“Let’s go to the bakery….” you could hear us already from far away.  Rolling through Fort Langley with the Bakery Van, two still very young Gingerbread Men, a Toast Boy and two Adult cookies. And we were armed! Armed with 1000 cookies! That is how many the Fort Langley Bakery baked, wrapped and gave away at this Year’s May Day Parade. But guess what? The cookies didn’t last very long. To many people wanted more.
Young and old loved the sweet treats and were craving for more….no wonder the bakery was packed after the parade.  Well now we have to consider baking even more for next year…let’s see. www.fortlangley-bakery.com

Hello, Readers -- If you are a Vancouver resident who chafes at the lack of affordable housing, you can imagine the hopelessness of my dtes neighbours as nearly half of the barely-affordable housing for low-income people has been wiped out in the past short while, in favour of development.

Now I'm not against development in my neighbourhood. But I want it to be thoughtful, visionary and inclusive. I want it to be a mixed income area where we continue to come up with empowered, creative ways of helping each other out.

Instead, I am personally witnessing a reckless, market-only-driven displacement of members of my community. It's happened so fast and furiously there hasn't been much chance to react.

Hi there -- my bank (Citizens Bank of Canada, VanCity's answer to the, errrr, orange bank) is soft-launching a community site about hockey (players upload stats etc).  They're starting out with a fun contest:



Here's the contest: submit your favourite photo or video connected to hockey and you could win:

Grand Prize: $1000 gift card Second/Third Prize: XBOX 360

My dream of having a brick-walled office in Gastown with big huge windows, high ceilings and art on the walls has finally come true. Best of all, now I can work without the urge to sweep the floor first (the floor here is really clean!)

What I am working on:
I'm a part of a start-up called Qrimp, one of increasing numbers of start-ups creating products that will probably come to be known as "browser-based application development platforms".  These tools replace traditional methods of creating software applications by putting the framework in a web browser and eliminating the need to write code.

(+ day job - office admin)

I look forward to spending many an evening and weekend here and meeting my fellow workspacers.

Biz Pod Video Podcasts are used in many different ways to reach many different audiences on either a private or public network. Examples include; internal messages to staff, reports to investors, updates to business partners and new information for clients and customers. You can also use Biz Pod for training videos or for promotional purposes. We put together a 3 Minute Video to explain how Biz Pod Video Messages can improve Business Communications.

Since it’s Earth Week, it really got me thinking about this topic. I am happy to be able to offer an alternative to traditional communication tools such as printed newsletters, memos, brochures, etc. Of course you can recycle most of those papers, but unfortunately, not everyone does or has a system in their workplace set up to handle this.
A typical business office generates about 1.5 pounds of waste paper per employee per day. And Americans just throw away 4 million tons of that office paper every year -enough to build a 12-foot high wall of paper from New York to California! (American Forest & Paper Association, 2004)
If you want to make a difference in our environment it doesn’t take much. For example, if offices throughout the US increased the rate of two-sided photocopying by 40% they could save the equivalent of about 15 million trees (Choose to Reuse by Nikki & David Goldbeck 2004).

Corporate Online Video Messages are more personal than traditional communication such as emails, newsletters, memos, etc. In our first video of our Showcase we featured Terry as our fictional CEO of Biz Pod Interactive Inc. To keep his staff informed he addresses his employees via Video Message. In this Video Messages Terry speaks about the future of work that will be the main topic at the annual executive conference. To convey an additional level of information a scroll text was used in the lower part of this Video Message.

For the full Showcase click here

Ever since I bought the Sunday New York Times this week I've been told by them and various other media outlets that today is Earth Day. 

At WorkSpace we make a daily effort to be green by purchasing our office supplies from FrogFile.  FrogFile provides the best alternatives to conventional office supplies, they even have 100% post-consumer Post-It Notes!

So Happy Earth Day and check out 50 ways to help the planet via SwissMiss.

I've been out last week to  Fort Langley again to pass a visit at the bakery. This time I had a chance to talk to Inge a super nice lady who works at the bakery.

She told me that on numerous occasions, she has seen a well-known musician come in to the bakery. It seems he can’t get enough (and he’s not the only one  ) of the Chocolate Chip Macaroon cookies.

He probably comes in when Inge is there because he thinks he won’t be recognized, but Inge is pretty up to date on her pop culture. As she says, “that Chad Kroeger fellow was in again the other day for his cookies…”

Starting off with the idea of enhancing internal communications of company's by adding simple short online video messages with a key speaker to their communications mix  got me interested in the industry of Business Video Podcasting. 

Inspired by the fabulous screen resolution of so many new portable players and smart phones I started looking into producing Short Online Video Messages for Businesses to give Corporate Communications more of a personal approach and ensuring a continuous flow of information since these Video Podcast are periodically produced and distributed. Once viewers have subscribed to the Company's Video Podcast they would get the latest message synchronized onto their devices and stay up to date with the latest news. Eventually Business Video Podcast could replace impersonal memos and newsletters and even reduce travel time of Business people that now could address their audience through online video.