MQ

Labour Day.  Seems like the right day to start work again on MQblog.  Armed with advice from Kirk LaPointe (my mentor on twitter, blog etc.) am going to try to link all these different media.  And I need to apply discipline to be a regular blogger.  Am thinking about a series of themes that will suit my new job with some new approaches.  But that is for the next blog.

Right now I want to promote the Gaining Ground conference in Vancouver Oct 20-22 — the Topic is Resilient Cities: Urban Strategies for Transition Times.

As Deputy I supported several Gaining Ground (GG) conferences in Victoria and recently I attended a Gaining Ground Calgary called Energy and the Future of Calgary.  They are really great conferences — I like them because they are hybrids — a great mix of professionals, academics, business people, community folks — all with different points of view.

You can check out the conference web site at:   www.gaininggroundsummit.com which will give you additional current information including the registration link.

I heard Sarah Severn (one of the speakers) in Calgary — she is the Director of Horizons at Nike — their Corporate Social Responsibility Program.  Worth coming to GG just to hear her and find out what businesses south of the border are up to.

Want to keep this one short because am going to try to link the media now.  Fingers crossed.

I confess to being a Monocle addict. It all started with my enjoyment around following the career of Tyler Brule – the Canadian (Winnipeg) who started Wallpaper, still does write on the back-page of the salmon coloured FT (easy to find if you live with someone who reads many newspapers and has a intricate filing system for what to save and what to recycle) – the column is called: The Fast Lane. Anyway Tyler rants often about urban issues and why our cities don’t meet at least some modest standards of “good experiences” for residents and visitors.

So I wait each month for Monocle – and the July/August 09 issues is all about Monocle’s The Most Liveable Cities Index ( www.monocle.com )which is in its second year. They evaluated cities on a number of criteria – this year they added some interesting criteria like chain store pollution (the number of international brand food outlets and retailers vs the total mix (e.g. Starbucks, Zara)), ease of opening a business and major infrastructure improvements.

The top five cities are: Zurich, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Munich and Helsinki. Vancouver is number 14 (slipping – we were number 8 last year) and Montreal is number 19. You might accuse Monocle of being Euro or Asia-centric – Honolulu was the only US city to make the list.

So a few tidbits to tempt you to read Monocle (at least this issue)…

· Melbourne (#9) is the first city outside Italy to gain a Slow Food Designation.

· It takes 15-30 days to start a business in Madrid (#12).

· Munich (#4) has 1,200 km of bike paths and more to come. Deutsche Bahn has a call-a-bike scheme where you can rent a bike for 8 cents a minute or 9 euros a day.

· In Singapore (#18) it only takes minutes to register a new company online.

· Montreal (#19) ranked first in North America for competitive operating costs.

· In Barcelona (#15) solar panels are obligatory now in every new building.

· Vancouver (#14) has 1 Zara and 120 Starbucks (!!) — whereas Paris (#8) has 6 Zara and 34 Starbucks.

What I like about these kinds of surveys (not that they aren’t fairly subjective on a number of fronts) is that they provide pointers to places where we can learn from each other. I picked up quite a bit of information from the little summaries of the Cities that I can use. Especially useful is their info on how “business-friendly” these liveable cities are.

The Editors did pick up on Vancouver’s Greenest City activities – about us claiming to North America’s greenest! So it is out there.

Monocle is pushy and in your face – at the end of each City description, there is a “Monocle fix” – Vancouver’s is: “ignore the border: forge tighter business, cultural and transport links with Seattle and Portland.” I’ll second that and will write more on that in the Fall.

It is a rainy day today – so may have more posts in August – weather dependent. I am supposed to be un-plugged. City, region, design, collaboration discussions to be continued.

Hello world!   This is my first post in my new position as Professor at the UBC Sauder Business School.  I am really looking forward to joining the Sauder community — a great platform for continuing the work that I have been doing over the past year with the Pacific Coast Collaborative (www.pacificcoastcollaborative.org).

I did have an internal blog at the Ministry of Advanced Education — and I enjoyed the discipline of daily blogging — thinking through what my colleagues might be interested in knowing about and asking questions about the various projects we were involved in.

One of my main areas of interest as I begin this new chapter is the integration of collaborative design thinking and regional zero carbon economy opportunities into business education and practice.  I’m going to need to learn a lot about the business school and its culture which will be fun.

Anyway — will see how the blog unfolds.  Interest not to have the discipline of the 140 character tweet.