Business

Bookends

Driving around town this afternoon, I was struck by how much potential Surrey’s City Center (aka Whalley) has. The City has been trying to redevelop this area since Skytrain was extended through to Fraser Highway, back in the early 1990’s. A lot of the old crack houses homes in the area have been demolished, and development signs are sprouting up on several empty properties in the area.

It’s coming along, but slowly. Right now we have bookends. That is, we have new, and nearly new developments at either end of  City Center.

The Central City Mall and new the SFU campus tower are at the south end (no, it’s not tilted, I was ;-):

Central_city_tower

 The Infinity condo project is also underway across from Central City. It’s supposed to hold a couple of thousand people when it’s done, and the first phase sold out in a day:

Infinity_project_in_whalley_060802

 And we have Scotia Tower and Gateway settlement at the north end:

Gateway_towers_in_whalley

There are residential complexes close to Gateway as well. But if you look closely at part of the middle of the area near Central City (as seen via the City’s Cosmos utility), you’ll notice a lot of parking open space.

City_center_via_cosmos

 Actually, the middle of City Center is much like an open canvas right now, and we can make it into whatever we want to. That’s kind of exciting actually, and hopefully the City will take advantage of that potential to attract some community minded business folks. With about 70,000 people in the area now, and several thousand more moving into new condos over the next couple of years, there’s got to be a customer base for enterprising folks.

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Warm fuzzy feelings for Canon Canada today

Kudos to Canon Canada. They’ve exceeded this customer expectations by fixing a camera that was well out of warranty – for free. Turns out it was a manufacturers defect, and they’ve been resolutely dealing with it for quite some time.

And kudos for JS Electronics of Surrey for being part of that ( sorry, they don’t have a website that I can find. Try 202-12899 76th Ave). Sure, they were probably as skeptical about it as I was, so they charged me an ‘inspection fee’ before taking a look. But, in the end, the camera is fixed, the charges were reversed, and I’m happy.

Here’s the story.

Back in November 2003 I purchased a Canon ZR70MC video cam. I managed to use it a couple of times before life just got in the way.  I had to put it aside, and it sat in the case in a cabinet until about December 2006, when I had more time to play.

When I pulled it out around Christmas to try again: dead. Well, not completely dead. Everything seemed to work except the view finder and  LCD screen. Fine, I could take my video (I think), but not know exactly what I was taking a video of.

I ended up putting it back in the cabinet until a week ago, when I pulled it out again, bent on seeing what I could do to get it working for the summer.

First step: google “canon  ZR70MC”, of course. At that point I ran across a few reviews mentioning a similar problem. It sounded like Canon was offering to fix that model, no matter what the warranty situation. Apparently it was a manufacturer’s defect in the CCD that came to light soon after the camera was released. However, there didn’t seem to be any dates on the reviews.

OK, off to Canon’s website, where I found a technical note. Sure enough, it was true. They were offering to fix the problem. But what about now; after 3 years, and no extended warranty?

I phoned the help line mentioned on the website. Yikes. I got someone on the line in a matter of seconds. After explaining what I was looking at (or rather, not looking at) the rep just said to take it into a repair center. They would repair it at no charge. He provided the local address for JS Electronics without a beat.

Off to JS Electronics, just a few minutes way. The fellow there that I talked to explained that yes, the repairs could be made for free, as long as the CCD was the root of the problem. Other things could also be at fault. It would cost me $50+tax for them to have a look and be sure. I’d know in a week.

I dutifully made a note to my skeptical self to give them a call a week later. Today, before I could call them, they called me. My camera was ready, there would be no charge, and they would be refunding the deposit I’d made.

All’s well. Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling. Today I’m a raving fan of Canon Cameras and JS Electronics in Surrey. So there.

Well done folks!

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Marketing 2.0

I picked up a post from Jim McGee at Corante tonight that talks about how marketing is changing. It’s a good summary of some of the effects of ubiquitous computing and web 2.

    

“The Elements of the New Marketing ReMix

   

The remix is from Place to Presence; from Promotion to Persuasion; from Positioning to Preference; from Price (static) to Price (dynamic); and from Product to Personalization.  These are the key elements of the new marketing remix.”

[update: I should have said that the clip above was from Sviokla’s Content.]

What really hit home for me was the discussion of promotion. It use to be in the marketer’s hands, but now, word of mouth marketing and the availabilty of online information is taking that power away.

I read somewhere once that doctors were having a time of it because patients come into the office only after researching their symptoms; and car dealers often knew less about the cars they sell than buyers coming onto the lot ( sorry, no links).

We live in interesting times.

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To most people they’re just bugs

Thanks to Science Blog today for the summary of an article in BioScience – as usual, seems you have to be a ‘member’ to read the BioScience article.

The paper provides some thoughts on the contributions insects make to society. It seems, in the US alone, the contribution of insects is at least $57 Billion, despite the losses from pests. Science Blog’s post is short, but it’s well worth the time for a read.

This must be national insect day or something, because just this morning I came across a link to Igor Siwanowicz and his collection of insect photos . Wow. Who says insects can’t be cute 😉

Of course, I spent quite a bit of my career studying insects, and I might be a tad biased.

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Limelight for bloggers

Steve Rubel writes about a new service  offered by some daily papers in the US.

“In what could be a landmark moment for citizen journalism, four newspapers plan to syndicate bloggers’ content on their own sites through a new program called Blogburst.”

Very interesting.

From the website at Blogburst, we get the following advantages:

“What do you get out of this?

Visibility and exposure on major news and portal sites

    • Traffic through attribution and links back to your blog

    • Authority and credibility within your topic area

    • New readers who wouldn’t normally find out about your blog

    • The opportunity to take your blog to the next level”

What you don’t get is to add advertising in your feed (yet). That’s kinda one-sided, but I guess if a blogger wants the exposure it’s a good thing. You can always advertise on the blog itself, and given that it’s an opt-in arrangement, you could always opt-out if you felt it wasn’t paying in other ways.

I guess the question remains about who should get paid for content. Too bad they don’t offer some sort of payback through a click through setup from their online editions.

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Communal wireless internet access?

Via SmallBizBlog we get the news from ITbusiness about a move to provide wireless access in Canadian cities. Bell Canada and Rogers Communication are working on such a deal right now.
 
That’s somewhat good news, I think. But the deal should be bigger and include other service providers too. Shaw and Telus come to mind in BC, for example.
 
What if all the access providers contributed a portion of our monthly fees to pay for sharing and maintaining the ‘pipes’, so to speak. We could choose a provider for service, price, logistics, or convenience at our main base, and from then on, have access to the internet. Period. The providers would have a chance then to win our hearts and business (hah).
 
I think the cell companies call it ‘roaming’. Overly expensive the way it works now, but it does work in a pinch. Certainly better than having a separate account for each and every location you might want to call from.
 
It’s fine for these large companies to set up additional proprietary networks, but if we want to really exploit the internet for all it’s worth, we can’t all be cloistered around our individual service providers for access. People move around to do business these days, and business and the internet are inextricably linked for most of us.
 
The ITbusiness article also notes a push for cities to provide free wireless access as a public utility. There’s been lots of arguing about this in the US as well. Free internet services may or may not be good idea, but somewhere, someone has to make enough money to keep the ‘pipes’ working. I’m not sure another tax (+GST) is the answer.
 
 
 
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Sharing in business

Via the TP Wire Serivce, here’s a clip from an article at Wharton School of Knowledge

“what gives firms competitive advantage isn’t just their repository of sheer knowledge, but their use and encouragement of so-called “performative ties” — those impromptu communications made by colleagues who are strangers in which critical knowledge is transferred with no expectation of a quid pro quo.”

Sharing. Isn’t that what blogs are about. Isn’t that’s what networking is all about. Building relationships in a way that everyone wins.

The authors talk mostly about interactions within a firm, but I’ve seen it happen frequently between specialists or firms as well.

Of course there are boundaries to the kind of information or the amount of time offered freely, but often, if you call an expert, they’ll be more than happy to talk about their field of expertise for a while. Enough to get you started towards an answer, or at least enough to let you know that you need some expert help.

Cool stuff, if you think about it. Similar to the old maxim “All of us is more than one of us”. And it might turn out that you do business together.

 
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Law of accumulation

I’m taking a workshop these days, based on Brian Tracy’s ideas. I probably wouldn’t have searched it out on my own, but a few friends are sold on the concept, and they’ve asked me to sit in on their intital efforts in presenting the material. So far, so good.
 
According to Tracy, there is a “Law of Accumulation”. It says that accomplishments are the result of hundreds, if not thousands of efforts – all unnoticed. Everything counts. Nothing is neutral in the process – each effort either helps or hinders.
 
In other words, when we see an accomplished person, we seldom think about all the previous work that went into getting there. Successful people have all had ups and downs in their careers, but they’ve managed through the process and come out on top. They’ve learned.
 
That’s hearty food for thought, especially for someone starting a solo business. There’s only so much time to do all the things that need to be done, and a lot of it seems like it’s getting you nowhere. Mistakes get made. Small victories happen. Running solo may take some time, but all the effort counts.
 
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