January 2008 Archives

It's not very often I write about my employer. I have a little rule I follow which precludes this most of the time. Tonight is an exception though.

Earlier this week I received an email from Antonio Perez, the CEO of Kodak. I should say I wasn't alone as all employees received it I believe. Attached was a voicemail message that Donald Trump had left encouraging us to watch tonight's episode of Celebrity Apprentice.

I was greatly interested by this for a number of reasons. I remember watching the Apprentice back in the UK when Sir Alan Sugar was Donald Trump and really enjoyed the show. In the past I did watch one of Donald Trump series mainly I might add, so I could actually see something of who this Mr. Trump was. Again I enjoyed the show. However, I'm probably done with this now and the idea of a celebrity version did not really jump at me. I was a fan of the very first Celebrity Fame Academy back in 2003 - mainly driven by the participation of Ulrika Johnson at that time, but to use a phrase I've heard a lot recently, this idea has probably jumped the shark.

Add to this the fact that fellow Vancouver blogger Alan Yu has been doing a write up of the show this time, as he's done before and also read one of Mr. Trump's books which he reviewed chapter by chapter. Throw in the Kodak connection and you have a reasonable case for me to watch. Luckily the Canucks game was on the East coast so there was no clash!

The concept of the show followed the traditional approach. The products came from Kodak's Consumer Products division, which is making some excellent products. Case in point is this review of Kodak cameras from the recent CES in Las Vegas.

Back to the show ... for $150 bucks the printer featured is a really competitive deal, especially when you combine this with cost of the Ink which works out 50% less than it's competitors.

I'll leave Alan to let you know what happened at the end but for me I enjoyed the Kodak connection. Good job guys!

As for the programme itself, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Donald Trump seemed to be enjoying himself. Maybe it's the nature of this show - i.e. celebrity/charity etc but he did, if I can say this out loud, come across a lot more human than I've seen him previously. So the show was good, my problem was with the ad breaks. These make it really hard to watch anything - just when you think you are getting into something you suddenly realise that what you are getting into is women's sanitary products and/or a 20 secs snippet of a completely different show - very frustrating!

I can't say I will watch the Apprentice again, but I will re-aquaint myself with the Consumer Products division. I understand over at Kodak HQ in Rochester the employees were organising Apprentice watching parties for tonight - I hope they had as much fun as I did watching the show ....

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the closing panel of the Canadian Financing Forum West. The event was put on by Dave Thomas of Rocket Builders. Credit to Dave for what was a cracking event. As the Forum's website says:

"The Canadian Financing Forum matches North American Corporate and VC investors with serious entrepreneurs looking to build world-class technology companies."

Basically a bunch of people looking for money able to present to a bunch of people with money. I was invited through New Ventures BC and the company I co-mentored last year, Teampages was presenting. Alas I arrived too late to see the presentation, but I did catch up with Mike Tan and was pleased to hear his business continues to do very well.

The highlight of the afternoon/evening for me was the Panel who discussed Web 2.0 type questions posed to them by a sad (and sick I understand) Paul Kedrosky. Lot's of healthy stuff here which I must blog about at some point including whether Facebook was done? Reading the press today I see that my favourite application on Facebook, Scrabulous may be under threat! That leaves the status updates as the other main reason I go to the site and made me think I should maybe concentrate on Twitter instead!

The reception to round the event off allowed me the opportunity to reconnect with some faces I'd not seen for a while and meet some new folk. Amongst them folk from Contigo, Chrysalix, Eqo.

This was a good opener for me to 2008, good networking, interesting people and presentations. Next week sees the Vancouver Enterprise Forum kick off, the CMA Breakfast Networking I host for the CMA Members and then Launch Party, which Danny Robinson of Strutta mentioned today.

Vancouver is an interesting place right now and at this time of year there is no shortage of things to take our minds away from the somewhat indifferent weather. Enjoy everyone!

I've been meaning to blog about my experiences as I go through the Toastmasters process and hopefully gain my Competent Communicator title in the next few months. To do this I have to give ten speeches, each of which have specific growth areas. So far I have given three of the ten speeches, the last of which I did was called "Crows - dispelling the myths."

At the same time I'm 12 days into my photographic project called "Crows 366." In this project I take a photo of a crow(s) every day for a year, i.e. 2008. You can view the pictures over on flickr. So I thought I would take my speech notes and present them as a blog post. What follows is the result. It is a shortish article which follows the same structure I used in the speech and talks about the same things. I have not elaborated on the points just tried to put them down in a more readable style.

So how did the speech go? Well I ran slightly over time at six minutes and forty seconds but overall I was very pleased. I did refer to my notes far too much and learnt the lesson that I should ALWAYS rehearse! Just doing the speech once before the actual event makes a huge huge difference. I believe this is something that will get increasingly more important as I move through the remaining seven speeches. My evaluator also mentioned that my voice is getting stronger which is great. Being softly spoken is not the best asset when public speaking!

Today I would like to talk about something that has amazed me, thrilled me, amused me and some say obsessed me since arriving in Vancouver two and a half years ago. I am talking about our numerous, noisy, feathered neighbours and fellow residents ... Crows!

Not everyone likes crows - the inevitable reference to Alfred Hitchcocks Film 'The Birds' comes to mind. However, today I am on a mission. I want to convince you to look again at our boisterous black friends and ask yourself:

"Am I judging these birds too quickly?"

To help you along I would like to share with you something of their history, their habits and behaivours and their relationship ship with us humans.

Let's start at the beginning, the very beginning. Crows have been in this part of Cascadia for hundreds if not thousands of years. They followed the first humans over the landbridge from Asia 50,000 years ago. Some First Nations revere Raven (a good cousin of crows) - originally white, who created the world and released humans from the clamshell he found them trapped in. To this day ravens and crows are considered messengers.

"Can I see what Stewart sees?"

A sad loss today...

On Flickr Mick has put this image up. I think it is a fantastic tribute to an amazing man. Click through on the image.

 

A full account here. 

It's that time of year again, or it will be on 22nd/23rd February when once more the Moose is loose and the fourth annual non profit personal blogging and social media conference takes place here in Vancouver. Registration for Northern Voice 2008 is open and I am sure filling up fast, so don't delay!

I've attended the last couple of years and always got something really positive from the event - be it increased knowledge, new friends or any number of other things. This year should be no different. Last year I took my Macbook and posted a quick couple of posts (here and here). It seems I was too busy listening to be typing after those, but this year I will try and do more.

One thing I really liked last year was Planet Northern Voice, which was a feed that had everyones blog in it that registered for the conference. Hopefully the guys will set this up prior to conference this year (can't remember when it was set up last year) - it was a great way to follow the thoughts and many of people I shared the whole Northern Voice Experience with!

 

I've decided to start the new year by combining two things I am very interested in: Photography and Crows. The idea is take a picture of a crow (or crows) every day for 366 (it is a leap year after all) days.

Of course it's easy with the first day and I'm sure my aim will be under threat before too late. I decided on the crows as I'm fairly certain nobody would want to look at 366 pictures of me.

D'Arcy Norman had a far more sensible approach, one photo every day without specifying a subject. I don't intend to blog every crow photo I take so I encourage you to head over to my flickr stream and follow them there.

Technorati Tags: crows, D'Arcy Norman, photography, crow 366

I've decided to start the new year by combining two things I am very interested in: Photography and Crows. The idea is take a picture of a crow (or crows) every day for 366 (it is a leap year after all) days.

Of course it's easy with the first day and I'm sure my aim will be under threat before too late. I decided on the crows as I'm fairly certain nobody would want to look at 366 pictures of me.

D'Arcy Norman had a far more sensible approach, one photo every day without specifying a subject. I don't intend to blog every crow photo I take so I encourage you to head over to my flickr stream and follow them there.

Technorati Tags: BC, Canada, mooseings, Vancouver