Today though I may have to eat my hat - it appears there’s genuine logic in undertaking training in a horsey environment.
Just look at the fine folks at Cowboy Leaders, 50 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah, who have launched an Anti-Tweet Business Retreat for executives strung out on information overload, looking for a way to improve their leadership skills:
The American West was shaped by cowboys. Cowboys are tough, hard-working, say-it-like-it-is people. They understand the value of hard work and see everything through to completion.
To get work done the cowboy must trust his ability to build strong, working relationships with his horses and his fellow cowboys. We will teach you the tools of the trade and help you understand how this will make you a better leader.
With courses titled Cowboy Up & Lead, Saddle Up for Success and Ride For the Brand I want to be sent on some management training, cowboy style.
And when they say ‘No tweeting allowed’ at the ranch, they mean it - just watch the video to see technophobe Deuce in action:
Ah, the public sector away day, there’s no better example of wanton wastage in the name of team building.
I’ve been on a few myself I’m sad to admit - the best one being the group ‘orchestra’ where 25 people attempted to bang drums of various sizes in time to instructions given by an out of work actor/conductor.
Last year I suggested there was room in the self-help book market for a new title, A Dummies Guide to Dude Ranching. There are obviously quiet a few people out there who’d buy a copy given visitor traffic to the story 12 months on.
With that in mind, how about a companion title on How To Be A Cowboy? There must be many folks who would love a couple of hundred pages, in addition to their classic westerns DVD collection, on how to live the cowboy lifestyle.
If books aren’t your thing then how about a trip to the Arizona Cowboy College? It’s “Your chance to learn authentic cowboy skills at a working cattle ranch.”
I passed through Scottsdale at the start of 2009 and wish I’d had the chance to stop by for a week’s tuition. Just look at the kind of training on offer below - not sure I’d be able to pick up all this lot in one of those trademarked yellow manuals!
Social media and social networking are two very web popular 2.0 buzzwords that have been making waves for quite a while now online. Do you Tweet? Personally I don’t have the time to check my emails let alone connect with people I’ve never met but I may be an exception to the buzzword action.
I do however love Facebook as a tool to keep-up with what friends, relations and former colleagues are up to.
Is this a social network too far? It would appear not judging by the frantic postings of members keen to brag about their first dressage show or sell or trade a horse to interested parties. It sure beats the old Exchange and Mart!
HorseTweet.com bills itself as ‘the social network for equine enthusiasts’. As someone keen on the idea of horseriding but none too accomplished I’ll leave more qualified readers to judge that statement.
Oh and here’s media-spokesperson-cum-glovepuppet-horse-reporter, Hoof, to introduce the site. Saddle up partners!
A short bike ride with Ewan McGregor in the Times is a good insight into the motorbike adventurer/actor as he sets off with journalist Jon Swain:
…the short trip I proposed we should make risked, I feared, being seen by the 37-year-old Scottish-born actor as dull and artificial. The plan was to ride into the Santa Monica mountains behind LA, then wind down onto the Pacific Coast Highway for a bit – one of the best riding roads in the US. To reach it we would ride the Topanga Canyon loop, with its steep side roads, which I was told were a blast to explore by motorbike…
Meanwhile historian Simon Schama describes how he fell in love with America at 19 whilst listening to the blues in a Washington piano bar in 1964: “In the red-lit shadows, I took pulls at my Lucky Strike, put my mouth to the open-necked beer bottle and fancied that with each drag I was closer to becoming the Hoochie Coochie Man myself”
If books aren’t your thing then how about a trip to 
