On this mostly sunny Monday morning, I find myself quite energized for the week that lies ahead. I slept a little better this past weekend, something that has been a challenge of late; and also enjoyed a good workout as well as a nice long run Saturday night. To cap it all off, I had a wonderful time with my children and also cleared up several nagging tasks that had been hanging over my head.
All of which leaves me feeling productive and re-energized for this week. It’s a good feeling for any morning, but especially a Monday.
As a 43-year old father of two, the news of the sudden death of two 50-year old men these past few days has hit rather close to home. If you have access to ANY media whatsoever, you’re more than familiar with all of the news surrounding the sudden and shocking passing of Michael Jackson. But yesterday word was also released that infomercial pitchman Billy Mays died suddenly. Both were 50.
It’s time to get back to work. But also soon time to get back to having more fun also. Life is short. The point is to experience joy every day.
“There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who can do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can ... give all our attention to the opportunity before us.” -Mark Van Doren
Monday, June 29, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Employment Gains and Losses Displayed Graphically
It’s been another busy and productive week as the local MITACS business development manager. I met with many faculty and companies interested in the MITACS ACCELERATE Program.
I have decided to add more links to the right side of this blog, links related to MITACS and the ACCELERATE Program.
This is my first weekend in a long time with no ball hockey coaching duties. I must admit that I’ll miss the team and the excitement. The entire experience was both very taxing and very rewarding. Two of the players thanked me for being "the best coach ever!" That was nice to hear! My son is already asking if I’ll be coaching next year. I want to say yes, but realize a lot of water will travel beneath the proverbial bridge between now and next March/April.
I wanted to share this graphic display of employment gains and losses. Unfortunately it only covers the U.S.A. But, at the same time, it’s so visual, so telling, and such a solid history lesson. Be sure to watch in particular for Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 impact in Louisiana and the comings and goings of employment in Detroit (the auto sector). You can find this display here.
I also wanted to share this interesting National Post article from early May. This was only recently brought to my attention, noting the top 25 most influential figures in Canadian golf! You can find the article here.
For now back at it. I’m wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
I have decided to add more links to the right side of this blog, links related to MITACS and the ACCELERATE Program.
This is my first weekend in a long time with no ball hockey coaching duties. I must admit that I’ll miss the team and the excitement. The entire experience was both very taxing and very rewarding. Two of the players thanked me for being "the best coach ever!" That was nice to hear! My son is already asking if I’ll be coaching next year. I want to say yes, but realize a lot of water will travel beneath the proverbial bridge between now and next March/April.
I wanted to share this graphic display of employment gains and losses. Unfortunately it only covers the U.S.A. But, at the same time, it’s so visual, so telling, and such a solid history lesson. Be sure to watch in particular for Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 impact in Louisiana and the comings and goings of employment in Detroit (the auto sector). You can find this display here.
I also wanted to share this interesting National Post article from early May. This was only recently brought to my attention, noting the top 25 most influential figures in Canadian golf! You can find the article here.
For now back at it. I’m wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Busy Week
It was a busy and informative day at the McMaster Innovation Showcase today. Hopefully tomorrow will be equally productive.
The Showcase includes a poster session, with some 40 or so research interests explained in great detail. Participants are voting with “McMaster money” – pretend investment funds. I’m sure many participants are “investing” based on quite varied criteria.
I approached it as an investor and decided upon a short list of five or six posters/companies/teams/concepts with whom I’d be interested in meeting. I look forward to the outcome sometime Friday afternoon.
I also managed to stay on top of most email and voice mail today, and proactively follow up with several contacts. Of course, I remain buried under a mountain of backlogged email and follows, but progress was made today.
This evening I met with our bookkeeper – for Parmasters and other business interests. We’ve been a little disconnected lately, so it was good to reaffirm the processes and systems we use to keep the books all in top shape.
In addition to the Showcase tomorrow, I have several meetings in the Hamilton area. Fortunately most are on-site at the Showcase. But not all.
And Friday evening I’ll continue to prepare for our ball hockey team’s final playoff push. We play on Saturday, against a tough team. After that, it all depends on the standings. The team has come so far, so quickly. I’m very proud of them and confident they’ll succeed at anything they collectively put their minds towards.
The Showcase includes a poster session, with some 40 or so research interests explained in great detail. Participants are voting with “McMaster money” – pretend investment funds. I’m sure many participants are “investing” based on quite varied criteria.
I approached it as an investor and decided upon a short list of five or six posters/companies/teams/concepts with whom I’d be interested in meeting. I look forward to the outcome sometime Friday afternoon.
I also managed to stay on top of most email and voice mail today, and proactively follow up with several contacts. Of course, I remain buried under a mountain of backlogged email and follows, but progress was made today.
This evening I met with our bookkeeper – for Parmasters and other business interests. We’ve been a little disconnected lately, so it was good to reaffirm the processes and systems we use to keep the books all in top shape.
In addition to the Showcase tomorrow, I have several meetings in the Hamilton area. Fortunately most are on-site at the Showcase. But not all.
And Friday evening I’ll continue to prepare for our ball hockey team’s final playoff push. We play on Saturday, against a tough team. After that, it all depends on the standings. The team has come so far, so quickly. I’m very proud of them and confident they’ll succeed at anything they collectively put their minds towards.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
MITACS Introduction
We'll soon be wrapping up the national MITACS business developer meetings, and I'll be heading to Hamilton for the McMaster Innovation Showcase (Thurs and Fri). I'm looking forward to immersing in some varied cutting-edge research.
I also recently met the operations manager at Mike Weir Wine. This is a great new connection for both MITACS and Parmasters. She, along with the president of the winery, are both quite interested in pursuing discussions with both firms. Great news!
Below is the brief introduction I often use in first emails to new contacts. It provides a quick overview of the area within MITACS where I focus. We're a large organization providing a diverse range of services and funding programs.
The MITACS ACCELERATE (Graduate Research Internship) Program brings together academia, industry and the public sector to develop cutting edge research-based tools vital to our knowledge based economy. This Internship Program is an effective way for industry, not-for-profit organisations, or government labs and agencies, to gain access to, and benefit from, the vast research expertise within our universities.
Our program sees graduate students or Post-Doctoral Fellows undertaking research on-site with companies to develop new tools and techniques to address high-level industry issues. The intern gains valuable industrial experience and an opportunity to apply their research to address novel issues, whilst the partner gains access to highly trained individuals (the intern and their supervising professor for a fraction of the normal cost associated with such world-class expertise).
Existing industry-academic collaborations may be eligible to participate. The cost to partners is $7,500 for the four-month period which is matched by the MITACS ACCELERATE Graduate Research Internship Program providing an additional $7,500.
Approximately 50% of the intern's time over the 4 months would be spent on site with the partner. The balance of the intern's time is spent back at their home university, further advancing the research under the guidance of their supervising professor.
Longer internships can be supported. MITACS ACCELERATE can also fund much larger projects, involving multiple interns. In recognition of the growing demand from professors to support multiple graduate students and/or post-doctoral fellows through a larger research project in collaboration with one or more industry partners, MITACS ACCELERATE has introduced Internship Clusters.
Internship clusters require a minimum of $30,000 from a partner and provide enhanced funding leverage (i.e. MITACS ACCELERATE contributes a greater percentage of the overall project costs) combined with the ACCELERATE Program's flexibility.
This program has been available in the mathematical sciences across Canada since 2003 (as The MITACS Internship Program). Recently, the program expanded in Ontario to all academic disciplines.
Applications for funding are reviewed and generally approved within about six to eight weeks. It's a very quick process.
For further information please visit www.mitacsaccelerate.ca. Past projects can be viewed at this site.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
MITACS Business Development Meetings
As may be ascertained from the title above, I'm attending the MITACS national business development manager team meetings this week. There are some 20 of us across the country.
As I type this I realize I have yet to provide much detail on MITACS and my role with the firm. This topic will have to wait for another day.
Suffice it to say that we fund research collaborations involving industry and academic researchers. We're a not-for-profit with our input funding coming from federal and provincial government sources.
In my role I work to find collaboration opportunities, that is companies and researchers that may want to work together.
These meetings end Wednesday.
Thursday and Friday I'll be attending the McMaster Innovation Showcase (conference) at McMaster University.
I'm also spending the week preparing our ball hockey team (I coach a group of 15-year old young men) for a big playoff game on Saturday.
Back to the MITACS meetings in a moment. We're on break.
I'm quite amazed at the expertise and varied interests we have in our group. There are lots of PhDs and former researchers. But also many business people and other backgrounds.
Our hobbies and interests include horseback riding, fishing, Lego, reading, writing, gardening, farming, castle building (literally), aquarium ecosystems, and the list goes on and on. I feel quite boring and mundane in many ways, as well as humbled.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Change the Way You Look at Things
It’s been another long and crazy week, ending with a short and crazy weekend. I attended quite a few meetings this past week, although most were scheduled calls or conference calls, which was nice.
This weekend is booked pretty solid from start to finish. I coached our ball hockey team last night, and the boys played a solid game, leading to a fantastic 2-1 victory. We took team photos before the game and were thus rushed to get out on the floor and get going. This left little time to get the team organized, put strategy in place, etc. I used a few time-outs to keep us on track.
I’m really enjoying my business development role with MITACS. I’ve been in many different sales/business development roles for many years. But this is the first where the product we sell is, essentially, money. I will have to type much more about exactly what MITACS does, and what I do to help facilitate the bigger picture.
You can learn more at www.mitacs.ca.
For now I best get back to that fully booked weekend. We have another ball hockey game this afternoon. My eldest son is also trying out for the Ontario rugby team. Very cool!
I’ll be hanging out with both of my boys on Sunday, in all likelihood.
Sunday evening I head to Toronto for three days of meetings and training with my fellow MITACS business development managers from across Canada. I’m looking forward to learning far more than I currently know about MITACS and the great work we do. That will be followed by two days at a conference in Hamilton, Thursday and Friday.
I’ll sign off with one of my favourite quotes:
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” -Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
This weekend is booked pretty solid from start to finish. I coached our ball hockey team last night, and the boys played a solid game, leading to a fantastic 2-1 victory. We took team photos before the game and were thus rushed to get out on the floor and get going. This left little time to get the team organized, put strategy in place, etc. I used a few time-outs to keep us on track.
I’m really enjoying my business development role with MITACS. I’ve been in many different sales/business development roles for many years. But this is the first where the product we sell is, essentially, money. I will have to type much more about exactly what MITACS does, and what I do to help facilitate the bigger picture.
You can learn more at www.mitacs.ca.
For now I best get back to that fully booked weekend. We have another ball hockey game this afternoon. My eldest son is also trying out for the Ontario rugby team. Very cool!
I’ll be hanging out with both of my boys on Sunday, in all likelihood.
Sunday evening I head to Toronto for three days of meetings and training with my fellow MITACS business development managers from across Canada. I’m looking forward to learning far more than I currently know about MITACS and the great work we do. That will be followed by two days at a conference in Hamilton, Thursday and Friday.
I’ll sign off with one of my favourite quotes:
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” -Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Monday, June 08, 2009
You Must Believe to Achieve
I’ve lost my voice. It’s was a busy weekend of working in the mornings and some evenings, and coaching our ball hockey team during the day.
My voice is coming back a little as the day wears on. I’ve been told I’m perhaps a little too “into the games”, a little too “animated”, that maybe I offer up too much encouragement to the players as the game progresses (i.e. that I yell too much). Perhaps they’re right!
We used a few key quotes this past weekend, in the dressing room, and on our team blog, to ensure the team focused on success.
We spoke of Henry Ford’s famous quote on belief, “Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you are right.”
We spoke about the famous quote on commitment from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one's favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
The boys began to understand – at the ages of 14 and 15 – that “one must believe to achieve.” –Stephen Southern, 2009.
In the end we made it all the way to the semi-finals, and came up one goal short. It was an absolute honour to go into battle with that group of young men, and I can’t wait to do so again this coming weekend.
For now, back to making research count, bringing MITACS research funding to Waterloo Region, Hamilton, Guelph and Niagara!
My voice is coming back a little as the day wears on. I’ve been told I’m perhaps a little too “into the games”, a little too “animated”, that maybe I offer up too much encouragement to the players as the game progresses (i.e. that I yell too much). Perhaps they’re right!
We used a few key quotes this past weekend, in the dressing room, and on our team blog, to ensure the team focused on success.
We spoke of Henry Ford’s famous quote on belief, “Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you are right.”
We spoke about the famous quote on commitment from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one's favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
The boys began to understand – at the ages of 14 and 15 – that “one must believe to achieve.” –Stephen Southern, 2009.
In the end we made it all the way to the semi-finals, and came up one goal short. It was an absolute honour to go into battle with that group of young men, and I can’t wait to do so again this coming weekend.
For now, back to making research count, bringing MITACS research funding to Waterloo Region, Hamilton, Guelph and Niagara!
Friday, June 05, 2009
Blog Changes Coming
When I initiated this blog I envisioned a life that would revolve almost entirely around golf and the golf business. Hence the design of the blog, the layout, the topics, etc.
Now it’s become clear that perhaps the topic area, and the theory on where my life may lead, were both too narrow.
I’m enjoying my new role with MITACS. I’m also enjoying the search for the next General Manager for Parmasters Kitchener-Waterloo.
I’m going to make some significant changes to this blog over the coming days and weeks. All aspects are up for grabs, including the layout, topics, bios, news feeds, links, etc.
For now, it’s time to head out of the office. I’m coaching my son’s ball hockey team, and we’re in a tournament all weekend, starting tonight. I can’t wait!
Now it’s become clear that perhaps the topic area, and the theory on where my life may lead, were both too narrow.
I’m enjoying my new role with MITACS. I’m also enjoying the search for the next General Manager for Parmasters Kitchener-Waterloo.
I’m going to make some significant changes to this blog over the coming days and weeks. All aspects are up for grabs, including the layout, topics, bios, news feeds, links, etc.
For now, it’s time to head out of the office. I’m coaching my son’s ball hockey team, and we’re in a tournament all weekend, starting tonight. I can’t wait!
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Replacing Myself
I’ve been a delinquent blogger yet again. It’s been a busy time with some transitions both personally and for Parmasters Kitchener-Waterloo.
I’m pleased to announce that I am in the process of replacing myself as General Manager of Parmasters KW. We are currently searching for an experienced and high-energy candidate to take the reins and lead the team that will build, open and operate Kitchener-Waterloo’s premiere indoor golf training center.
This transition has always been planned, and will facilitate the growth of Parmasters throughout southern Ontario. I will work closely with the new General Manager providing oversight and mentorship.
I’m also very pleased to announce that I have joined an organization called MITACS Inc. MITACS is a not-for-profit company that funds collaborative research projects involving industry and academia.
This additional role will allow me to be of great service to our local economy, bringing research and development funds into many local industry sectors, including information technology, tourism, transportation, aerospace, banking and finance, security and telecommunications.
Importantly, this new role affords me ample time to assist the new General Manager to ensure our Parmasters golf training center delivers incredible value!
As we search for the ideal General Manager candidate, the Temporary Event Center (TEC) at Market Square will be open on Saturday mornings only. Should you wish to contact us, please refer to the Parmasters KW website and feel free to send us an email or leave a voice message. We will return your correspondence as quickly as possible.
I will also be making a few changes to this blog as time proceeds. Our new Parmasters KW General Manager will blog regularly as part of his/her mandate. I’ll post more information and developments over the coming days and weeks.
I’m pleased to announce that I am in the process of replacing myself as General Manager of Parmasters KW. We are currently searching for an experienced and high-energy candidate to take the reins and lead the team that will build, open and operate Kitchener-Waterloo’s premiere indoor golf training center.
This transition has always been planned, and will facilitate the growth of Parmasters throughout southern Ontario. I will work closely with the new General Manager providing oversight and mentorship.
I’m also very pleased to announce that I have joined an organization called MITACS Inc. MITACS is a not-for-profit company that funds collaborative research projects involving industry and academia.
This additional role will allow me to be of great service to our local economy, bringing research and development funds into many local industry sectors, including information technology, tourism, transportation, aerospace, banking and finance, security and telecommunications.
Importantly, this new role affords me ample time to assist the new General Manager to ensure our Parmasters golf training center delivers incredible value!
As we search for the ideal General Manager candidate, the Temporary Event Center (TEC) at Market Square will be open on Saturday mornings only. Should you wish to contact us, please refer to the Parmasters KW website and feel free to send us an email or leave a voice message. We will return your correspondence as quickly as possible.
I will also be making a few changes to this blog as time proceeds. Our new Parmasters KW General Manager will blog regularly as part of his/her mandate. I’ll post more information and developments over the coming days and weeks.
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