The men line up for the start of the BC Cup Pro Race
Each summer, organisng the Yaletown Grand Prix is a major project which takes up a huge amount of my time and energy. Like most major events, there are always moments in the process which make me wonder what I am doing it for and why I come back every year for the long hours and stress.
Then comes race day and the 15,000 spectators, over 200 athletes and nearly 100 volunteers who make the day one the best in downtown Vancouver, and all those doubts fly away.
This year, was a challenging sponsorship environment but with support from our new title sponsor ZegnaSport along with the continued support from key sponsors like Deans Knight Capital Management, Mini, Avison Young and others, we made it happen when other events couldn’t.
The addition of a running race brought a whole new element to the race day and we were fortunate to have our fourth straight year of perfect weather (I just touched wood for luck). Normally, I finish the event and am so exhausted I can’t even contemplate being the Event Director for another year . . . but this year I am charged up to get at it for 2010.
Sorry for the delay there. Life’s been busy what with all my clients hopping along, a couple of new projects in the offing and putting in miles on my road bike, the time and mental space to blog has been shrinking.
The best news is that training for the TransRockies is well underway. I’ve put over 600km in on the road bike since April 1 and am geared up for a big push now that the weather forecast calls for unbroken sunshine for a while. The bike really needs an overhaul and I have most of the pieces ready to do it. I am going to be unusully patient and wait for the final pieces (a new wheelset) before I tear it down and build it up again.
For now, here’s a quick idyllic picture of the patio where I try to hold all my business meetings. Life could be much much worse.
What with the Junos, the Playhouse International Wine Festival and Vancouver Fashion Week all going on simultaneously this week in Vancouver, there are a record number of parties, galas and receptions going on all over town. Even for the jaded, it’s an exciting week in the town.
Just today, the marketing meeting I was in all headed nextdoor to Gotham Steakhouse for an informal wine tasting session with the reps and owner of Catalano Estate Wines, a winery with vineyards througout Lago di Garda and Tuscany. While I am no vinophile, the Sangiovese wines were great and the Firmamento Cab-Merlot is something I’ll look for the next time I am shopping.
The next days are getting hectic with full days of epicmedia PR work followed by planned events every night througn Sunday. I’ll blog when I can but for now, it’s rest and relax time.
One quick work note–the guys from Two Chefs and a Table are hard at preparing for the Junos and the Vancouver Sun gave them a great plug in their On the Burnercolumn. 2400 meals in two days . . .
My guys at Two Chefs and a Table were approached to make a proposal for catering the 2009 Juno Awards. That in itself is a compliment as the Junos will be the biggest thing happening in Vancouver this year . . . unless the Canucks win the Stanley Cup. And since they’re not (sorry fans), it’s safe to say that the Junos are a big deal.
Well the compliment grew exponentially as Two Chefs and a Table have been named the offical catered for all back-of-house areas during the Awards and the pre-event rehearsals. Needless to say, everyone is exited (and maybe a little bit nervous) about the gig. With the cream of the Canadian music business and entertainment media onhand, there’ll be some famous folks enjoying the Two Chefs and a Table catered creations.The designated food areas they’ll be working include backstage, the ETALK Media Lounge and Red Carpet Zones along with the craft/trades service area.
While we’re not sure what the deciding factors were for the Juno organisers but the great food made from locally-sourced ingredients and a history of success in large catering jobs can’t have hurt. The Two Chefs bistro in Railtown is already hopping every day of the week for lunch, dinner and weekend brunch and now the whole team is going to be mocing a little faster for a couple of weeks.
Once the Junos are over it’s back into preparations for the April special dinner events which will be announced soon. Stay tuned!
One post that recently got a lot of comment on Twitter was a survey from emarketer which shows that social media use has surpassed email use on the internet. There’s a lot of normal early-adopter eagerness to trumpet the ascent of the new and descent of the old but the survey itself is so broad that it is like a rorschach test of attitudes toward social media. If you’re a social media evangelist, then it’s easy to interpret it to mean that “email is dying”.
One of the real weakenesses of this survey overview is the broadness of the categories and hence, the lack of data analysis within each category. I’d like to know how much email is personal and how much is business and how those numbers have changed, I’d also like to know how much social media time is spent messaging–specifically sending messages which would have previously been emailed?
Since we don’t have that analysis, let me give you mine as an email machine and active social media user.
One of the great attractions and advantages of social media is that they have simplified social e-communications: FaceBook and Twitter all remove the need for an address book. Your contacts are embedded in your profile and however you connect to your profile–PC, mobile device, public computer–you’re able to access your entire contact list. An added benefit is that they are opaque to bosses and avoid the danger of using work email for social messages—a case which leaves all your communication potentially open to intrusion or loss if you move jobs. The advantage of this benefit is amplified by the fact that all internet use is heavily skewed towards weekdays, read “work”.
In their current incarnations, social media are not powerful enough tools for business and more formal communications. They are not capable of carrying large amounts of data or including the kind of formatting or meta-data like appointment setting which are essential to professional transactions. That type of private person-to-person communications also runs contrary to the “social” aspect of the media.
It’s safe to say that a lot of chatter and personal messages have moved to social media–the ease, brevity and casual nature of the communications actually encourages their use so a couple of emails are now replaced with 5 Facebook messages, 20 Tweets and so on. These patterns would certainly skew the social media usage stats upward if we could get a deeper look at the emarketer data.
Does this mean the “death of email” as many Twitter enthusiasts claimed? Not a chance.
It’s normal that effective new communications methods find their own application and niche and in doing so eat up some of the time and space previously occupied by existing media. Just as the phone replaced and augmented much written mail and telegraph, email has quickly come to replace and augment much phone and conventional mail communications.
Social media is replacing a lot of personal and social email with short message bursts, however email will continue to fulfill the huge and continuing need for private long-form communications until something as powerful comes along. Social media aren’t that.
I won’t be uninstalling my Outlook anytime soon. Now I have to go solve a puzzle that my mom just emailed me.
Every year Vancouver Magazine’s Restaurant Awards are a crucial event on the Vancouver food scene. They accompany the presentations with video of the award winners during the big gala presentation.
Two Chefs and a Table
The guys at Two Chefs and a Table were surprised when a video team from Vancouver Magazine stopped by their bistro to film the space and them at work. While they were a bit cagey about their reason for being there, it came out that the video was for the 2009 Restaurant Awards. So there’s nothing definite so far, but we’re definitely excited for the official announcement to come.
Superbowl Sunday is always one of the best days of the year, and this year I watched the game at District 319 where Karl Gregg from Two Chefs and a Table, was catering a party. It wasn’t hard to sell me on the party a 37′ hi-def screen with surround sound and comfy leather armchairs to watch it in. Sold.
The room itself was gorgeous. Formerly the Golden Harvest Theatre which had been in business showing Chinese movies in the 70s and 80s, it had been completely renovated and turned into a very stylish and unique venue for film, music and corporate functions. The project had been the brainchild of William Vince a Vancouver film producer who sadly died of cancer last year muh too young.
Well, now I am doing their PR and media! It’s really exciting to be involved with such a specialvenue and the news and storytelling is going to start very soon. The first big event on the calendar is the first annual William Vince Foundation Gala evening so look for news of that great night soon.
I signed up for the TR3 today. Here’s a screenshot of my
Paul's registration confirmation
registration confirmation.
Changing my mind at this point is going to be an admission of defeat . . . and I hate to do that. Now all I need is some decent weather so that I can get out of the gym and onto the bike. Oh and maybe I should start shopping for a new bike. I am thinking of a Rocky Mountain Bicycles Altitude or Slayer XC.
It’s been something like five years since I turned the pedals in anger at a bike race . . . and my fitness certainly
shows it! This year might be different as my longtime client the TransRockies has introduced a new event called the TR3, a solo event which will run alongside the full one-week, two–person team event this August. The TR3 might be just what I need to motivate me to train again and get back in shape for the over 15okm of rugged mountain biking with probably around 6000 metres of climbing which will be a part of the inaugural TR3.
As I will also be co-0rdinating communications and daily media for the TransRockies, there’s no way that I could ride the full seven days and still look after my duties. Training for seven days is also not realistic with the busy year I have ahead of me . . . but three days sounds like the trick. I still refuse to ride and train in bad weather–now that I have retired from serious competition, I reserve my right to be a fair weather cyclist, but I have been pretty diligent about maintaining a decent cross-training schedule this winter and am planning to ramp up the miles as the weather improves.
So here’s my bulletin board announcement–I am riding TR3 this summer.
Olympic Gold Medalist Ben Rutledge and St. Regis GM Jeremy Roncoroni. (Photo courtesy Morgan Sommerville)
The St. Regis Hotel reopened on December 1st after an extensive 18-month renovation process which added a elegant modern face to this 96 year old Vancouver heritage building.With the Christmas and New Year season over, it was time so throw open the doors to all our friend in the Vancouver media to show them the new look St. Regis.
With that in mind, we set a date of February 10th and organised a media reception and gave it the theme of Resolution Keeping and included a group of event partners who provided information to help spur our attendees to stay on track with their goals for the new year.
Over 60 members of the media attended and, to a person, they raved about the renovations and the new look of the hotel. The design work from Elaine Thorsell has given the St. Regis Hotel a modern lustre and sophisticated new look that places it at the top of the pile in boutique Vancouver accommodations.
Thanks to the staff of the St. Regis Bar & Grille for their hard work on the day, to our event partners: Sleeman Brewing, the Steve Nash Sports Club, Prairie Organic Vodka, Right to Play, Cyclebetes, Sugoi Performance Apparel, Public Myth Yoga Wear, Painted Turtle Wines and Sequel Naturals. And most of all to Carissa for all her hard work.
My guys at Two Chefs and a Table were approached to make a proposal for catering the 2009 Juno Awards. That in itself is a compliment as the Junos will be the biggest thing happening in Vancouver this year . . . unless the Canucks win the Stanley Cup. And since they’re not (sorry fans), it’s safe to say that the Junos are a big deal.
