Well now that that is out of the way...

Well now that that bit of unpleasantness is out of the way...

So now I've had my say about the Canadian Vaping Association's regulatory demands of the federal government, I suppose we should get some things out of the way. Like who the hell do I think I am? What the hell is Shop Talk? How dare I say the things I do? What the hell do I think I'm going to accomplish by doing this?

My name is Thomas Kirsop, as it says in the blog title and like most in the vaping industry my background had very little to do with what I do now, but a huge influence in how I do it:

• I've been a night watchman in a city core, where my main interactions were with the homeless, the addicted, the psychologically fractured. Those who sold themselves and those who sold others... and drunks... a lot of drunks. Way too many drunks.
• From this part of my life I learned a lot about empathy, and judgement. I learned about force of will and humanity; the better of our nature and the worse.
• I also developed a distrust of "people" in general and the ability to figure out pretty quickly when someone was shining me on or trying to "sell" me something.

• I've been a power engineer for over 20 years, now to be clear a power engineer is not a "ring on the finger, I do math" Engineer. A power engineer is a person who is licensed to run industrial boilers and pressure vessels. We are process operators, not process designers. Engineers draw stuff up according to their tables and charts and laws of physics and magic. Power engineers and process operators then figure out where they need to "tap it lovingly" with the 48 inch pipe wrench to make it work in the real world.
• From this career I learned how to learn new things. Reading comprehension was definitely a big part of it. Manuals, procedures, diagrams, drawings, and lab reports. 
• I learned that cause and effect are not always immediate. Often you make changes with the intent of seeing the results in hours, days, weeks, or months; not necessarily minutes. Sometimes things might happen and it turns out it was because of a change that was made days or weeks ago, and in more than one case over a year before. 
• I learned how to look at vast amounts of complex data and identify relationships and cause and effect within it, and then how to logically form a plan to manipulate variables until it started to coalesce into a form that was pleasing to my employers. I also learned about unintended consequences: A + B = C except when W is misaligned with Q, in which case A + B = Magenta. Magenta is bad. Always.

• For 7 of those 20 plus years, I doubled as an industrial first responder.
• This is why you won't hear me chanting in time with the rest during the "Vaping saves lives" chorus. If you come into my shop choking on a hotdog and give you the Heimlich maneuver and that hotdog bounces off the window and you start breathing again; I might have saved your life.
• If you come into my shop and through vaping I help you "stop setting things on fire": I helped change your risk profile. I had an impact your life. You are still going to die. Eventually. You might not die of a smoking related cause. That's good enough for me, but it makes for a lousy chant at a rally.

Knowledge comes from research. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from a lack of wisdom and knowledge. After 20+ years of developing all three I opened a retail vape shop where none of it would immediately apply.

Except it turns out it does apply.

I am the shop owner who reads the studies, the articles, the opinion poll research. Not just the "Prime Quote", not just the "Stuff I Agree With". All of it. I read all of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I'll champion the good, and my minimum standard is to not make the bad and the ugly worse. I will look at all that data and then tweak my business to try and account for the stuff I don't like (I hate my really damned expensive ID scanners, but they serve a purpose and I have no intentions of ever giving them up). Every time I come up with a plan or a strategy, I mull it about for a while "are there unintended consequences?", "Can my opponents perhaps twist it this way, or corrupt it that way to turn this against me?". That has served me well to this point.

I'm not always right, and I'm still gaining knowledge, experience and wisdom, but my batting average isn't exactly shite either.

2 years later I quit my job and left the career that had me just barely into the "1%" club and opened a second shop. I work 7 days a week, taking Christmas Day off once a year for about a third of the pay I used to make on a ten day on ten day off schedule.

Knowledge, wisdom, and experience it turns out have very little to do with rationality and sanity. Just ask my wife and kids.

Things not covered in the above bio:

• I had my first cigarette at the age of 9.
• I didn't manage to stop smoking until I was 43 (or was it 42? I don't remember).
• I was on the board of directors for the Electronic Cigarette Trade Association (ECTA) of Canada until shortly before it disbanded.
• I currently sit on the board of directors for the Vaping Industry Trade Association (VITA) in Canada 
• For you folks in the UK, ECTA was similar in intent to ECITA. VITA is similar in structure to UKVIA.
• Plenty of folks don't like the company I keep, they are entitled to their opinions. This does not mean that I assign value to those opinions even though I may assign value to those people (or not, in some cases).
• I am not "a little bit" of a curmudgeon. I am "a whole lot" of curmudgeon, and "a little bit" of an asshole.
• I will never knowingly lie to you. If I speak it, I believe it to be the truth for the circumstances of it's issuance. The world is a complicated place. I will change my opinions, and contradict myself as circumstances and information dictate.  I am not always right, and anyone who says they are is not likely speaking truth.
• What I speak here is from me. If my business has something to say, my business will issue a statement. If an organization I am affiliated with has something to say, that organization will issue a statement. I may share statements from others, but I do not speak for them here. Here, I speak for myself.
• This isn't my first blog. If you came here from Twitter and you were involved in vaping advocacy from 2014 to 2016, there is a likelihood you have read things I have written before. That wasn't my first blog either. My first blog was a satire piece that helped me meet my wife. My first blog was also the exception to the rule that proved not everything on the internet stays on the internet forever.
• I have more little old ladies who look upon me kindly like a grandson than any 48 (nigh on 49) year old man has a right to lay claim to. This is a happy side effect of my way of doing business, and I'd burn any relationship outside of blood or marriage to keep it that way. Those little old ladies are why I get out of bed every day.

So what exactly is ShopTalk?

Shoptalk is actually a Facebook page that can be found here. Generally it's where I share information, brief posts, videos and live-stream broadcasts with my commentary on the vaping industry in Canada and my opinion on things that can be done to make it better or things the industry is doing to make itself worse.

Make no mistake: I spend a lot of time talking about things my industry does that do not do my industry any favours when it comes to image issues and legislative troubles. I believe that we, as a fledgling market do more to sink our own boat than others. As a market segment, the North American industry is just barely scratching past puberty and has a lot of growing up to do. This is a big part of why we are consistently on the verge of being put in the time out corner by various legislators.

That's not to say that there are not entities out there who want the category to be eliminated. There are, and they are a threat, however there are a lot of things in our control that we could change that would take the wind out of their sails, and there are a lot of instances where they are shooting at us with ammunition that we gave them.

Anyone that thinks ShopTalk is "Vaping! ALL good! ALL the time!" would be mistaken. ShopTalk has always been more of that straight forward Uncle who cuffs you behind the ear and says "I love you kid, but you gotta grow up because the world just doesn't work the way you think it should". 

I think this industry is capable of making some pretty significant and positive change to a lot of people, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cover up it's ugly bits and make excuses for it's youthful mistakes.

The Facebook ShopTalk page is also rife with profanity and the messaging tends to be both short, and less complex. This is both because my nature tends to be more sailor over statesman, and because the target audience for the messaging there is more "front-line" than "tactics and planning".

And now there is a blog.

While Facebook is a good platform for shorter "Off The Cuff" content, live-streaming reaches those who do not have the time or free focus to get into more in depth discussions, and Twitter is an excellent platform for "zingers", there are a lot of times where things that need to be discussed are to complex, or data intensive for those platforms. It's a pain in the nether regions to drop citations in a Facebook post. The idea of pre-selecting images and having them cued up is a bit much for a live-stream that generally happens because I've got a free 20 minutes is a little counter-intuitive. 

And sometimes I just need to slow my own roll. My mind is usually cruising along at warp speed, and I'm a two finger typist. Often that results in plenty of accurate and valid statements showing up out of sequence and in a jumbled fashion.

So for the larger and more complex topics, I will use this platform. I can then reference posts made here in my shorter form offerings and who knows... maybe I'll orate them for a podcast.