Greg Davis-Smartest guy in the room

We spent the last couple of days with Greg Davis owner and coder extraordinaire of the rapidly exploding scuba board Dive Buddy. The question on the table was blogging and content. One of our major issues with eco blogging or industry blogging is cross pollination.

Let me explain. For the most part scuba boards are insular, they want to keep their communities insulated from the outside and that is how they monetize their sites. This also fosters, to a degree, "group think".

At the same time salient industry thought, eco news, local dive news, and more happens outside these communities. The only way for this content to get in is if someone brings it in and that is the crux of the matter.

In many cases community members blog outside their scuba communities and do not have the time or effort to move these posts back into the scuba board. We are losing the conversation by blocking this tide of industry thought and discussion. Enter Greg Davis.

We joined his site in 2008. What struck us at first were the divers who had been attracted to his site with it's ease of navigation and ability to communicate with others. This, as it turned out, was simply a great crowd of divers.

"If you build it, they will come" as the saying goes, and Greg built it, the scuba community.

Back to blogging. So this weekend we discussed cross pollination and Greg built a program that allows outside blogs to automatically post to Dive Buddy In a word brilliant. The blogger gets what amounts to double Google points for content, the Dive Buddy members get fresh new content to discuss, disagree with, or add to (the foundation of community) and Dive Buddy once again becomes more user friendly knocking down the oldschool scuba board paradigm of keeping members insular.

The entire program is still in Beta, but the idea is there. If you are a dive shop anywhere in the world, shark diving operation, or industry member who blogs about the industry, dive sites, eco news check out "the house that Greg built". In today's world content (good content) is king. The rise of serious online communities are driven by industry content and those few industry visionaries who capitalize on it-driving the industry conversation forward on a variety of topics.

Welcome to Dive Buddy and complete win for all.

PETA Schizophrenic Messaging for Sharks

A few months ago we had a few things to say about the ill conceived and ill timed PETA Shark Week campaign featuring this image.

This week PETA announced a pro shark campaign in Florida to coincide with annual shark migrations and the negative hyper media that usually follows in it's wake.

This smart media tactic piggybacks on a natural shark event and effectively allows PETA to insert it's messaging into the local conversation.

Singer Island, Fla. -- The annual migration of hundreds of sharks off the South Florida coast has prompted PETA to create a pro-shark banner that will fly over Singer Island's beaches on Saturday from 12 noon to 3 p.m.The banner, which reads, "Sharks Aren't the Only Predators. GoVegetarian!," is part of PETA's campaign to raise awareness about the plight of sea animals who are killed for food.
Every year, more than 50 million sharks and billions of other sea animals are killed and consumed by humans, while sharks killed fewer than a dozen people last year.

PETA wants those who are concerned about predators in the water to think about the terror and pain that sharks experience as they bleed to death after their fins are hacked off to be made into "delicacies" such as shark-fin soup and shark steak. Many species of shark and other fish have been decimated by overfishing. According to an international team of scientists, 29 percent of fish species have "collapsed," or declined by 90 percent.

"Sharks are much more likely to be attacked by humans than the other way around," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "The most dangerous predators of all can be found lined up at the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet."

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