Rick Baker Thought Posts
Left Menu Space Holder

About the author

Name of author Rick Baker, P.Eng.

E-mail me Send mail
Follow me LinkedIn Twitter

Search

Calendar

<<  June 2011  >>
MoTuWeThFrSaSu
303112345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930123
45678910

View posts in large calendar

Recent Comments

Comment RSS

The Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce celebrates 125 years of business leadership.

by Rick Baker
On Jun 3, 2011
I had the pleasure of attending last week’s kick-off event, celebrating our Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce’s 125th anniversary.
 
The kick-off event, held at our new Waterloo Region Museum in Kitchener, was a tremendous success. I particularly enjoyed the great venue, the great company, the to-the-point presentations and the video history story created by Modevation Media.
 
The video provided a list, a long list, of the contribution our Chamber of Commerce and its predecessor organizations have worked on to help our community prosper during the last 125 years. Also, of course, the video contained some great pictures.
 
I get a kick out of old pictures…the people and how they dressed, the historic community gatherings…all those hats, the historic cars, and the historic buildings.
 
I tried to picture what it would have been like in the 1880’s when our Chamber of Commerce was created.
 
So, I checked some statistics.
 
Here are some of the facts I found:
  • The British gifted the land of our community to the Six Nations in recognition of their support during the American Revolution just over 100 years before our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • The Six Nations began to sell land to Colonel Richard Beasley 90 years before our Chamber of Commerce was formed…Beasley soon began to sell land parcels to settlers
  • Mennonite families arrived from Pennsylvania 80 years before our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • The Town of Berlin was just over 60 years old when our Chamber was formed
  • The Grand Truck Railway had served our community for about 30 years when our Chamber was formed
  • The province we live in received the name Ontario 19 years before our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • Canada’s 10th Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King was 11 years old and attending Berlin Central School when our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • The Town of Waterloo was 10 years old when our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone was 10 years old when our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • Thomas Edison’s patent for the light bulb was 7 years old when our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • The Province of Ontario had approximately 2,000,000 people when our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • The Town of Berlin [now City of Kitchener] had a population of about 6,000 people when our Chamber of Commerce was formed
  • The Town of Waterloo had a population of about 2,500 people when our Chamber of Commerce was formed
When the prescient business folks of our community gathered 125 years ago to create an organization to lead and help local commerce:
  • telephones and light bulbs were new and barely-proven technologies
  • there were no electrical utilities or natural gas utilities
  • they saw no airplanes
  • they saw no automobiles
Regardless, those business leaders saw in their minds a vivid picture of a prosperous future for our community.
 
And, together, they took the action required to help bring that future about.
 
PS: I am honoured to have had the opportunity to participate in our Chamber of Commerce, working to follow the amazing early footsteps taken by business people in our community 5 generations ago.

Tags:

Community

Permalink | Comments (0)

Sales Tweet #230

by Rick Baker
On Jun 3, 2011
Sales Tweet #230 "Old and adequate ideas, like old and adequate cities, come to polarize everything around them.”
 
The Thinking Behind the Sales Tweet
This is a quote of Edward de Bono, from one of his early books 'The Use of Lateral Thinking'. The question to ask is, "Are adequate ideas good enough?" If your answer is anything but "Yes" then it is time to inject some fresh ideas…some 'New Things'. [As in - People only do 3 Things: Good Habits, Bad Habits, & New Things]

Tags:

Hero Worship | Thought Tweets

Permalink | Comments (0)

Copyright © 2012. W.F.C (Rick) Baker. All Rights Reserved.