Ask Carroll

[crabmeat thompson]

Nick, what strategies do you employ to build your own personal brand?

Fcuk, I don't know. I was thinking the other day just how inattentive I am to that stuff. I have Twitter and Instagram accounts but I never have used either, not one Tweet or picture. I don't have an agent and I don't really pursue a role as a public figure or commentator or whatever. I probably should do all that, but I don't think I want that kind of life. I want to do a good job, that's something people get to know about and appreciate.

But fcuken hell, if anyone here has any good ideas about Personal Branding, fire away.

You need a logo Nick - sort of like MR had - you can also use it as an avatar which seems to be a department in which you are sadly lacking.

I propose a "Design Nick a Logo" connest. First prize = $12724

I'm going to work on my entry tonight - it will be rather stylish and include two bananas and some shark teeth.

i'm on the job.

[Wubic Pig]

Very good Brian but logos don't move. Otherwise I seem to have missed some stuff here the past few days - been busy - are you planning on buying something down this way? We can continue this in tangents if you prefer or PM prob best...

[marauding mullet]

OK. Lets get super duper technical.

The great bulk of the world has gone metric. Why are surfboards still measured in feet? Apart from the silly sounding guy saying "I got a new 1950.7mm" today. Or is it that simple in that, we are just so used to it.

And then why, given all dims. are in inches, we crank on for hours about volume, in fcuken litres?

Awaiting your two shillings worth.

I suppose it's a statement in a way about the nature of surfing, and maybe the nature of measurement

Accurate measurement has this absolutely spastic and inexplicable place in surfing, well inexplicable if you're just coming across surfing and haven't been growing in it for 30 years

Like, Hatchman aside, a "six-foot" wave? What the fcuk does that even mean? A wave is never one size for more than a second or so. It changes shape constantly until its eventual dissolution. Trying to claim a wave measurement, on the face of it, is totally stupid. But if you accept that the measurement is really just a general idea of something, that "six foot" in the Australian context is about double overhead around the takeoff but probably declining quickly after that, then the implications of such a measurement become clear.

So has it been with board length. For many years now a "6'1"' has had a certain meaning, while a "6'10"" has had quite another. The implication carried by the term is greater than the actual sizing.

That's changed heaps in the past five or six years, and it feels as if model names and basic surfboard types are now the generic bearers of meaning around surfboard type for many of us. So maybe the ground is fertile for a steady change to centimetres; I mean they connect much better with litres, and litres are for sure the generic volume measurement thanks to design software which only got a roll on since metrics have been firmly in place. But somehow I doubt it. What's your new Pyzel Pinky? Oh it's 1.75 metres and 27 litres? Is that core descriptive?

In actual fact there has been a recent and most unnappealing trend for shapers to write a mangled combination of fractions and decimal points in imperial measurements. e.g. 6'6" x 19 3/4 x 2.65
Braithy and Steve, commence running argument ending with make-up sex.

[SharkBoy]

Look I made a request earlier for nobody to try on the whole shark expert shtick in this thread. So shut up the both of you.

I wont try on the expert scthick...but here is a link to two experts takes.

Shark Boy, how many times do I have to say it. Keep this shark stuff the hell out of here.

The last thing I want to see in this thread is some ridiculous I'm Right! slang-fest around sharks. It was bad enough in Tangent
s when shearer and braithy were going at it about cats and birds. Sharks are Testosterone Rampant and every fcuken he man on the Internet is parading their reading and knowledge about 'em thanks to this very sketchy incident at Jeffreys. You know who was there? Fanning, that's who, and Julian. They're for sure pretty spun by the whole thing but no, they have to do press conferences and we all have to be Right about it.

Do it somewhere else.

Whoa, easy there.
I didnt add any of my own opinions, my intent was to end the speculation by quoting what actual experts had said instead of speculating further

[Cranked]

Well thanks to the Surf Forecast website I've changed to using kJ now, I don't even look at the wave size any more.

Wave energy (in kilo Joules, kJ) on the swell forecast tables and maps indicates the power of the predicted waves and can be the most useful guide to how powerful the surf is likely to be at your local beach / reef. It is a function of both wave size and period (the larger the waves and longer the period the greater the power). Small ocean waves with a long period can create the same size surf as larger waves with a short period but they can have the same wave energy, making it a potentially better guide to likely surf size. We would suggest making a note of the forecast wave energy on a small but surfable day and on a day that is the biggest you are happy to surf. This should give you the energy range that is in your comfort zone. As a rough guide, wave energy of 100kJ can be just about surfable at many breaks, 200-1000kJ should produce increasingly punchy waves while 1000-5,000+ can start to get really heavy and even dangerous at some breaks.

[Nick Carroll]

Has pro surfing (ASP/WSL) ever considered trialling a team style format similar to Davis Cup Tennis or the way team Golf works for a few contests? Say Hawaii, Brazil, America, Australia, South Africa etc top 4 WSL ranked surfers in a contest put national pride on the line.

Oh yes! They used to have these sorts of events as a sideshow at WCTs. But it never really took off; the whole point of these contests is to winnow out the individual, and I don't think the spectators or the surfers quite understood why they were doing the teams thing.

Surfing at that elite level is soooo not a team sport, just as it isn't at a personal level either, so eventually the team sideshow event dropped off the radar.

[Nick Carroll]

Whoa, easy there.
I didnt add any of my own opinions, my intent was to end the speculation by quoting what actual experts had said instead of speculating further

well I guess I do have to explain more.

People who want to be Right on the Internet always drum up experts in support.

Quoting an expert never ends speculation, it's just more fuel on the fire. It's a fcuken Internet team sport right there, people claiming to be more Right than the experts.

I don't want to see that shark I'm Right shit in here full stop so just let it go.

[Hollowed out]

come off it AJ, I make more money than both of them put together just by getting up and typing every day.

... well, my last cheque for $128.50 should take that shit-eating grin off your face.

I'm one step closer to retirement.

Nick, just for clarity, who posting on here is 'paid' or receives reward for their content or participation on RS?

Same for Swellnet, which you may not know or wish to comment on, but I assume the likes of Jarratt, Blindboy (whoever he is) and others don't just pen stories because they are bored.

Not intended to be anything other than understanding how it works as one would think that any 'paid' content would be firstly in the real persons name and secondly have a tag on their posts denoting that they are part of the site i.e. 'staff, 'contributor' etc as per magazine mastheads.

[el rancho]

Lol 'paid' to post here.

That's a good one.
Nick is being paid by dailylife.com.au

[crabmeat thompson]

hollowed out is like a more rotund version of sunstroke, yeah?

[Nick Carroll]

Nick, just for clarity, who posting on here is 'paid' or receives reward for their content or participation on RS?

Same for Swellnet, which you may not know or wish to comment on, but I assume the likes of Jarratt, Blindboy (whoever he is) and others don't just pen stories because they are bored.

Not intended to be anything other than understanding how it works as one would think that any 'paid' content would be firstly in the real persons name and secondly have a tag on their posts denoting that they are part of the site i.e. 'staff, 'contributor' etc as per magazine mastheads.

Well I don't get paid on here at all, I'm on here because I like the connection and kind of feel I am among friends, though as we have seen in the past, that can be a bit of an illusion

I dunno about any of the Realsurf surf reporters etc and whether they get paid, it's not really my deal anyway

Of course Jarratt is paid for his pieces on Swellnet but he wouldn't be paid for his comments on the stories. When I write stories for websites they are always paid for. There's a major difference between Out There and In Here. Fact is, these forums aren't really in the public eye, they don't attract nearly the amount of web traffic or ad revenue as even the smallest surf news type site. To me that's what makes them safe.

[Wubic Pig]

Nick, what strategies do you employ to build your own personal brand?

i'm on the job.

Actually that will make a great mascot - slap some yellow nut huggers on the little fella.

[Nick Carroll]

you're going to Hell The Pig.

[Hollowed out]

Thanks Nick, I was interested because a busy guy like you must put a huge amount of time on RS when you could be writing stories that pay the bills.

So real credit to you for taking the time and effort to answer silly questions like mine!

[Nick Carroll]

well hollowed one of the ways RS works for me is as "out" time from writing or researching

Like a lot of the crew I reckon, you're stuck in front of a screen or whatever and it's good to switch gears.

[The Mighty Sunbird]

I have a 6'6 Egan Thruster
I have a 7'0 DHD Thruster
says so on the stringers

but if I put them next to each other the 7'0 is only an inch longer...

[The Mighty Sunbird]

isn't that 90% of posts on here?

[crabmeat thompson]

i have to spend less time on facebook. i just went to like ronson's post.