Archive for the ‘General Announcements’ Category

Last fall, after a late frost ruined all of the fruit on two apple trees in my back yard, I made the deci­sion to leave it all as fod­der for the birds this win­ter.   Much to my cha­grin, the squir­rels are the only crea­tures that have been mak­ing use of the offer­ing and mostly that’s been hap­pen­ing over the last month or so.  We haven’t had a par­tic­u­larly hard win­ter, but I sus­pect that the more palat­able win­ter food has been con­sumed and now these lit­tle ver­min are hav­ing to settle..

I’ll be clear that these lit­tle crea­tures are ver­min, and a nui­sance, they’ve chewed through more than one impor­tant bit of the house, and make a habit of skit­ter­ing along the stucco out­side my bed­room at ungodly hours of the morn­ing. I yell at them, shake my fists, and even pound on the walls  on occa­sion, but I must admit it’s dif­fi­cult to NOT enjoy watch­ing them scam­per through the snow and scurry up the trees to pick fruit nearly the same size as their lit­tle carcasses.

I caught this lit­tle guy the other day camped out on a sunny win­dow sill and quite enjoy­ing his meal (until I came along that is..)

I still have no idea where the impulse came from, but I dug up a copy of Baz Luhurmann’s 1999 release Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sun­screen) this morn­ing.  As I lis­tened with a decade of addi­tional expe­ri­ence under my belt, I’ve real­ized how sim­ple wis­dom can be, and how we tend to ignore that of those who are fur­ther down the path then ourselves.

As I progress through Lead­er­ship Cal­gary, the focus shifts fre­quently back to build­ing wis­dom in to our ways of think­ing and being. At times the prospect (and in fact the process of get­ting there) seems immea­sur­ably daunt­ing.  After list­ing to this record­ing for the first time in ten years  though, I real­ize that wis­dom really can be sim­ple.. to those that posses it.  It’s the getting-there that’s difficult.

Baz Lehur­mann: Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Ladies and Gen­tle­men of the class of ’99, wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sun­screen would be
it. The long term ben­e­fits of sun­screen have been proved by
sci­en­tists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reli­able
than my own mean­der­ing experience…

I will dis­pense this advice now.
Read the rest of this entry »

I had an inter­est­ing encounter this after­noon when I met the Postie out in front of the house..  I intro­duced myself and as we chat­ted, he com­mented about some stock he’d pur­chased in a com­pany that I haven’t worked for in over a year.  For the first time I caught a glimpse of a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, a world where the only con­nec­tion to your client is through the outer mark­ings on an enve­lope.  When I real­ized this, I even felt a bit silly for offer­ing my first name.  I’m the only one who gets mail at this address after all, and why wouldn’t I be me?

When I worked at tech­ni­cal sup­port sev­eral years ago, I knew clients by their user­name alone (save a few regular-callers), and often I would recall a plethora of infor­ma­tion about the spe­cific con­fig­u­ra­tion of their com­puter, pre­vi­ous prob­lems and addi­tional email addresses with­out much thought.  Sev­eral of the reg­u­lar clients I could still list off by user­name, but any fur­ther details of their lives are for­ever lost in the Telco archives..

This really high­lights to me what a huge impact our envi­ron­ment can have on our ori­ent­ing sto­ries, our way of see­ing the world. I’m curi­ous now, has any­one else had this expe­ri­ence, or can you relate to the tech-support or postman’s side of the equation?

Through Lead­er­ship Cal­gary I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to meet a remark­able lady by the name of Gena Rot­stein.  Her com­pany, Dex­ter­ity Con­sult­ing is Canada’s first and only Phil­an­thropic Bro­ker­age Firm™ and spe­cial­izes in build­ing and main­tain­ing diver­si­fied phil­an­thropic invest­ment port­fo­lios for clients that want to max­i­mize the impact of their char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions to the community.

Dexterity’s unique approach to busi­ness is reflected even by it’s office location–the back of Gallery 213, an art gallery cre­ated in part to sup­port Cana­dian artists by offer­ing up commission-free wall space. And here, here is where the post begins!

On Sep­tem­ber 3, 2009, Dex­ter­ity Con­sult­ing along with a num­ber of spon­sors pre­sented the first Cana­dian taste of the Mile­stones Project, a 35,000+ image col­lec­tion of moments depict­ing a series of firsts for chil­dren around the world. The first tooth, first best friend, first day of school, and first hair­cut are shared by peo­ple the world ’round regard­less of race, color, reli­gion or loca­tion.  The aim of the pro­gram (if I may be so bold as to sum­ma­rize) is to show how sim­i­lar we all are when you strip away the mean­ing­less hatred and igno­rance that seg­re­gates us from others.

Pho­tog­ra­phers Richard and Michele Steckel, the real heart of the Mile­stones Project were on hand to speak about their work and what it meant.  Their gra­cious­ness and com­mit­ment to the bet­ter­ment of the world is to be com­mended, and has been rec­og­nized by such orga­ni­za­tions as the United Nations among oth­ers.. They were a true inspi­ra­tion to speak with!

The open­ing night was by all accounts a great suc­cess with a packed house for most of the night.  We were joined by sev­eral spe­cial guests and a crowd of enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers for the open­ing com­ments.  The show will con­tinue until Octo­ber 31, 2009 and is located in Gallery 213 at Art Cen­tral in down­town Calgary..

I man­aged to catch a few pho­tos using avail­able light. With the gallery as packed as it was, I felt it would be a bit igno­rant to use a flash and blind the whole audi­ence reg­u­larly but in hind­sight, the qual­ity of the pho­tos would have been greatly advanced by a lit­tle off-camera flash.

I’ve been asked to build and deliver a 12-week pho­tog­ra­phy train­ing course for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Cal­gary and the Cal­gary Board of Edu­ca­tion, Start Out­reach High School, and yes­ter­day we had a very pos­i­tive ini­tial meet­ing to dis­cuss the logis­tics of such a course.  Need­less to say, I’m extremely excited by the pos­si­bil­i­ties this project will present over the com­ing months as both orga­ni­za­tions are really open to new ideas and encour­ag­ing the stu­dents to explore.

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Cal­gary pro­vide a dizzy­ing array of pro­grams for Cal­gary youth to pro­vide them with a car­ing and safe envi­ron­ment in which they can grow and learn.  I’ve worked with them on a few dif­fer­ent occa­sions and I’m chuffed to be work­ing with them again!

Start Out­reach pro­vides high school stu­dents with a self-paced learn­ing envi­ron­ment that allows them with the flex­i­bil­ity to com­plete their high school stud­ies with­out the typ­i­cal con­straints of a tra­di­tional school. As we dis­cussed their philoso­phies and learn­ing struc­ture I couldn’t help but think that I wish this sort of thing was around while I was still in school.   I’m really look­ing for­ward to work­ing with them on this project as well!

The project itself is just in the plan­ning stages at the moment so I’ll pro­vide more detail on how the pro­gram will run later. It will be open to stu­dents at the Start Out­reach High School in Bow­ness, with addi­tional spots avail­able to stu­dents at other CBE Out­reach schools if we have space available.

Lead­er­ship Cal­gary offi­cially kicked off today with a two-hour infor­ma­tional lunch. After all of the per­sonal intro­duc­tions were made, it became abun­dantly clear that we’ve got a group of peo­ple assem­bled for this pro­gram that are, for lack of appro­pri­ate lan­guage, phe­nom­e­nal. As each and every per­son out­lined what they wanted out of the pro­gram and how they’d arrived at the deci­sion to take part, I found myself nod­ding along in agree­ment and even smit­ten with a bit of awe at what an engaged and pas­sion­ate bunch they are.

To say the least, I’m com­pletely stoked; these are my kind of people..

The eight month pro­gram is by all accounts a very unique and tai­lored les­son in wis­dom and adap­tive learn­ing (and much more) which I’m only now begin­ning to under­stand.  As we progress through the year, I’ll have more to report on the top­ics we cover and even obser­va­tions I make whilst work­ing through the course mate­ri­als but suf­fice it to say, this will be a very inter­est­ing Journey..

To give you just a teaser of what is to come, a seg­ment of our first (err.. sec­ond) home­work assign­ment. Watch Home (Mai­son), a film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. (this is a full length film, so make sure you’ve got an hour and a half to spare before you start..) And…  If you have a lit­tle extra time, or would like to catch a quick pre­view of what Home is all about, you can see Mr. Arthus-Bertrand’s TED Talk filmed just prior to the movie launch. (Thanks to Rahim for the early heads-up on this stuff..)

Last thing, please feel free to com­ment, the old CAVOK didn’t have that func­tion­al­ity, but I wel­come your thoughts.. –J

After nearly ten years of online jour­nal­ing and an eight month hia­tus, I’ve returned with a new sense of pur­pose.  Much has tran­spired in the first half of 2009 includ­ing a com­plete dump in the econ­omy, the fin­ish­ing of my home ren­o­va­tions and a crit­i­cal shift in my views of this world..  I still sub­scribe to the the­ory that Blue Skies are a State of Mind how­ever, I believe that we must now more than ever take an active roll in ensur­ing that this is so.

I have shifted my career focus as well, and begun to ser­vice my pho­to­graphic clients on a full-time basis now.  In the past, work always man­aged to get in the way of get­ting out to play pho­tog­ra­pher.  I’ve formed a new divi­sion in my com­pany called Drom­e­dary Pho­tog­ra­phy with a focus on pro­vid­ing pho­to­graphic ser­vices to envi­ron­men­tally and socially respon­si­ble clients and will be work­ing dili­gently to build my client base.

Also, I will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in Lead­er­ship Cal­gary in the com­ing months and this will pro­vide much fod­der for the mind and soul, all of which I’ll gladly share with you.

I should also like to note that I’ve set this blog up using the Green-Apples theme from RoseCityGardens.com for the sake of effi­ciency in get­ting this back up and run­ning.  I like the sim­plic­ity of the tem­plate, but the code that makes it so is nowhere near as friendly so the look  may change from time to time until I have sorted out a design I can live with.   Please feel free to com­ment on the changes as you see them!

So, in clos­ing, to those of you who’ve sup­ported CAVOK in the past years I’d like to offer a warm wel­come back, and to those of you who’re new to CAVOK, please sit down, hang on and enjoy the ride!  — Jordan