Sometimes it’s just good to get out

Attended a Surrey Chamber of Commerce lunch yesterday at the Surrey Golf Club.  Anthony Martin, President and Chief Operating Officer of Great Canadian Casinos gave a talk about their recently aquired Fraser Downs site in Cloverdale. He’s a pretty good speaker and has a humorous story about how he came to work with the company – if you get a chance, ask him about it ( sorry, no link on that). Suffice it to say, it was one of those “out of the blue” episodes. And it gave a bit of a picture of him as a person – nice.
 
Seems the Company has grown from about 1800 employees in 2003, to 5100 in 2005, and attained a TSX return of 14,814% (yikes!). I don’t gamble, but I wish I had back in ’03. Local properties now include those in Richmond, Coquitlam, Vancouver, and Surrey. They’re still looking forward….so stay tuned.
 
Tidbit: Surrey Central is not the center of Surrey – Cloverdale is.
 
I enjoy Chamber lunches. In my past life, most of my business contacts were spread around the province. That was great and I really enjoyed it, but now I’m getting a chance to meet some local folks. Yesterday I lunched with people in banking, advertising, web-design, and car insurance loss prevention. I also talked with local politicians, a realestate person and a newspaper publisher. Cool. I like learning about what other people do.

Fun on the Coq

I found this sign on the connector section of the Coquihalla Hwy, between Merritt and Kelowna. I was on a business trip to Vernon back in May.  I’d seen the sign before, so I was on the lookout for it.

Moving_bc_forward_end

Not clear if it hails an end of BC moving forward, or the end of a particular project. I suspect the latter, but it made me think a minute.

Arbor Day at Green Timbers

I took a brief trip over to the arbor day event at Green Timbers Park today. There weren’t many people there, but those that attended seemed enthused. Lots of local environmental orgs with displays and, of course, the Lions with hotdogs by donation – Yes!

Arbor_day_at_green_timbers_2_may_2005I took a break to sit by the lake in the middle of the park. Lots of ducks, one goose and an eagle sitting in a tree. I watched the eagle for a while and it finally made it’s move – it swooped down on the surface of the lake a couple of times and scurried away with a fish.

It was interesting to listen to the people beside me: "Oh, look at that duck. It’s fishing".  Hmmm…. guess we’ve got some education that needs doing…Arbor_day_at_green_timbers_may_2005

Being Bold Blog: 90-day Planning

This looks like a good idea. How often do you do this? I use to, but haven’t for some time. I think I’d better start again.

Link (is dead): Being Bold Blog: 90-day Planning.

90-day Planning With the start of a new Quarter, I have reviewed my performance for the first quarter and have done planning for the next 90 days. I find that a really useful way of doing this kind of personal planning is to work backwards. Ask yourself this question: At the end of this next quarter, what must have happened personally and professionally for me to feel good about my progress and commitments? If you can identify those key things, then you shape them into SMART goals, and work backwards. Plan out what needs to happen in order to get you to that point. Over the 3 months, but in particular this month, and this week. Often, personal planning takes a back seat to the urgency of today, but I find that planning done well actually reduces the urgency and increases personal effectiveness dramatically.

Skype experiences?

So I have Skype…now what.  So far I’ve only been in contact with one other person.  Few people put their Skype number anywhere or broadcast that they use it at all.  I guess there is good reason for that: much like putting your phone number out there for everyone to call at all times.

I wonder how much use it will be in business, but I see where there is developing technology that lets you record your skype calls. Could be useful for interviews or conference calls.  Might save some of the transcription, especially if you could use the recording with voice recognition software…

HBS Working Knowledge: What Do YOU Think?: Where is Consumer Generated Marketing Taking Us?

Interesting post from Harvard.  I wonder.

Link (is dead): HBS Working Knowledge: What Do YOU Think?: Where is Consumer Generated Marketing Taking Us?.

There is a kind of “always on” communication system shaping up between the most outspoken and committed of the tech-minded users and those that supply them. We might term it “consumer generated marketing.” Is it time to ask ourselves whether these trends are always in our best interests as marketers and customers? Is it possible to be too well connected with one segment of customers? Is there a danger among marketers and more generally the media of paying too much attention to the Internet-savvy early adopters and activists and too little to other early adopters that tend to keep their behaviors and ideas to themselves? Might marketers be too sensitive to Internet prompts, responding too rapidly on the basis of noise as opposed to truly developing trends? What do you think?