We launched the Work Wild website to rave reviews on January 5. It was a pretty crazy couple days after that. I got the first 5 minutes of my fifteen minutes of fame anyways. GlobalTV and CTV had me on and I got my first exposure to being on TV. News sets are eerily quiet. There’s the news anchors, a floor manager, and a bunch of crazy robot cameras moving around silently (probably plotting their revenge on the human race). Also, the entire CTV news set is a blindingly bright green screen that made me a little bit sick at 6am. Mike Sobel interviewed me on the Global Morning News. I remember the good ol’ days of him introducing me to Saturday afternoon cartoons like Gummie Bears and Dark Wing Duck on ITV. Remember, when there’s trouble you call DW. Let’s get dangerous.
I was also misquoted in my first news article in the Edmonton Journal. The writer got the basic point of what I was trying to say across in the article, but used words I really don’t like using such as “green” industry. Green is a colour, not a description of environmental friendliness. And of course the industry is green. So are trees, and that’s our livelihood. Anyways, it was my first brush with fame since a picture of me showed up in the Edmonton Journal after loggersports at the U of A. There was a glorious picture of me smashing through a tree with teeth clenched, muscles flexed and glistening, and shards of timber filling the air. I imagine it looked something like the following:
Part of the website launch was a contest that we were running on the website. You build a Work Wild creature, “like” the facebook page, and bam, you were entered to win an iMac or iPad. (Again, I’m sorry to the people who had issues entering the contest). So if you could figure out how to make your browser work and had flash updated it literally took 2 minutes to win a prize. The following were our winners!
NICOLE LUCHANSKI
Look at her. Jumping into what’s probably freezing cold water to bring in a monster (ha!) fish. Nicole is a second year forestry student at the U of A that grew up in Edmonton and is enjoying her education so far. She says she’ll likely stay in the industry after she gets her degree because she enjoys that it’s a sustainable industry and she gets to spend time in the great outdoors. That giant new iMac will definitely help her in her last couple years as she learns how to do some intense forest modelling. It will also lead to countless hours of facebook procrastination.
CHELSEA HIRD
That’s a picture of Chelsea, lightsabre in hand, ready to take on the world. Chelsea is installing tires down in CowTown where the stupid Flames have managed to miss the playoffs despite being one of the oldest teams in the league. She’s going back to school in the fall and hopes that her brand new iPad can help her out on her progression to an awesome career. She didn’t know there were so many different types of jobs in the forest industry until checking out Work Wild, but she would definitely consider a career their now since she enjoys the wilderness so much. Chelsea, I suggest the first game you download be Tilt to Live. Greatest game ever. I should get kickbacks for promoting it so much. While playing, if you want, you can pretend you’re a caribou trying to escape all the seismic lines and roads that are chasing you…
BRANDON ESTRADA
This kid rolled into the office with some mad flow and unparalelled confidence. I’m now 7 years removed from the teen years, and remember the trials and tribulations of Jr. High and High School. Brandon has no worries though, as he’ll chew up the next couple years and spit them out. He doesn’t know what he wants to do as a career yet, but he said it could definitely involve trees and the outdoors.
In summary, the winners are all awesome people and I’m glad they’ve jumped on the Work Wild train. We’re still trying to contact the last winner, so if you haven’t heard anything, check the junk mail of the email on your facebook account. Tell your friends to follow us on facebook. We’ll be in your town this summer giving stuff away and helping you understand how sweet a job you could have working in the forest industry!
Go outside and enjoy yourself. Here’s a song to get you excited for the weekend. I picture this blasting in a park while throwing a frisbee around.