You are really going above and beyond on the blog posts! Jason, really enjoyed your post today about Ottawa. In my experience, people are more apt to click through a link with a fun picture – so well done. Thanks for making my job easier (and more fun)!
—C.G.Koens, Implementation Specialist & Editor, Weaving Influence
(third-party provider to Webtech Wireless)
This winter, thousands of locals and visitors alike will don their skates and glide effortlessly along the Rideau Canal Skateway, a highlight of winter in Ottawa and the world’s longest skating rink. At 7.8 kilometres long, the Rideau Canal is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it’s best known as a winter wonderland as it wends its way from the steps of Canada’s majestic parliament buildings through the heart of downtown Ottawa and finally winds up at Dows Lake skating rink.
Unlike many cities, Ottawa comes to life in the winter when the frozen canal becomes the focus of winter festivities such as its Christmas Lights across Canada, featuring over 300,000 multi-coloured lights, and its popular Winterlude, held in February, make Ottawa a winter destination. For most city Public Works departments, winter is the time to prevent streets from becoming the world’s longest skating rink. But Ottawa’s got that handled too.
In 2009, The City of Ottawa implemented the Webtech Wireless InterFleet winter operations solution for government fleets, because it supports an extensive array of sensor integrations (road temperature sensors, spreader controllers, plow sensors) and boasts ten-second reporting and turn-by-turn navigation. With InterFleet, it gained visibility into how much salt its third-party contractors were using and with that came the ability to identify excess salt. Not surprisingly, by reducing excess salt usage, the City reduced its salt costs by 20%.
“Installing GPS technology in our salt spreader vehicles is a great way to help us reduce the amount of road salt we use, and reduce costs at the same time,” said Mayor Larry O’Brien, “By installing these systems, we will both prolong the life of City infrastructure and keep more money in the pockets of Ottawa taxpayers.”
Due to its negative impact on the environment, particularly drinking water supplies, the City of Ottawa actively encourages residents and snow removal contractors to reduce the rock salt they use. Ottawa’s Public Works Department is always looking for innovative means to reduce salt usage and it found GPS technology linked to its electronic salt spreader controllers to be one of the most effective ways to track salt usage. It actively promotes the Smart About Salt Council to increase awareness about eliminating rock salt and using resources more effectively.
Ten-second real-time reporting provides supervisors with the information they need to handle winter effectively. No matter where they are—the office, home, or vehicle—supervisors can respond immediately to events as they unfold, confident that the information they are looking at in their InterFleet solution is completely accurate and up to date.
So, when the temperature drops this winter, it’s time to celebrate!
Check the skating conditions on the Rideau Canal Skateway.
Find out more great ideas about things to see and do when you visit Ottawa and Gatineau this winter at Canada’s Capital Region!
Photos courtesy of National Capital Commission
I have read all of the case studies and blogs and have to say they are well written and speak a great message. I like the one on hunger too. Great Work!
—Mary Cecilia MacPhee, Senior Account Manager, Webtech Wireless
Vladivostok, Russia may seem a long way away from America’s heartland, but a summit being held there points to a shared concern—food security. As Russian President Vladimir Putin put it, food security “is one of the most acute problems of our time.” So while Asia-Pacific summit leaders are focusing their attention on the rising concern over food security, a new report by the US Department of Agriculture states that 17.4 million American families (almost 15 percent of US households) are now “food insecure”.
Did you know that a staggering 40% of all food produced in the United States is wasted? Of that, 20% is wasted through spoilage during distribution (i.e., transportation). But food spoilage can be reduced, if not eliminated through better temperature tracking during transportation.
Detail from Next Generation Food infographic
At Webtech Wireless, our GPS/AVL tracking solutions help trucking fleets reduce all kinds of waste: fuel wastage, time wastage, and food wastage. By providing you with the ability to monitor the contents of your shipments on route, you ensure that perishable cargo travels within the required temperature specifications. With status updates sent to you remotely, you are assured that you are part of the solution, not the problem. It’s that simple: Monitor your trailers and prevent waste.
Many people assume hunger is supposed to happen in other places, yet hunger is a reality in the most plentiful of nations. According to Feeding America, a Chicago-based food bank network, one in six Americans goes hungry. Among its charitable activities, Feeding America food banks provide food and groceries to 33,500 food pantries, 4,500 soup kitchens and 3,600 emergency shelters.
Feeding America is promoting many programs to help including online donations, a “Give a Meal” program, a virtual food drive, and corporate donations. Find out and view their “Map The Meal Gap” study. Remember, September is Hunger Action Month.
We were at the NAFA 2012 trade show (North America Fleet Managers Association) in St. Louis and one of the highlights of the show was the keynote presentation, Making Sense of the Future, given by Dr. Peter Bishop, PhD. Together with other trade show attendees, we gathered in full force and in great anticipation to hear Dr. Bishop provide a wide vision of the future of debt, oil & resources, people and demographics, automotive market and emerging technologies.
Patrick Lizotte, our account manager in Quebec and eastern North America said, “Dr. Bishop invited us to look into change versus sudden change, and our relationship and involvement with technology and computers; that is, how we are evolving and adapting ourselves toward the computer era”.
Some of the topics he presented included:
Dr. Bishop concluded his presentation with a simple two-word recommendation, “Stay Awake”. – Be certain to handle Future and Change.
Dr. Peter Bishop is an associate professor of Human Sciences and chair of the graduate program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Dr. Bishop specializes in techniques for long-term forecasting and planning. He delivers keynote addresses, conducts seminars on the future for business, government and not-for-profit organizations, and also facilitates groups in developing scenarios, visions and strategic plans for the future.
I’m building a list of real-life grammar error examples, based on my writing, researching, and reading. These examples will all make titallating class materials at BCIT or when I publish my own version of Strunk & White. The examples below focus on confusion about pluralization.
As an insurer and issuer of driver licences, we make decisions which can have a significant impact on peoples’ lives.
Problem: People is already plural, so the apostrophe is misplaced. Also, the sentence should use that and not which as it’s restrictive. In editing, the lack of a comma is a giveaway that the writer was uncertain anyway—using which always requires a comma.
Correction:
As an insurer and issuer of driver licences, we make decisions that can have a significant impact on people’s lives.
ABC Crane Service is an Oklahoma based crane rental company that provides crane service nationwide. Their fleet of cranes range from 80 to 660 tons and have been used in projects to solve challenges such as…
Problem: In the second sentence, the subject is fleet, which is a collective noun (therefore treated as singular). The confusion arises from the words cranes and tons (clearly plural) closer to the verb have, but the collective should prevail so it should be has. Other copy errors are indicated, (and corrected), in underscore.
Correction:
ABC Crane Service is an Oklahoma-based crane rental company, which provides crane service nationwide. Its fleet of cranes ranges in size from 80 to 660 tons and has been used in projects to solve challenges such as…
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your instruction and guidance in class.
Having teachers who have a passion for what they teach makes the difference.
—Joe Coll, Technical Writing Student, BCIT
(Now Technical Writer at Ballard Power)
We have been making great software, but now with this award, we can call it award-winning software.
—Scott Edmonds, CEO and President, Webtech Wireless
When I’m editing (either corporate technical and marketing materials or student papers at BCIT), I pay particular attention to sentence construction. Technical and business writing is prone to awkward sentence construction, because the material is so complex. And marketing writing only compounds the problem, because the writer feels compelled to decorate the writing with as many superlatives as possible.
Here are five tips I use to keep my writing clear:
1. Avoid nominalization. Most people are familiar with it even if they don’t know what it’s called. In nominalized writing, the writer turns verbs into nouns. It’s most common in bureaucratic writing, and I believe, originates from a writer’s attempt to gain ground on the target audience—it talks down to its readers.
Here’s an example:
Improve driver safety by notification of Emergency through panic button depression.
You can see that nominalization also results in a lot of passive voice. By returning the nominalized verbs into true verbs, your sentence instantly has more life:
To improve driver safety, notify Emergency by pressing the panic button.
2. Keep the subject and its corresponding verb as close to each other as possible.
Here’s an example:
Before:
“This concept demonstrates how simple data related to, for example, salt dispensed on the public highways during the winter months when combined and processed with external data like geo-spatial, traffic fatality, and weather data can be turned into useful information.”
After:
“This concept demonstrates how simple data can be turned into useful information (for example, data from salt dispensed on the public highways during the winter months becomes useful information when combined and processed with external data such as geo-spatial, traffic fatality, and weather data).”
3. Move parenthetic content away from the core of the sentence. In the example above, I’ve moved the parenthetic material away from the structural core of the sentence, but mirrored the point to reinforce the meaning. Parenthetic content is not always contained in parentheses (brackets). You can also use commas and even em dashes to indicate a parenthetic idea. I distinguish each as follows:
4. Check your logic. The most common logic error in grammar has a name: It’s called the dangling modifier. It occurs in sentences in which the doer is unclear (either because the sentence carries two or more doers or it’s omitted). It’s often the source of humour, as in the famous quote of Groucho Marx, “Last night, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How the elephant got into my pajamas, I’ll never know”.
Here’s an example taken from technical writing:
“The currently open table appears in the top-left corner of the window.”
“Open” in this case is not a verb; it’s an adjective. The intransitive verb “appears” is doing whatever action it can. “Currently” is a misplaced modifier. It should read, “The open table currently appears in the top-left corner of the window.”
5. Limit your use of adjectives and other superlatives. I call this “super fantastic writing”, because it’s used when “fantastic writing” just isn’t good enough. I recently edited a document that made the claim “…saving you more than millions of dollars in lost revenues”. As in point four above (Check your logic), it just doesn’t make any sense. Without an exact number, you can’t add a superlative (“more than”). As an editor, it’s sometimes difficult to persuade writers to release their white-knuckled hold on such writing—but it must be done. Decorating your writing with lots of adjectives, superlatives, and other do-dads doesn’t make it better or more persuasive.
I felt challenged in Jason’s class and I credit him with helping me to develop the level of organization and precision I needed to succeed as a technical writer. He is an inspiring educator, and I look forward to encountering him in future courses.
—Helen Dudley, Technical Writing Student, BCIT
(now Vocational Rehabilitation Consultant at WorkSafeBC)