Passion (P) is great, and is the fundamental starting point for a business like scuba. I love teaching people to teach people, and thus have the greatest job as a course director.

The other thing, the theme of your site, is business knowledge (K) and customer service skills (S).

P+K+S= Success

We need to have passion (the right attitude), knowledge and skills to be successful.

Knowledge and skills can be acquired. They can be learnt through courses like the PADI IDC. But passion is internal.

For those with the passion - get the knowledge and skills.

For those without a passion, the message is clear. Find something you are passionate about and jump into that wholeheartedly.

Geeks! ;-)

I guess this is where we need to look at diving being a continuum of activities that revolve around the whole theme of being underwater in magnificent aquatic environments.

For some people simple recreational dives and snorkeling adventures are the ticket.

For others, diving on deeper wrecks and some moderate skin diving are the game.

And for others again, tec diving or serious free diving are important aspects of the game, and are the very things that grandparents are unlikely to be able to do - or want to do.

Maybe tec diving - or at least deeper recreational diving - needs to take a greater prominence in our marketing efforts. The new PADI Tec 40 Course, for example, is a great program that really caters to that arena, as is say that TDI Intro to Tech program. Going tec without being full on teccy!

I remember Holly Beck's comments at Dive Fuel in 2007 or 2008 were quite insightful. As a kid, she used to visit Caribbean resorts with her family. As a non-diver, her image of divers was basically "fat old men in speedos pushing everyone else out of the way at the breakfast buffet so they could get to their dive boat".

For a variety of reasons, we in the diving community have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to marketing to the younger generation. We have all the elements, as you say above, to be an attractive activity for all age groups, but we need to get the message and the medium right for the Gen Y folk.

Happy birthday Nick. Taking the rest of the week off? Have all your Christmases come at once?

Have a great break!

Had a chance to look at the site, and am quite underwhelmed.

Navigation is clunky, page rendering is ordinary, and the use of Flash is somewhat unimaginative.

More than anything, why would I ever want to visit the site? Theres nothing there that would have me want to come back after an initial, cursory, visit.

I'd have to say ho hum to this.

A website like this one looks is a glorified brochure. NO need for a beta of that. Give me some new functionality that makes life different, then that might be cool.

Using flash and minimising the use of social media is a good way to stay low on Google juice.

People want content more than flash. They want enhanced value more than content.

This should be an alpha test!:)

OTOH I believe Twitter is a better forum for open conversations. Teaches us to be succinct.

Facebook is becoming less and less useful as a communications tool. The SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) is aweful, especially with farmville, zombies, etc.

Also, we need to be really careful about the privacy issues with Facebook, particularly in the last week with the changes to their policy.

Heh heh! My pet peeve is when the SNR (signal to noise ratio) is so high that it clutters your feed.

Frankly if I see 10+ posts from someone in less than a minute it tells me that its automated or at best piled up. They never respond to conversations, because they're shouting not listening.

They get unfollowed PDQ

To use the phrase from the Cluetrain Manifesto (one of the best marketing books IMHO), "markets are conversations" ;-)

A Retweet can have two purposes - one is to add comment, and another is simply to pass on a message. I use if for both. Sometimes a message stands on its own 2 feet. Sometimes its already at 140 characters.

You sound judgemental as is to say that retweeting should never happen without adding comment. But if there's nothing else to add, just to spread the message, then adding additional noise just for the sake of it is pointless.

Of course, if ALL that someone does is blind retweeting, I'll probably vote with me feet and unfollow them in favour of those that they are retweeting.

I think that being part of a conversation is knowing when to add comment, and when to let the original comment stand on its own 2 feet!