I met George and Ward whilst I worked for Cable & Wireless. George until recently was with KPN in the Netherlands, Ward with Belgacom. These two guys became real friends and it was somewhat surprising that they turned out to be our first (and only?) visitors of 2008.
Back in March I’d decided to volunteer to work at Globe 2008. The GLOBE Foundation is a Vancouver-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to finding practical business-oriented solutions to the world’s environmental problems and every other year they host a sustainability conference and exhibition. As I work in this space I thought it would be a great idea to volunteer my services to help out, and get to a few of the presentations for nothing. I wasn’t banking on getting an e-mail from George letting me know that he would be in town for teh conference. What a great surprise. So, we spent a solid day or two on the sight seeing trail and despite the atrocious weather had a good time visiting Capilano Suspension Bridge, the UBC museum of anthropology (closed on Mondays!) and some of the down town areas of interest.
As for the conference – I was a little disappointed in that very little new thinking was presented, but that may purely be down to me working in the area of sustainability for such a long time.
Fast forward to the beginning of September.
I’d been ‘warned’ by Ward that he’d be in the north west US (Montana and Washington) around the end of August – start of September and that he’d plan in a flying visit to Vancouver. And, so it was that Ward turned up at the beginning of the month. We managed a whirlwind tourist day, once again taking in Capilano but managing some time in Stanley Park as well.
It was so good to see a couple of familiar faces here and quite touching to think that they’d made the effort to call in as we’d previously only met on work related meetings 2 or 3 times a year for around 4 years.
I’m sure that we’ll be ferrying future visitors to other great attrations that Vancouver and the lower mainland offer, so if you’ve no head for heights, fear not – Capilano is not manditory.
