verification, transparency, and accuracy of resource usage and its impact," says Alan McGill, a partner in PwC UK's Sustainability & Climate Change practice.
Sustainability has emerged as a key social issue due to one broadly accepted reality: environmental resources once believed to be limitless are increasingly seen as limited. Any limited resource needs to be managed for efficient use. "We used to live in a world where energy was cheap and information was expensive. Now, information is a resource that is becoming limitless, and energy and other environmental resources are becoming constrained," says SAP's Graf.
In an increasingly digitized world, the sustainability journey is about using the limitless nature of information to become better at managing constrained resources. "Information technology transforms energy usage into something that is manageable," says Amit Chatterjee, founder and board member of Hara Software. IT is accustomed to managing the flow of materials in enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, and other systems. What has been missing is the flow of sustainability-specific information about those materials across the full value chain.
Figure 4
As resource availability is reducing, the data about resources is increasing. Sustainability provides the context for using data and information technology to advance on efficiency and innovation.
Over the long term, the role of IT is to provide information to help strike the balance between the availability of resources and the demand for resources. (See Figure 4.) Achieving such balance has the potential to eliminate volatility in the supply or prices of necessary resources, avoid the unintended consequences of business operations, and address many of the grand challenges facing the world today.
Many enterprises have started to look at the life cycle of their products and services and track the environmental and social impact by taking a cradle-tocradle or cradle-to-grave view of them— the closed-loop resource system shown in Figure 5. Coupled with this system is the life cycle of information—from its collection to analysis for setting targets, to changes in business practices, and to reporting on performance—making up the closed-loop information system. When these two closed-loop systems— resource and information—conceptually interact, they become the basis for embedding sustainability in operations. The integration of operational information with sustainability impact enables employees to make decisions that weigh the environmental, social, and economic concerns with the longterm ability to sustain the business. Figure 6 shows how adopting the closedloop framework makes advancement on a sustainability maturity path possible.
Figure 5
The coupling of two closed-loop systems—one on resources and the other on information—provides a framework for embedding sustainability.
On this path, the role of information spans the following key objectives to demonstrate readiness for embedding sustainability.
Figure 6
The closed-loop systems enable the sustainability maturity journey.
Much sustainability activity today is driven by the need to reduce the environmental footprint. While there is an economic basis to do so, the underlying metrics are unlikely to be adequate for a future in which sustainability is strategic and drives the top line and the bottom line. Industryspecific metrics are needed to integrate economic, environmental, and social dimensions across the life cycle of products and services. For example, Nike defined the Considered Apparel Index, the Outdoor Industry Association defined the Eco Index, and Dow defined the Sustainable Chemistry Index.
"Sustainable chemistry is a high-level way to look at life cycle management, the attributes of your business model, and the products you make, and then to evaluate its level of sustainability," Kepler says. "SCI touches all parts of our business. It looks at all [environmental, social, and profit impact] of them collectively and shows where you have an impact and where you can make changes," he adds. At Dow, SCI has become a basis for assessing the sustainability performance of products, processes, business units, business models, and individuals. (See Table 1.)
Table 1
Dow's Sustainable Chemistry Index blends the following eight factors to determine products that have sustainable chemistry advantages.
Sustainability performance depends on individual actions taken by all employees. Raising awareness to drive employee engagement is essential to embed sustainability values. IT plays an important role here. "When you're developing and reporting and really working on being transparent, a whole new internal conversation occurs around all the indicators. It raises awareness and forces companies to look at how they're performing," says Ryan Whisnant, director of sustainability at SunGard.
Many people use e-mail signatures that promote awareness for reducing printing and paper usage. It would be more powerful if every time somebody goes to print, a pop-up says, "This print is going to cost $x. Do you really want to do that?" Most printers are not set up to provide that prompt, but policybased tools can allow this processlevel sustainability reinforcement. By bringing the information about the environmental impact to the point of action, individual action will more frequently be the sustainable choice.
SAP uses information this way. "When employees book a flight, we will tell them what the carbon footprint of that flight will be. Employees are empowered to take this additional information into consideration when making a decision to travel," Graf says. SAP has embarked on a project to break down its total environmental footprint to the individual level. Such visibility changes behavior, because individuals can compare against location or enterprise averages. "All these approaches are positively influencing behavior," Graf notes.
This type of embedding can go much further when the metrics and desired sustainability impact results are known across the value chain. "Acting sustainably—at a corporate and individual level—becomes the new normal if we can understand and control the impacts of our choices upstream and downstream on stakeholders we may never meet, as well as the 'boomerang' benefit on us at the point of action," says Nic Delaye, director in PwC's Sustainable Business Solutions practice. For example, Nike's Environmental Apparel Design Tool is used by designers to surface information about the environmental impacts of material, dye, and related choices in the value chain.
Environmental and social considerations were historically seen as external factors, and most enterprises did not understand or model them. As a result, questions about footprint, end-of-life of products, and other considerations were never raised. "Such questions usually are not asked until after the product is developed and it's successful, and the result at times is unintended consequences on society or the environment," Dow's Kepler says. "Frankly, they're unintended many times because you didn't sit down and model market adoption impacts up front."
By having a model of the relationships among the various dimensions during the creation of products and business initiatives, many unintended consequences can be avoided or planned for. IT has a large role to play in such modeling.
In some cases, that means working with existing enterprise applications and data sources and applying them to financial, manufacturing, and other business processes. For example, the evaluation process for building a new campus could include energy-efficiency ratings, green tax incentives, off-gassing ratings, improved employee productivity and retention, reduced employee health costs, and sustainable-source warranties in materials used. The building industry has standard metrics and warranties in these cases. As standards evolve for, say, measuring toxicity impact, water usage, and carbon emissions, those factors could be added to existing processes and information systems as part of the evaluation criteria used within a business and across its value chain.
Such modeling and visibility should not be limited to the enterprise. They must extend to the value chain. When resources are tagged with sustainabilityrelated information, it's possible to know much more about the relative performance of value chain partners. "Buyers of goods and services can place demands on their suppliers and can actually know whether those demands are being met in ways they could never do before," Delaye says. Such visibility is essential, because when enterprises create sustainability targets, they often make assumptions about the performance they can get from value chain partners.
Much of the information for sustainability is nonfinancial, such as tons of greenhouse gas emissions, gallons of water used, tons of waste disposed, and so on. However, it's possible to translate this information into financial metrics. This appliedvaluation concept is familiar to all businesses. After all, money is a set of metrics and shared valuations for the basket of economic activities—goods, services, labor, intellectual property, goodwill, and so on. And financial metrics are the most fundamental measurement used across business decisions and processes.
Existing financials usually do not include the cost of inefficiency, the cost of environmental damage, and the present and future value of the environment and its resources that businesses and people use to sustain themselves. However, metrics are beginning to emerge that include these effects, opening the door to more programmatic sustainability decisions. The most complete accounting for these assets also incorporates people, culture, social infrastructure (such as education), and the macroeconomic impacts of enterprise behavior.
PwC: Alan, you recently advised PUMA in creating an environmental profit and loss [EP&L] account. What is the motivation for any enterprise to create an environmental or social P&L?
AM: Taking the nonfinancial drivers of sustainability that are critically important to a business and putting a valuation on them in economic terms means that people will understand the impact of sustainability concerns on their business much better. They will have an integrated view of key environmental drivers and will be able to denominate these issues in a comparable base unit. This capability will facilitate a better understanding of the interrelationships of these value drivers. The organization will be better positioned to know where the risks and opportunities for innovation are and where they should focus their scarce resources to avoid potential disruptions to business.
With an EP&L [environmental P&L], this is effectively the first time that PUMA has been able to look at its business with a different lens. Now, PUMA has a much better understanding of the key risks within its supply chain and where those risks are. It can quantify the economic value of the risks. At the same time, the EP&L is also identifying significant opportunities for PUMA with regard to how it can reengineer and transform its supply chain, how it interacts with its suppliers, how it can decouple resource use and growth, and how it innovates within its business model.
From a competitive position, companies that have an EP&L can manage their cost base much more effectively, because they will better understand how and from where cost increases might appear. As a direct result, they can plan for these increases and cope with rising prices better, because of the business insight they have.
PwC: How will such results impact existing operations?
AM: With a quantified EP&L, enterprises will effectively be able to send the right pricing signals up and down the value chain to influence changes that are necessary from a sustainability standpoint. They will be able to use a market mechanism that most people and enterprises understand to make progress on their corporate goals. The result is that sustainability concerns become embedded in operations, and they help the achievement of overall corporate strategies.
For example, if companies can work out how to take the economic cost from the EP&L—and social P&L—account and integrate it into the procurement processes, then existing processes and market mechanisms might drive a decision that's different from what companies might have concluded previously. The environmental and social impact now would be factored into the pricing model. When done right, the processes will favor suppliers that allow a company to improve its sustainability performance, innovate, and deliver growth.
PwC: Does information technology [IT] have a role here?
AM: Technology is accelerating the use of sustainability as a driver of growth, particularly information technology, as it allows greater monitoring, independent verification, transparency, and accuracy of resource usage and its impact.
IT has a role to define and facilitate how information is tagged and shared across the value chain, so that resources and environmental information can be integrated with traditional financial costs. The ability then to share that information internally and with the value chain, easily and quickly, will be transformative for enterprises and industries. IT's role and impact can be very powerful, because it will give great new insight to businesses.
PwC: What does this mean over the long term?
AM: If I abstract a little, what EP&L— and social P&L in the future—is starting to do is demonstrate that the pure financial information around the P&L that a company makes now will be insufficient for understanding the performance of the company in the 21st century. It has been very relevant and it was right to have the financial P&L when we were in the 19th and 20th centuries, because we were in a very different position as resources were considered limitless. That is not true anymore.
Profit currently is the dominant measure of success in our economic system. Increasingly, though, there is recognition that historic financial performance is unlikely to be sufficient to assess the long-term prospects of a business where the dynamic of wealth creation is changing.
In response, businesses are disclosing significantly more nonfinancial information that underpins how value is and will be created. Disclosures include detailed plans for low-carbon products and services, and employee incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Essentially, a key piece of information— information around environmental and social concerns—has been missing from most business operations. With an integrated view that blends financial, environmental, and social performance, you have increased business insight with which to manage the risks and opportunities in the future.
"Taking the nonfinancial drivers of sustainability that are critically important to a business and putting a valuation on them in economic terms means that people will understand the impact of sustainability concerns on their business much better," says PwC's McGill. "The organization will be better positioned to know where the risks and opportunities for innovation are and where they should focus their scarce resources and avoid potential disruptions to business." (See the sidebar, "Environmental and social P&L account.")
Athletic apparel manufacturer PUMA has taken this approach to embedding sustainability, using emerging modeling and valuation methods to develop an environmental profit and loss statement. PUMA released the first environmental profit and loss statement in May 2011.3
In many ways, emerging sustainability developments are redefining the notion of externalities and the definition of cost. "Once this is done, it's possible to use cost as an honest measure that also includes considerations for sustainability," forecasts Chorley of Oracle.
Behind most sustainability initiatives today are ways of thinking that separate a company's core business and its impact on the world. But businesses with mature sustainability practices do not view them as a department or center in the organization. Rather, sustainability practices are dimensions embedded in all decisions and processes, part of the entire business—just as financial considerations and performance metrics are. Yes, there should be sustainability experts in the company—just as there are experts in finance, HR, sales, product design, and sourcing—but as long as sustainability is considered a separate, standalone activity, it won't meaningfully occur.
Sustainability at the core is an information challenge. Synthesizing, engaging, and integrating sustainability information provide the context for how sustainability concerns will influence enterprise strategy. "Good sustainability data will allow managers to see their businesses and value chains in a whole new way. This is the future of strategy," suggests Andrew Winston, founder of Winston Eco-Strategies.
The true indicator of success is that sustainability behavior becomes second nature. By embedding sustainability dimensions into products, services, and business processes—from performance reviews to sourcing decisions— companies can more quickly get that second-nature result.
Second nature will be extremely important as sustainability becomes a major strategic concern in the next decade. As organizations engage with sustainability, their journey will take them from a focus on compliance to a demonstration of leadership using sustainability as a way to drive innovation and growth.
As businesses mature in their sustainability efforts—from compliance to obligation, then efficiency, and ultimately to market leadership—they will travel a path that converts outside concerns into inside engagement, transforming existing processes to make sustainability a core activity. Sustainability will stop being a separate concern and will become embedded in ongoing business operations and strategic priorities.
IT is playing an important role. By making visible the consumption and impact of environmental and social resources in products, services, and business operations, IT accelerates the use of sustainability as a driver of growth.
Ultimately, embedding sustainability means tagging resources with sustainability-related information and providing information at the point of action to drive sustainable choices and behavior. That information at the local facility, enterprise, and value chain can send the relevant sustainability information or "pricing" signal throughout the organization and its suppliers, and steer the business toward more sustainable choices or outcomes.
Such embedded information available to people and made part of business processes will lead to making sustainability practices, well, sustainable.
1 By sustainability, PwC means the processes by which enterprises manage their economic, environmental, and social obligations and the opportunities to create longterm competitive advantage and growth. hese are also often referred to as people, planet, and profit in popular media. Although particular examples and illustrations may speak to only one of these three elements, the term encompasses all of them.
2 Sustainable chemistry is Dow's cradle-to-cradle concept that encompasses a life cycle view of the company's products and processes with the objective of minimizing footprint by using resources more efficiently and reducing impact on the environment.
3 "PUMA and PPR HOME announce first results of unprecedented Environmental Profit & Loss Account," PUMA news release, May 16, 2011, http://about.puma.com/?p=6644.


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- No monthly Service Charge on BBVA Compass ClearChoiceSM for Business checking accounts.1
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- Preferred funds availability on deposits up to $25,0003
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BBVA Compass Business Preferred enrollment is subject to eligibility. BBVA Compass reserves the right to review eligibility for Preferred Client status on a periodic basis. BBVA Compass may, in its sole discretion, enroll clients in the BBVA Compass Business Preferred program, regardless of whether the client otherwise meets the eligibility requirements, and may impose lesser requirements to maintain Preferred Client status. BBVA Compass Business Preferred program is subject to change or termination at any time, without notice to you. BBVA Compass reserves the right to review qualifying balances for BBVA Compass Business Preferred client status on a periodic basis.
1BBVA Compass ClearChoiceSM for Business: Checking accounts subject to approval. $100 minimum opening deposit required. Additional terms may apply; refer to your account disclosure for details. Miscellaneous fees and service charges may apply. Products, features and benefits offered with accounts are subject to change.
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3Preferred funds availability on daily deposits: Deposited funds will not be held on deposits made to your business checking account up to $25,000 a day for the Business Preferred Program. BBVA Compass reserves the rights to and has discretion to put a hold on items in accordance with applicable law, regulations and account agreement.
4Combined Monthly Statement: Combined Statement includes business account information on checking, savings, loans and lines of credit, time deposits and credit cards. Accounts are subject to eligibility as to whether or not they can be included.
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7Safe deposit Box: Small-sized safe deposit box offered at no charge, subject to availability. Not all branches have safe deposit boxes. 50% discount on larger sizes where available.
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text:
Opening 1: We Are
Opening 2: Believe
Opening 3: Hikari e, "Toward the Light"
Opening 4: BON VOYAGE!
Opening 5: Kokoro no Chizu, "Map of the Heart"
Opening 6: BRAND NEW WORLD
Opening 7: Crazy Rainbow
Meh. Old thread, but it's still in the first page, so...
As far as One Piece intros go, I have to say that Bon Voyage! has grown on me. To be honest, I didn't like it much at first, but watching the video over and over again changed my opinion of it. Most of the other One Piece openings showcased the Mugiwaras' fighting skills in one way or another, but this one didn't, which is why I didn't like it at first. Bon Voyage! doesn't need to show action scenes to be a good intro, though. It just positively drips with nakama-ness (I like the scene where the crew were all walking in a line), which really is the strength of One Piece. While other shounen anime groups are simply a team of individuals, the Strawhats are a team — or as one ED song says, they are a family. No other shounen anime group has a bond that strong, IMHO.
Also, the scenes showing each of the Strawhats' tragic and defining past gave me shivers. ^^
id have to say the best is Kokoro no Chizu cus the trumpets sound cool
then prorably bon voyage than number 6 and 7 i dont rEally care for the rest
brand new world...
it gives me chills at the last part everytime i watch it..haha its awesome
if we vote for the text above the song my vote will go for Hikari E (i mean Gol D roger text)
In visual term Hikari E (again)
for the song Brand New world.
But the best for me it's the "We are" Cast Voice singers


text:
Not Rated Avalon Boot
Sorry, this item is sold out!
Looks like you've got more shoe shopping to do - have fun!
Looks like you've got more shoe shopping to do - have fun!
Item # 253807
Spice up your look in this fabulous casual boot from Not Rated. The Avalon has a distressed look and unique hardware accents that will make you look right on trend.
- Distressed faux leather upper
- Wraparound straps with studs and chain detail
- 13" shaft height, partial inside zipper
- 14" calf circumference
- 3" stacked heel
- Synthetic sole
- Imported
- Online Exclusive!
By: NCshoelover5
Location: North Carolina
February 10, 2013
Poor Quality but Comfy
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Location: BIRMINGHAM
February 05, 2013
Great fit!
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By: MarisaG23
Location: Minneapolis
January 23, 2013
Not Rated Avalon Boot
"Love these boots! Nice and comfortable and look great with skinny jeans!"
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Location: Belleveu, NE
January 12, 2013
Nice boots
"Was looking for a nice boot with a small heal, this are perfect. The detail around the ankle is just the right amount!"
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