SNAPSHOT: South Dakota

SnapShot is a monthly column offering a collection of travel concepts to destinations and activities worldwide. Expose yourself to travel!

Author - Stefanie Gorder, ctp, ds
TNNW Travel Correspondent

~ South Dakota ~

My travels around our great country have allowed for personal exploration of off the beaten path places and led me to opportunities which enhance the journey through personal discovery. Tie this in with having travel partners all over the nation who assist in independent and group travel plans and it’s a winning combination.

For a state ranking 16th in size amongst the 50, South Dakota averages 10 people per square mile with population around 755,000 and is surrounded by six states (Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota). The only knowledge I had prior to visiting for the first time was that South Dakota is home to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore. It’s not often that the business traveler takes time out to explore a region. Usually our time is filled with meetings, seminars, and rushing back to the airport. With South Dakota’s attractions featuring stone carvings with heights to 6 stories high, and surrounding areas of phenomenal beauty such as the chiseled spires, deep canyons and jagged buttes; it is a destination well worth stopping to explore.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Located 25 miles southwest of Rapid City, and surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest, Mount Rushmore National Memorial is an inspiring American attraction. From the first glimpse as the winding road brings the four American presidential faces into view, it is a perfect attraction to include for business or pleasure. The 60-foot faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers who began drilling into the 5,725 foot mountain in 1927. Deemed priceless today, the project took 14 years and cost only a mere one million. The mountain was named in 1885 after Charles E. Rushmore, a New York City Attorney who was traveling in the area on business.

I had the opportunity to strike up a conversation with travel industry leaders on the Avenue of Flags which leads to the memorial’s Grandview Terrace and it was difficult to concentrate on the discussion as we drew nearer to our seating for the evening Sculpture Lighting Ceremony. It was as though the air was filled with the grandeur of American pride as I stood before the faces which I had seen before only in pictures. The program is a nightly event during the summer and the Park Service offers a fantastic introduction to the Memorial. The night we attended members of the Armed Forces were encouraged to participate in the flag ceremony. Seeing friends on stage being recognized for their contributions to our county brought tears to my eyes and many in the audience. Imagine an entire amphitheater singing together in celebration of our freedom. It is my favorite attraction in South Dakota since it touched my senses and gave me an incredible feeling of appreciation for the men and women who created such a powerful attraction.


Crazy Horse Memorial
Marketed as the world’s largest mountain carving and located in the Black Hills, the Crazy Horse Memorial sculpting began in 1948. Chief Henry Standing Bear convinced sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to honor American Indians. Known as the storyteller in stone, Korczak prevailed over decades of financial hardship and racial prejudice he encountered in trying to create an American Indian memorial in the Black Hills. He dedicated the last 36 years of his life to working on the mountain, refusing to take any salary. After his dead in 1982 at the age of 74 his family continues his dream. When finished, Crazy Horse will stand 641 feet long and 563 feet high.


If you can’t travel to the Crazy Horse monument anytime soon, watch the progress from their web cam: http://crazyhorsememorial.org/webcam

Badlands National Park
For extended hiking and camping adventures, the Badlands National Park just might be the perfect South Dakota destination. The southwest region offers a tapestry of colors on the prairies that were created through on-going rains, freezes and thaws that revealed millions of years of sediment in spectacular formats. Early trappers and Native Americans encountered moon-like landscape and “bad land” is the perfect description for travels over the rugged terrain. Badlands National Park is one of the largest protected mixed-grass prairies in the US and covers 244,000 acres with 64,000 acres designated as wilderness. Wildlife such as bighorn sheep, bison and deer are often spotted. For additional information, see http://www.nps.gov/badl.


Corn Palace
Murals of corn and grains cover the World’s Only Corn Palace in Mitchell. During annual harvest time the murals are replaced with fresh corn and a new theme of pictures. Eleven different shades of corn are used in the designs. Established in 1892, the Corn Palace was conceived to showcase the area harvest and prove the fertility of the South Dakota prairie. Today, more than 250,000 visitors go to see a building literally made of corn. Creating the murals each summer is a team of approximately 20 and costs over $130,000. The Corn Palace is a free and interesting attraction which is open during the summer season.


Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead

Growing up in the 70’s, my sisters and I were always fascinated by the wholesome family tales of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her siblings. A trip to De Smet allows visitors to Laura’s actual homestead which was featured in several of her Little House books including “By the Shore of Silver Lake”, “The Long Winter”, “Little Town on the Prairie”, “These Happy Golden Years” and “The First Four Years”. See the original Ingalls homestead, the house that Pa Ingalls built, take a covered wagon ride and attend an 1880’s school session. Nothing is better than immersing yourself in a different time by taking in pioneering activities! Open during the summer season only.

Take the headaches out of planning … call an expert!
Shebby Lee Tours based in Rapid City specializes in the great American West and feature award-winning historians bringing the legends of the area to life. Want to feel the thunder of pre-historic beasts as they rumble by during the fall Custer State Park buffalo roundup? Or travel with a local expert who really knows how to showcase the destination? Speak to a local and receive the best insight into a destination! For information on a top selling tour in South Dakota, see this link (note- book early as this tour will sell out!):

http://www.travelalliancepartners.com/tap/partner/pages/PkgSLT.aspx?pid=22&sid=7&oid=67

When I first heard South Dakota was the destination for a networking meeting, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Now that I’ve stood in awe before the Presidential statues, heard the eloquent voice of their Governor discuss their rich heritage and giggled with friends over their unique photos in front of a building made of corn, I can honestly say I’m delighted to have visited a few of America’s treasures.


Planning a business meeting or vacation to South Dakota? Contact:

South Dakota Office of Tourism
711 E. Wells Ave / Pierre / SD / 570501
Phone: 605-773-3301 / Fax: 605-773-3256
Web: http://www.travelsd.com/

Rapid City Convention & Visitors Bureau
444 Mt. Rushmore Rd. N. / Rapid City / SD / 57701
Phone: 605-718-8489or 800-487-3223
Web: http://www.visitrapidcity.com/

Need a quality tour operator in South Dakota? Contact:

Shebby Lee Tours, Inc.
PO Box 1032 / Rapid City, SD/ 57709

Phone: 605-343-4852 / Fax: 605-343-7558

Web: http://www.shebbyleetours.com/
http://www.travelalliancepartners.com/tap/partner/pages/PkgSLT.aspx?pid=22&sid=7&oid=67

_____________

Submission: August 2009

Stefanie Gorder, ctp, ds
marketingCents, llc.
Email: Stefanie@marketing-Cents.com
Twitter: @StefanieGorder

SnapShot is a monthly column offering a collection of travel concepts to destinations and activities worldwide. Expose yourself to travel!

For more information, please visit Stefanie's TNNW Bio.

Published by THE NATIONAL NETWORKER Newsletter. All rights reserved. Subscribe Free - Click HERE.
The National Networker Companies

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SNAPSHOT: South Dakota

TNNW Updates! [Must Read] - August, 2009, Week 2

SUPERCHARGED NETWORKING : TURNING CONTACTS INTO BUSINESS.

AUGUST, 2009, Week 2
UPDATE ISSUE 7 (New Format)
Get free subscription to the TNNW Weekly Newsletter: http://twitlik.com/OK


Brand New Stuff:

SrMeetUp! Letter to TNNW Readers
Program Leaders and Advisory Committee Members Needed

SrMeetUp! (http://srmeetup.blogspot.com/), an exciting new membership-based organization, is developing a social community, calendar of entertainment and educational events and business services to offer Baby Boomers from age 55 to 67. They are in the process of creating an innovative comprehensive service for getting Boomers mobilized, gainfully employed, placed as volunteers, or involved in part-time positions. These people, located in the NY, NJ, CT Metro area, come from tremendously varied backgrounds – from physical laborers to professionals to former C- Suite organizational executives. Some of these individuals need to return to work - others just want to keep their skills sharp.

The Boomer population is growing in size and influence. In the current economy, some Boomers have seen their pension and retirement funds evaporate – still others have been displaced, despite their impressive experience and credentials, by a completely unexpected change of direction in a company or in an entire industry.

Elaine Ingis, SrMeetUp!'s Founder, is seeking an experienced and ambitious management recruiter or other HR expert (or perhaps a select committee of proactive, imaginative career engineers) to lead them in creating a bundled program which includes: individual employment counseling; basic skills sharpening; resume and cover letter preparation; employment campaign planning; utilization of social media platforms (such as LinkedIn); recruitment and placement services (full- and part-time); volunteer opportunities which may lead to employment, and others. We’re open to all constructive suggestions and arrangements. This could be a wonderful and ethical opportunity for the right person or persons to develop his/her/their own professional reputation, clientele and earnings.

SrMeetUp! is in its capitalization process, and you can learn a bit more by viewing a brief JV proposal from http://twitlik.com/JVDoc .

Please contact Ms. Elaine Ingis directly at elaine@srmeetup.com with your ideas and inquiries.

Note:
SrMeetUp! is an active Member Company of TNNW (http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/). For your free subscription to the TNNW Newsletter, go to http://twitlik.com/OK.
--------

Not Quite Brand New Stuff (i.e., it was newer last week):

It's August."So what?" you ask, in a skeptical, somewhat disrespectful tone. Better start watching for new stuff every single week in every single thrill-packed Newsletter:

THE NATIONAL NEWSPICKER will be making its arrival. It will have the capability of making you into a current events genius (and give you the appearance of being the smartest guy/ gal in the room) in return for an investment of just 20 minutes per day of your precious time.

THE NEW FORMAT with navigation tools so easy that your pet ferret will be able to use them will be going live. Unlike Internet Explorer 8 (which is a piece of crap) we will actually improve the quality of your media experience, and your ability to MONETIZE your KNOWLEDGE.

THE NEW SPECIAL ITEMS will be featured every week, if nobody gets a chance to edit them out first. If you promise not to tell, I'll give you a hint...





















You're not laughing now.


Immediate Items Which Are No Longer Immediate at all (but which we happen to enjoy discussing):

1. Featured TNNW Columnist Yossi Feigenson (of Real Estate and Other Things of Value) received an invitation from the publishers at the European Wall Street Journal for us to submit a first article from TNNW on the subject of networking, to be released in Europe. After much arm-twisting, Yossi agreed -- being a tough real estate negotiator (although his clients adore him), he felt a need for at least a sporting show of some arm-twisting.

The result is a wonderful article, titled "Business Networking: TEN ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES". It is a collaborative team effort by Douglas Castle, Yossi Feigenson and Adam J. Kovitz. It is an excellent distillation of some great unconventional wisdom, and it appears in this week's issue of THE NATIONAL NETWORKER Newsletter. If you are an impatient type of person, you can download (and even reprint) this article by clicking on http://twitlik.com/WSJArticle .


2. We at TNNW are absolutely delighted to have made the acquaintance of Dr. Franco Oboni, one of industry's and government's foremost experts on risk evaluation, assessment and mitigation. He is a consultant and lecturer to international and multinational firms, as well as The United Nations on identifying, analyzing and formulating strategies to navigate around virtually every type of business risk -- from terrorism, natural disasters, erosion, government instability, domestic insurrection, logistical safety, toxicity issues, quality control, mechanical failures, human error to the slightly less exotic aspects of shipping, credit and a host of others. He has correspondent offices throughout the world...including some of the most troublesome and dangerous areas.

He and his firm are actively engaged at present in a humanitarian de-mining project in Lao, PDR (one of the most heavily mine-laden countries on the planet, dating back to the Vietnam War). It will indeed be an honor and a privilege to have Dr. Oboni become one of TNNW's Featured Columnists.

Prepare yourselves! Get a bit of background information and professional insight into Dr. Oboni and his firms. Some links follow. I highly recommend looking at them all:

Franco Oboni www.riskope.com

Riskope Risk and Crisis Management Blog (newly-begun) http://foboni.wordpress.com/

www.slideshares.net/foboni

www.youtube.com/foboni

Franco's CDA/ESM slideshow has achieved the "most viewed" ranking for two consecutive days on Slideshare.net. Looks like his favorite subject is becoming very popular.

By the way, have a look at this particular video. I believe that you will find it informative and quite impressive, as well: http://www.slideshare.net/ELPACTOPRODUCCIONES/daqui30anos

We are delighted to have found a new friend in Franco. In addition to his expert writing, we are going to have Adam J. Kovitz use his indisputable charm to have Franco become actively engaged in our INTERNATIONAL AGENT/ DISTRIBUTOR SERVICE very soon.


3. A week ago, I invested a good portion of the afternoon in learning about the art and science of constructing meaningful questionnaires, polls, surveys, market research focus groups and gathering (and profitably utilizing) market intelligence from Mr. Scott R. Gingold, a veteran pollster and industry consultant and the Founding Principal of both Powerfeedback (http://www.powerfeedback.com/) and Confidential Counselor (http://www.confidentialcounsellor.com/).

In addition to getting some fabulous feeds from Scott, who is quite active as an author and as a Twitter contributor, we are in the process of exploring a strategic co-venture whereby we can integrate some of our PUBLIC RELATIONS SERVICES and our TNNW SURVEYS Product with Scott's two organizations. We know how much our readers enjoy finding out about what other people are thinking, so we will be generating more surveys and publishing more results.

More importantly, with the addition of Scott's expertise, we expect to give our Members access to the research and analytical intelligence necessary to grow their businesses and plot any changes in course to stay ahead of the competitive curve.

It was wonderful to meet with you, Scott.


Coming This Month!:

Aside from the results of TNNW Surveys #88 and #89 (which will be published in separate Special Editions) which you can review to refresh your recall of the subject matter at http://TheNationalNetworkerSurveys.blogspot.com, we have a bullet series of goodies headed your way. Incidentally, if you should have ideas for surveys which you would like for us to design, publicize, analyze and use for your branding advantage, go to the Survey Site! As promised, here are the bullet points:

• High-Utility Killer Content



• Sharp New Look and Super-Simplified Navigation and Access



• The World's Best Suite of Member Services*



• Some Brilliant New Writers



• Direct Professional Introductions



• The Ultimate Intelligence Source - THE NATIONAL NEWSPICKER**



• TNNW BUZZWORKS - Our SWAT Team Becomes Available to YOU***

*Imagine These MEMBER SERVICES, Bundled for Optimal Efficiency:

• Complete Public Relations, Publicity and Press Releases;



• Financing! - For Ventures, Acquisitions, Development Projects, Operations, Purchase Orders, International Trade and Growth...Credit Insurance;



• International Agent/ Distributor Service - Go Global Instantly and Inexpensively;



• Targeted Multimedia Advertising for You, Your Organization and Your Services, Publications and Products;



• Custom Surveys and Market Research Packages.

Q: How did you live without this stuff?

**Imagine This One, Amazing, Time-Saving Resource: THE NATIONAL NEWSPICKER. One source of distilled business intelligence from over 25 of the world's most credible and authoritative sources. Twenty minutes of reading. Knowing it all. Being informed. Sounding lethally intelligent. Being more efficient, effective, powerful and valuable. Increase your Relationship Capital (Adam J. Kovitz is the Avatar of Relationship Capital, by the way). Also: We invite our Subscribers and Members to rename this thing. Please.

Q: How did you live without this stuff? (We're asking again!)



***Imagine This Kind of Artillery, Working for You: TNNW BUZZWORKS, giving you visibility, credibility, image, identity and a constant presence across all e-media. Full saturation marketing.


KNOWLEDGE + APPLICATION = POWER.


For more information, please visit TNNW Bio for Douglas Castle.

We will make you glad that you joined us and became a part of our growing, interactive international community. And of course, they'll be plenty of buttons...





With our Commitment of Great Things to Come,

Adam J. Kovitz and Douglas Castle (who is not quite as important as Adam J. Kovitz)




*******
Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER (TNNW). All rights reserved.

To subscribe for your free TNNW Newsletter, go to http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/ For the complete National Networker (TNNW) Relationship Capital Toolkit and a free continuous RSS feed (available either by traditional RSS or by direct email), go to: http://thenationalnetworkerweblog.blogspot.com/

Published by THE NATIONAL NETWORKER Newsletter. All rights reserved. Subscribe Free - Click HERE.
The National Networker Companies

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TNNW Updates! [Must Read] - August, 2009, Week 2

A NOTE FROM THE CHAIRMAN: World War III Breaks Out!!!

Sound the alarms and man the battle stations!

World War III has officially broken out this week and TNNW has the exclusive for you, our subscribers.

Unlike previous World Wars that were fought "conventionally" with groups of opposing countries on either side fighting each other in trenches with tanks, missiles and machine guns, over wide expanses of ocean with large mega-ton battleships blasting one another with their mega-ton guns, this World War is being fought on a radically different field of battle.

This field extends across the whole wide world and through our very homes and places of business. What's worse is that it is deeply infiltrated by terrorist who want to destroy our very way of life!

I'm talking about the recent attacks on Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook by cyber-terrorists.

Okay...a bit dramatic, I know...but think about how far we have come as a society in just the past few years. When TNNW first started, most networking was still being done in person...face-to-face. LinkedIn was very new, eCademy was very new and both Twitter and Facebook weren't even in digital "in utero".

TNNW was founded on the premise that a networking revolution was coming and a whole new industry was about to be born. Okay...at least we got the revolution part right. The industry thing may just not have materialized, unless you call it media or advertising or Web 2.0, but you have to admit that networking has become a way of life - a culture - woven into our very fabric of society.

Which is why when hackers have worked to bring down two of Social Media's biggest powerhouses, I have to liken it to World War III - fortunately, so far, it's bloodless, and the "fightin'" staff at Twitter and Facebook have seemed to get things (mostly) back to "normal".

And while we return to our own simple ways of micro-blogging our deepest thoughts into 140 characters or less and sharing pictures of ourselves, our families and our pets with our friends, we can only wonder if it's the War or only the battle that's been won. More on World War III as it develops...

Speaking of Twitter, TNNW Author Douglas Castle wrote a wonderful article in last week's issue that bears repeating: Social Meteor Threatens the Earth. He has received many wonderful comments on it and we'd thought we'd share it again.

I have also received some wonderful comments on my own article last week: Ending Slavery in the U.S. and Abroad. I certainly welcome your thoughts as well.

Last week, we also introduced our newest writer Mike McClintock, with History Repeats Itself.

And now for something completely different...

...my wife of over 16 years, Wendy, whose article appears this week (Pan Historia), is one of the city coordinators of the first ever Great Nationwide Kiss-in: Philadelphia. This event is to support equality and is open to all who will be in the Greater Philadelphia area this Saturday, August 15th at Love Park, in Center City, Philadelphia at 2:00pm. Wendy and I will both be there - bring your loved ones and have some fun as we demonstrate a tasteful, yet public display of affection. Hope to see you there!

This week, it's a whole new slew of great articles for your perusal. More to come this month...stay tuned!

As always, I look forward to Networking with you,

Adam

For more about Adam J. Kovitz, please click here.

Hire Adam to speak at your next conference or event by emailing info@thenationalnetworker.com.

Follow Adam on Twitter!

Published by THE NATIONAL NETWORKER Newsletter. All rights reserved. Subscribe Free - Click HERE.
The National Networker Companies
Forward/Share This Article With Colleagues And Social Media:

A NOTE FROM THE CHAIRMAN: World War III Breaks Out!!!