Persistent Illumination

It's true, I'm now a proud part-owner of Tim Hortons. Let me know what changes you would like me to make in Timmy's from now on - I call the shots. ;)

Yes, I expect the share price to drop a bit in the first little while, but we'll see what happens in a year's time. It was interesting to hear how many individuals bought in when it came on the market, nearly a quarter of total sales by some estimates. As one journalist put it:

"The truth is as a shareholder I got in at $35.26 -... [but] TD Waterhouse was the big winner. My final bill after re-opening a trading account was $95.16, which included their commission and the applicable taxes."

Yowza. I used a self-directed (read: no-frills) brokerage through my bank (CIBC's "Investor's Edge") and paid less than half of what that journalist did in fees. And yes, I bought more than one share...

• Tim Hortons, Inc
• CIBC Investor's Edge
• THI.TO on Yahoo!Finance

I notice that StudentLifeCentre.com has opened its posting privileges to, well, just about anyone. I guess this makes it their "How not to die the death when your lead person graduates, which is what happened to uwstudent.org" solution.

So far it seems to be a good solution, but the new "writers" seem to be much more ... bitter? crabby? ... than the original author. And they certainly seem to be expressing their dislike of Imprint.

• Student Life Centre
• SLC.com: Use it or lose it?
• SLC.com: SLC blogging scorecard
• uwstudent.org

Many social outings of late, including "V for Vendetta" and the Vagina Monologues at the Bombshelter. I hear the latter raised more than $4,000 over three nights, with 90% of proceeds going to Mary's Place in Kitchener. The former, well, definitely not what I expected. Much more thought provoking, though.

Still, the real fun is going to come on Friday, when I head to Vancoooooooouver!

• Mary's Place

Just for fun today, I dropped by the Waterloo Regional FIRST Robotics competition. I've known about FIRST for quite awhile, but I've never seen it live in action. And you know what? Much more fun than I had pictured. It was a Junkyard-Wars-meets-American-Gladiators-meets-Shad-Valley sort of experience. Interesting to see the great crowds that came from as far away as Michigan for the event, as well as the plethora of sponsors.

• FIRST Robotics Waterloo Regional

A recent post seems to have incorrectly linked to the temp hosting of my newly designed EWB site. Try here instead.

Well, they are sending me to Vancouver for a week next week, and the weather network is calling for 10C and sunny. Definitely looking forward to it. The weekend is mine, and then the rest of the week is symposium, training and meetings.

Lots of other exciting things planned. Going to catch a play tomorrow with Amy, and the weekend after I get back from Vancouver she and I and the rest of my house are apparently headed to Niagara Falls for a weekend of wine tastings and fun. Seems to be a regular hangout for me these days!

I also got a piece in the Daily Bulletin earlier this week, talking about Amy's exchange trip. Ten days in Germany - I have to admit that I am a bit jealous!

Dropped by the Imprint tonight, it appears they've gotten permission to get a special reading course for the summer. Imprint could very well be the seeds of a journalism program at UW, but it would take years before that would become a reality. Also had a good talk with Sabrina Bowman tonight about student life and the future thereafter!

After an hour and a half "conversation" with someone in Africa this morning, much of the rest of my day went into the development of yet another website. It's still in development but my share of the work is pretty much done. Except, that is, for providing some sponsors on the sponsors page and some press releases on the media page. :)

In other good news, Amy's play has finished its run. Now it's off to Germany for them in April!

I spent the bulk of yesterday judging a business case study competition for the University of Waterloo DEX. (I also helped out when they hosted a provincial high school business conference earlier this summer.) A full day at UW, I was one of a dozen or so judges who oversaw presentations from somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 participants. The case studies covered many sectors - B2B, financial, retail, ethics - and I used my old restaurant experience to judge that particular sector.

A larger case study of the day was solving the problem of Fed Hall, currently losing plenty of money every year. Sad to say that one of the groups couldn't dredge up anything more than the same-old, same-old (ie, sure to be unsuccessful). Not very many great ideas hoping to turn the tide of some heavy financial losses --- and not having the numbers to back it up.

Another of the groups painted a more cohesive picture that sounded a bit more promising. Expanding the catering business, focus on venue rental (hello Google!), some improved branding, as well as expanding into some interesting theme nights. Interesting were my co-judges for that section: current Feds VPAF Carmen Lam (the exec currently overseeing Fed Hall) and accounting professor Bob Sproule, who was the Feds' General Manager for five years back in the 90's!

All in all, it was great to see the enthusiasm and expertise of some of UW's young business hopefuls. I'd love to judge some other, similar competitions.

About a week ago, I decided to officialy "come out of retirement" from my volunteering hiatus. (Which is incorrect, since I've been volunteering as a research assistant for organizational psychology at UW since January, but I digress.) I approached my friend Sarah Lewis to see if she has anything on her plate as the current president of the UW chapter of Engineers Without Borders, and she got back to me with a huge project that very day.

It appears that one of EWB's long-term (18 month) overseas volunteers will be ending his current internship with a bang. Tom Owen, who I apparently know from the 2003 EWB national conference, has been in Ghana for more than a year promoting human development. Once his formal internship is over, the new project will begin.

Using locally available materials and vehicles, he will travel nearly 2500km down the Niger River in west Africa. This will correspond with a public awareness campaign in Canada, where volunteers will get regular updates and stories about how life really is in Africa. (He'll have a satellite phone.)

So I get to coordinate a big chunk of the in-Canada stuff: sponsorship, media and communications. A big job, but a fun one. A bulk of work on my plate developing the materials, but the rest will be easy.

Oh, and for a special sneak preview of the new EWB site design, click here.

I've heard murmurs about the impending "death" of traditional media for quite some time now.

The theory's proponents say that new electronic communications - blogs and podcasts, for example - will soon take over the traditional reporting venues of newspapers, magazines and perhaps even radio. Why not? Everyone loves to blog - it makes each and every one of us our own brilliant writer, editor and publisher. Everyone loves their iPod (though I'm still not sure why). The internet is growing so rapidly, and there's so much money to be made. Traditional media, R.I.P.

Not so, thinks I.

To many, blogging is a fad. It catches on like wildfire for a brief period, and then it disappears into the night along with Christina Aguilera and destroyed jeans. This phenom is evidenced by many of my UW tech-savvy peers who used to blog like it made them cool, and now they barely find the time to post once a month.

Which leads us to point number two: nobody's listening. Well, not nobody - there are a good many sites out there which enjoy a cult following. Some even rise in status to become a sort of "news" source for a particular group, whether we're talking slashdot or studentlifecentre.com. Still, the more people who publish their inane life stories on the net (guilty as charged), the more diluted the news stream becomes, the harder it becomes to find anything worth reading. The less likely it becomes that I'll look to blogs for my news, rather than the Globe or the Star.

Third, we should note that traditional media outlets have not been caught unawares. They have adapted relatively quickly. I can get access to most of my favourite Globe and Mail articles online for free, and everyone from Maclean's to major political parties has employed bloggers, for those of us who want our commentary-of-the-moment-on-demand.

Fourth, and likely most importantly, is that internet media shares the same fate as many other industries. For every leader that rises up and dominates our attention, there are at least a dozen more that will die the death without ever being recognized. How many people will read this post, for example? A dozen, max? Not that it's not good (perish the thought!) but moreso it's that I don't take the time to foster a community, advertise, focus on cutting edge information and commentary, or otherwise stop blathering on about my fansastic girlfriend on this blog. Simply put, I may be a dedicated blogger, but I suck at making this a business. Which is good, because that was never my goal.

That having been said, the "I can have relatively few resources and become a publisher" surely has had some effect on the larger houses.

Perhaps someday I'll try to run a commercial site, just for interest's sake.

So I won the Oscar pool. Only by a point - 14/24 correct - but enought to just squeeze in over the drama students. I got most of the technical stuff right, that was my edge. Amy tied for second, with 13 points.

Then I went home and proceeded to let a flu bug develop in my tummy, keeping me up all night (I'll spare the unpleasant details) and rendering me useless for my first day of work at GEOWARE. I lasted about 1 1/2 hours, and then I went home to bed. Which, it now being past 8:00pm, is where I have been ever since. Thank you Amy for taking care of me, dropping off ginger ale, medecine and such.

Hey, if anyone wants to live in paradise this summer, it's for rent.

I've seen the place before, it's quite nice. Lakefront property, enclosed gazebo, great landlord. A few minutes' drive into town, though, and they only have dial-up. Otherwise, I'd suggest it!

It's only a matter of time until CSI picks up on this, I suppose.

I start a new job Monday, account management work for a company called Geoware. A small but well-established (22 years) software company in Waterloo, I'll be doing the "people" side of things. I stopped in yesterday to meet my new boss (who started Wednesday herself - they're on a bit of a hiring spree) and she seemed like lots of fun.

Oh, and did I mention they might fly us to Vancouver for a week in early April for a trade show? Yeah. :D