Please help us document our Awesomeness
 

Hey everyone.

I am hopping on to ask for your help (a little from everyone adds up).

The TBKA website is starting to get a rough skeletal outline, but needs some MEAT on it's bones from our local kiters, beach goers, citizens. As many of you know, one of the primary goals of TBKA is to do it's best to preserve access at our spots. We are hoping the TBKA site can pull a sort of double or triple duty in this regard by documenting positive events, deeds and people in our community, among many other goals. One approach to doing this is to put a real face on all of us for the Tampa Bay community to see. This is where you all can help tremendously by supplying some 'good info' for the site. :)

I currently have 3 riders to profile for the 'Riders Profile' section of the site, and want MANY more (every single one.. if possible).

http://www.tbka.org/index.php?option...d=27&Itemid=86

The ultimate goal of this section is to profile as many of us as possible. Your skill level as a rider or awards won is pretty much irrelevant. What's actually more important (in my mind) is that you are a nice person and love kiting. Please feel free to mention your family, job, etc if you wish. The goal again is to put a face on all of us. It should help us learn to know one another more quickly and also, possibly more importantly, show Tampa Bay who we are.

If we can have a collection of rider profiles showing off how we are upstanding citizens in the community, love kiting (to the extent many of us arrange our vacations and free time around it) and show how much it means to us.... I am thinking if the worst ever comes (possible threat of ban) having all these positive profiles will hopefully counteract the behaviors of a minority of our riders. The profiles will also help TBKA to show off the positive influences we have in our kiting community.
You don't have to be a member of TBKA to have a profile on the site. To submit a profile, contact either Steve Sadler or myself.
There is currently a way for a logged in user to have Authorship rights to publish an article. In addition, you can simply email me the article, and I will publish it for you. scottfears@mac.com is my email.

Don't be shy (please) about getting your profile up. I am honestly hoping for 100 of them by the end of one year. The more, the better. :)
They can be really short and sweet if you want, or as long as you wish. Pictures included would be awesome. Just add those as attachments in your email.

Also, we just put up a 'Good Vibes' section.

http://www.tbka.org/index.php?option...d=94&Itemid=87

If another rider helped you or someone in the community out, please document it. None of us do good deeds only for the recognition's sake ... BUT... coming from the above expressed view of being proactive to anything that possibly tries to take away our riding freedoms, documenting good stuff starting now is a good idea, imo.

It'd be AWESOME if you guys could add a comment on this page if you saw a good deed done.

In addition, if someone seems really pumped at the beach and says so (an onlooker) try to get them to hop on and post under the Good Vibes section.
If you helped a boater or similar out while kiting, and they are saying how grateful they are, tell them that adding a comment on the Good Vibes section would mean a lot. Again, none of us do good deeds just to get in the paper or a star, but it's probably a good idea to start documenting these acts.
You don't have to log in or anything to do this, any one can post to the Good Vibes section.

Again, if in several months or the end of the year that page was jammed with positive comments, it can only serve us well.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and help out. I really can't stress enough how if each of us takes 15 minutes to write a profile and 2 minutes to post about a good deed, how quickly we could amass some serious awesomeness on record. :)

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Ready
_

nah it was too long for me to read with my short attention span! LOL

I'll digest it later.

Good point.

Short version - write us up a profile describing yourself with as many pics and as much info as possible. We would love to have as many profiles as possible.
Why? Because we have a lot of great people around here and why hide it?

Also, if someone does something really nice, helpful etc., let's give a shout out.
These things will help us out in a variety of ways and are greatly appreciated :)

You can send pics and stories to this email address-
localsrock@tbka.org

nice. :D

Steve, you forgot transcend kiteboarding for one of my sponsors.

Thanks.

Got it Josh! I will update the story, and congrats on the sponsorships!

Thanks to our first couple of Good Vibes posters to start the ball rolling :)

http://www.tbka.org/index.php?option...d=94&Itemid=87

We also already have a profile sent in as well and we have at least 4 others working on their profiles this week. It's much appreciated. To reinforce, the ultimate goal of the rider profile section is to put some faces on our riders so the community at large can see who we are (all great people). This is good in general, but also will really (as in a lot) help our cause if we ever need to demonstrate that we are responsible etc, to authorities. So, the more the merrier and please don't get all shy on us.

thanks.

got another one that i shall keep on the DL for a bit longer.

i'm sure you know what i'm talkin about... maybe?