Kevin sounds off about SKWIM

--- Forwarded message ---------

From: kevin leadteamdevelopment.com

Thank you Nicole and Wes! 

 

Your efforts are making a big difference in aquatic safety, public interest, and wellbeing.  And you are providing others the opportunity to help accelerate the progress.  In the USA, the UK, and other countries, swimming participation is down by 5-8% in the last 5 years yet downing is up 25-30%.  People are swimming less as families and aquatics is more and more viewed as individual training rather than group play. 

 

We must be careful in our industry to promote “Lifesaving and Lifegiving” rather than “Drowning Prevention”.  Let’s accentuate the positive and it will reduce the negative.  Our industry is still hyper-focused on individualism, separatism, and head-down activities.  That is why drowning often occurs with a pool full of people all doing their own thing. 

 

When we promote head-high social aquatic activity, play, and strategy, and educate that each person in the water is responsible for everyone else, we have a cohesive force in the water working together as one.  It not only emulates lifesaving team action, it generates a “spectacle” that is hard to ignore and generates “spectatorship” which is the driving engine of prosperity and sport industry growth.  This is proven in land-based sports and is more vital than ever for aquatics.  #playskwim!

 

All the best and God bless!

 

Coach Kevin I. McCarthy

SKWIM® Global Development

In cooperation with:

C. + 1- 425-802-2167 

F. + 1- 425-868-6840

1125 205^th Avenue NE

Sammamish WA  98074 USA

 

Statement to Pittsburgh City Council

Some rehashing of my notes:

The aim for today's message was to present the book, Coach Mark's Public Policy Playbook for Pittsburgh's Aquatics and Recreation - Yinzer, Alpha Edition. It is freely available now in a PDF ebook able to be downloaded from within the mobile or desktop app called CrewLAB within the ISCA Team. The QR code on the postcard helps you get the app. Copies are being delivered to the City Clerk for the clerk's office and all members of council. 

The first copy of the book to arrive from the printers was delivered in person to Mayor O'Connor when he attended a meeting in the South Side at the Market House. 

The book has also been made available to the City Controller, Rachael Heisler. 

On the first day of fall, details of how to get the book were shared at public comment with the Pittsburgh Public Schools board and administration. 

After the meeting, I delivered the same postcard to Eric Sloan, Director of Citiparks, and Dan Gillman and James Hill of the Mayor's office. Plus, I requested a meeting with Allegheny County Executive, Sara Innamorato and info was delivered to the office of the County Council and County Manager. 

Within the playbook, there are three Meta Plays that deserve your attenuation and action. Two call for the re-launching of prior concepts, the Athletic Reform Task Force and PPS Summer Dreamers. Both can be modernized and enriched with city and school district cooperation. 

The horrid fight and gun shots outside the South Side Cupples Stadium after the scholastic football game between Westinghouse and USO (Obama, Sci Tech & U-Prep) illustrates another glaring example of why we need the Athletic Reform Task Force. 

When we had expert leaders working on that issue, established by prior Superintendent Mark Roosevelt, we were making progress and considering all sorts of issues that surround athletics and our youth. We had committees and proactive attention to matters of security, violence, and sportsmanship were getting addressed. 

Then Superintendent Linda Lane came into the office and she killed the Athletic Reform Task Force. Since then, many advances even regressed.

Even the President of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers said that PPS, presently the second largest district in the state, could quickly become the fifth or sixth largest due to the number of students departing the city. 

He was making those predictions based upon the Future Ready Plans undergoing in the next two year. I say the post-game shootings are going to be a cause for another thousand students departing the district. Families don't want to send their students into the PPS situation.

How we treat the youth in the city is unlike that as to what the experiences are like in suburban Pittsburgh. 

The news of council is more focused on next year's financial budget. The newspaper said it is a "stop gap budget." No way. The budget you are working to approve and the acts you are supporting are not going to be stopping anyone from leaving the city. 

The city has a big gap in its circle of life when you consider the schools and the youth. 

The stop-gap measures that would work to keep people in the city are within the pages of this book and the Meta Plays. 

The Athletic Reform Task Force would work to teach about sports, fitness, health and wellness. 

The budget is but a band-aid and like first aid. Well, how about if we teach first aid, lifeguarding and swimming. See the Meta Play called the I-League. 

When we have respect for self, for others and champion the causes of playing well with others, we'll be able to have relationships that are able to ground the kids and families within the city's schools. 

Most of all -- and I did not have enough time to get to this point in the 3-minutes -- the city's finances are so frail that the only things we can do are also documented in the book. Planning, talking and organizing volunteers is cheap. Citizen led-planning, bottoms up planning, and open planning that is envisioned affordable. The missing ingredient is political will from those in City Hall and with the Board of Education. 

To play well with others and to play and lead our kids is about the only thing the city's budget can accommodate -- as that isn't expensive. 

 

I‑League Blueprint: Expanding Swim Teams, Lifeguard Training, and Water Polo in Western Pennsylvania

Transforming Pennsylvania High School Swimming: The I‑League Inclusion is explained in depth in the Playbook so that any interested student can have a swim team experience.

Coach Mark Rauterkus breaks down the I‑League, a new plan to bring swimming to every high school in Western Pennsylvania. He explains why it matters, how it works, and how you can get involved.

• The current gap: Half of WPIAL schools have no swim teams or aquatic programs.
• I‑League solution: Year‑round swimming, lifeguard training, water polo, triathlon and open‑water options for all students.
• Dual benefit: Provides competition for schools without teams while keeping elite swimmers in scholastic programs with all‑star meets and NIL opportunities.
• Tech edge: AI tools and new resources to train the next generation of swim coaches and instructors.
• How to join: Download the free PDF of Coach Mark’s Public Policy Playbook via Crew Lab, grab the paperback for $26, and help push rule changes for more frequent scrimmages.

https://Read.SwimISCA.com to get the book. 

Check out this episode!

Fwd: Why Your Chatbot Is Lying About Public Affairs

Begin forwarded message:

From: Neptune Ops <info@neptuneops.com>
Date: October 12, 2026 at 8:05:03 AM EDT
To: mark@rauterkus.com
Subject: Why Your Chatbot Is Lying About Public Affairs
Reply-To: info@neptuneops.com



🔱 Three blind spots in chatbots, and how to spot the vendors selling them ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

View in browser October 12, 2026 4 Minute Read 🔱 Sign up for a free demo today!   See how the latest AI and digital advocacy tools can transform your work. THIS WEEK'S EDITION Why Your Chatbot Is Lying About Public Affairs  Ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini who moves a senator on energy policy, and you’ll get a confident, well-formatted answer in seconds. It will read like a polished briefing memo. It will also be flat wrong. That’s not because the chatbot is trying to mislead you. Chatbots were built to serve hundreds of millions of people asking about everything from recipes to tax law. They were not built to map influence inside a capitol. In today’s short read, we cover the three reasons chatbots fall short in public affairs, what purpose-built tools do differently, and how to tell a real public affairs AI tool from a chatbot in a nice suit. The Three Chatbot Blind Spots   🔱 It won’t go there. Chatbots are designed to steer clear of sensitive political territory. Ask who an elected official’s closest influencers are, meaning the donors, former staffers, family, friends, and local leaders whose calls actually get returned. You’ll get a polite deflection or a generic list of committee chairs.   That’s intentional. The companies behind these models would rather be cautious than controversial, so their guardrails treat political influence questions as a minefield. A chatbot is like the official tour guide at the Capitol. It can tell you the history of every statue in the rotunda, but it won’t tell you who’s meeting in the back room.   🔱 It only watches the highlight reel. A legislator can have thousands of floor speeches, votes, press releases, newsletters, and social posts on a single issue. A chatbot sees only two things: what it absorbed during training, which stops at a fixed date, and whatever its web search pulls back in a few seconds, usually a handful of top results. No coach prepares for a playoff opponent by watching SportsCenter. They watch the full game film, because that’s where the tendencies show up. Public affairs works the same way. The insight lives in the pattern: how a member talks generally, how they talk about a specific issue, what they've actually done on a topic.   🔱 It gives a different answer every time. Chatbots are probabilistic, not deterministic. In plain English, they build each answer by predicting the most likely next word. That means the same question asked twice can produce two different responses.   That’s a feature when you’re brainstorming ad copy or slogans. It’s a liability when you’re telling a client whether a swing vote is gettable. If a bank teller gave you two different balances for the same account, you’d switch banks. Your intelligence tools deserve the same standard. What Purpose-Built AI Tools Do Differently   Purpose-built public affairs AI is designed to solve all three problems: It synthesizes the full record rather than a sample, pulling in any statement, vote, and relationship on file. It’s built to explore the sensitive political questions practitioners ask every day, because that’s the entire point of the tool. Its answers are grounded in a defined body of verified data, so it becomes nearly deterministic. Ask the same question twice and you get the same answer. The serious tools get there by combining two things.   The first is open-weight models: AI models an organization can download and run on its own terms. Think of it as owning a car instead of hailing a rideshare. The rideshare driver decides which roads are off-limits. When you own the car, you choose the route.   The second is retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, which turns every question into an open-book exam. Instead of answering from memory, the AI first looks things up in a curated library of verified information. You don’t need to know how the engine works to see why that matters.   Beware The Chatbot In A Trench Coat   As demand for public affairs AI grows, so does a crop of vendors who put a new logo on a general chatbot and call it a platform. Under the hood, it’s the same product you can buy for $20 a month. It has the same political guardrails, the same highlight-reel problem, and the same shifting answers. The only thing that’s different is the invoice. What This Means For Public Affairs   Your chatbot isn’t useless. It’s a strong writing assistant, a fast place to start research, and a great way to get past a blank page. But it is not an intelligence tool. Treating it like one means walking into meetings with a fraction of the picture and full confidence, which is a dangerous combination in a business built on credibility. The organizations that pull ahead over the next few years won’t be the ones with the most AI subscriptions. They’ll be the ones that know which tool to trust for which job, and that can tell the difference before the contract gets signed. Three Ways To Operationalize This Email   Ask these three questions of any vendor to separate the real thing from snake oil:   🔱 Who are your AI engineers? A company that builds AI employs people (almost always in the San Francisco Bay Area) who build AI. If the answer is a long pause or “we partner with a leading AI provider,” you’re likely buying a chatbot subscription with a markup.   🔱 What’s your model architecture? Ask how they navigate the political guardrails built into commercial models. A real builder will walk you through their AI architecture with confidence. A reseller will change the subject, much like the chatbot it’s reselling.   🔱 What have you actually shipped? Ask to see software running in production, used by real clients on real campaigns. A slick slide deck is not a product. 🔱 If you're enjoying this content, please consider forwarding this email to a colleague or friend.    🔱 If you're not already a subscriber, please sign up here to stay up to date on the latest developments in political technology.   🔱 If you have suggestions for future newsletters or any other feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Neptune Ops, 945 Market Street, Ste 501, San Francisco, CA 94103, United States

Fwd: How to nail the first trim

-------- Original Message --------

A couple of things that make it even smoother. ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­

​ Heusom www.heusom.com © 2026, Heusom. All rights reserved. Heusom 700 Main Street Bangor, Maine 04401

Episode #116: Free Community Aquatics Directive Offers a Framework for Pool Transformation and Funding Success

Most communities already have more aquatic capacity than they realize. They have pools, schools, coaches, instructors, recreation departments, and community organizations. The opportunity is to connect these assets and put them to work.

In Episode #116 of Heavy Or Not, The OG Swim Guide, Coach Mark Rauterkus introduces The Community Aquatics Directive, a practical playbook co-authored with Coach Ron Usher, inventor of OtterBall.

The book presents ten pillars for transforming underused swimming pools into thriving community assets. The episode explores drowning prevention, learn-to-swim instruction, vertical swimming and aquatic fitness, youth retention programs, school partnerships, competitive pathways, lifeguard development, smarter scheduling, and sustainable funding.

Discover how better programming can expand participation, develop local employment opportunities, strengthen public health, generate revenue, and make existing aquatic facilities more valuable to the communities they serve.

GET THE BOOK FREE: Visit https://SwimISCA.com and join the International Swim Coaches Association team on CrewLAB to access the free PDF edition of The Community Aquatics Directive.

AN INVITATION: Coach Mark is also seeking foreword contributors for future editions of the book, with opportunities to feature the contributor's name on the cover.

A pool is a major community asset. Strong programming is what makes that asset come alive.

Heavy Or Not, The OG Swim Guide | Episode #116

Check out this episode!

Fwd: ☝️ — the ONE THING the top 1% of webinars MUST DO...

--
Ta.
 
 
Mark Rauterkus       Mark.Rauterkus@gmail.com

*they don't teach or sell (weird I know)

The top 1% of VSLs and webinars do one thing completely differently — different from what most people teach, and different from what you're doing right now.   They don't teach. And they DON'T sell.   (I know that may sound backwards at first, but here's why)...   Teaching feels generous. But it gives your audience a false sense of accomplishment — and fails to provide the context and value they can only get from buying your product or program.   And selling turns just them off. The harder you pitch, the more you sound like everybody else — and the more you push people away.   Nowadays we all show up with our sales pitch radars on high alert!   Most importantly — teaching and selling both fail to do the one thing required for your audience to buy:   Change what your audience believes.   Simply put, there's a gap between what a stranger believes right now and what they have to believe before they'll ever buy. I call it the "Beliefs Gap" — and until you close it, you'll keep launching to crickets.   That's exactly what the one-page SCRIPT Content System does: it installs the "8 Buying Beliefs" in the right order — so by the final slide, buying is simply the obvious next step!   And now the new AI builder writes every word of it for you — then builds all 24 slides — using your existing AI tools. In minutes!   And right now, you can get lifetime access for $27 — just for testing it out...   👉 Grab lifetime access here: https://go.fletchermethod.com/ai-script-engine   — Aaron The Fletcher Method™ 2155 Northwest Awbrey Road Suite 114 Bend, Oregon 97703 United States

Look at city council statements

https://triblive.com/local/stop-the-bleeding-pittsburgh-city-council-focuses-on-emergency-budget-measures/?utm_source=second-street&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=triblive-morningheadlines&emailmd5=cf8ff26269e21916f057fc187b7c01dd&emailsha1=2288612016783210532331751511564213882321386716626214&emailsha256=2553d61bd6fb453b5b843f79aedde6325581601a25d195d7f19e2a7051a54246

Fwd: SCOTUS ❌ Blocks, PG payout & Pittsburgh's future

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh <newsletter@pghguild.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2026 at 1:20 PM
Subject: SCOTUS ❌ Blocks, PG payout & Pittsburgh's future

What you make possible

Dear Mark, On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt an expected final blow to the former Post-Gazette owners, the Block family, in their efforts to avoid accountability for years of blatant federal labor lawbreaking. The court refused to hear their latest wasteful plea. Members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh struck for more than three years and have waited even longer to make this long-expected news possible. The Blocks have no other choice but to pay millions of dollars back to current and former editorial union workers of the Post-Gazette — with interest. It’s money that should have been in our paychecks and benefits every single day since the PG — then under Block Communications Inc. — illegally tore up our contract in July 2020. You made Monday’s news possible. We are extremely appreciative of the support you, our community, showed us during this drawn-out process as we both accelerated and waited for the slow mechanics of the justice system to reach this conclusion. Of course, our fight for the caliber of news that Pittsburgh deserves continues on multiple fronts. Fired former strikers, who are unemployed members of the Guild, soft launched The Pittsburgh Progress in late July. That’s an effort you’ve made possible and can further strengthen, too. When the Blocks announced in January that they were closing the Post-Gazette, community members and PG workers came together to figure out what you needed in a post-Block Pittsburgh journalism future.   Because you told us you wanted to feel ownership over your local news, we made the Progress a multi-stakeholder cooperative. You can quite literally co-own it with your neighbors and its workers and democratically decide aspects of how the business is run. You can sign up right now on PittsburghProgress.com to become a subscriber to the Progress or a member of the Pittsburgh Progress Cooperative or both. A small number of former strikers — about 80 percent of us got purged by new PG ownership — are still employees of the Post-Gazette and are working with those owners, the Venetoulis Institute of Local Journalism, to craft a new, robust contract. We’ve already bargained a few times, have found alignment on some basic important points and are looking forward to future sessions. Pittsburgh needs more journalism jobs and more focus and media coverage on the struggles of working-class Pittsburghers — not less. Whether you recognize some of the names and subjects on PittsburghProgress.com from our strike publication, the Pittsburgh Union Progress, or simply want to see independent, worker-led news, we encourage you to give our sample stories a read. The article about this latest news is featured on The Progress website. There’s plenty more to read on the site regarding local news, labor, arts and culture, sports, and community. Ultimately, it’s journalism built by workers, with our neighbors, for Pittsburgh. You supported us through a grueling strike that we won, together, unequivocally and with finality. We encourage you to continue in that same spirit as we continue to advocate for worker-focused journalism rooted in our community. In solidarity, Natalie Duleba Former striker Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh local secretary Pittsburgh Progress founding worker-member Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh TNG-CWA Local 38061 322 North Shore Drive 2nd floor, Suite 250 Pittsburgh, PA 15212 pghguild.com NewsGuild-CWA AFL-CIO, CLC.