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Name of author Rick Baker, P.Eng.

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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.

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4 Good Samaritans at Waterloo

by Rick Baker
On Sep 9, 2010
Late on Friday afternoon, with all of us heading into the last long-weekend of summer… what are the odds of witnessing the work of a Good Samaritan?
 
Much higher than one might expect…if one is fortunate enough to live in our community.
 
I had finished a meeting on the afternoon of September 3rd and my watch said 4 o’clock. I thought about calling it a week and heading home but decided to clean up some paperwork at the office. I turned off King Street on to Weber Street, in Waterloo. In front of the Faith Life building, my lane was partially blocked by a woman trying to push her car to the side of the road. I squeezed past her, almost touching the curb because there wasn’t much room. I could see a couple of people running from the Faith Life laneway…it looked like they were coming to help the lady out. I decided to go past and do a U-turn so I could come up behind the lady…to block traffic so no one would accidentally hit her or the people who were helping her.
 
By the time I had driven up behind to block traffic the lady was inside steering and 4 people were pushing her car to a safe spot.
 
I pulled out my BlackBerry and took the following picture:

The 4 Good Samaritans
The 4 Good Samaritans
 
We traded business cards and I exchanged email with 2 of these Good Samaritans.
 
Here is a picture of those two Good Samaritans, the Ackermans, taken while they were on vacation in New Zealand.
 
Dan and Bethany Ackerman
Dan and Bethany Ackerman
 
If you know Dan or Bethany…give them a pat on the back for the nice thing they did for a lady in distress on a busy Friday afternoon.

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Thank You: Celebrating my 100th Waterloo MIN Blog

by Rick Baker
On Sep 1, 2010
Thank You - Waterloo MIN for providing me the opportunity to share my thoughts with people interested in fostering a vibrant local manufacturing community.
 
And Thank You - everyone who has taken the time to read my blogs, rate them, and comment on them.
 
For my 100th MIN blog I am summarizing the highlights of the MIN blogging experiences I have enjoyed over the last year.
 
The Top 3 posts
 
If #visits, ratings & comments are good measurement sticks then here are my Top 3 Blogs:
  1. Changing For The Better: Good Habits, Bad Habits, & New Things #1
  2. 7 Powerful Answers #1
  3. P=2S+O #1
If provoking behind-the-scenes communication and obtaining polarized feedback is a good measurement stick then these would be my Top 3 Blogs:
  1. People Networking…Succeeding in the 21st Century #1
  2. To succeed in Sales I need…
  3. A Contrarian Thought About Creativity
If having fun writing stuff is a good measurement stick then here are the ones I would choose as my Top 3 Blogs:
  1. Don’t put the cart before the horse… - Part 1
  2. Did You Ever Wonder
  3. STOP THE PRESSES!
Some FAQs about my blogs:
 
Q: How do you find the time to write all that stuff?
A: I cut back on watching CSI.
 
Q: Why do you write all that stuff?
A: To share and inspire thinking.
 
Q: What was the funniest thing?
A: Some of the things that didn't make the 'Did You Ever Wonder' short list.
 
Q: What was the biggest surprise?
A: My little Good Habits, Bad Habits, & New Things video didn't go viral and get me spots on Oprah and Letterman.
 
Q: What's the #1 thing you've learned?
A: The more I write the more I read and the more I read the more I am impressed by skilled authors.

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Community | Habits: Good Habits, Bad Habits, & New Things

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Waterloo Manufacturing Innovation Network (MIN)

by Rick Baker
On May 20, 2010
Through the Greater Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation on the Waterloo Manufacturing Innovation Network (Waterloo MIN) last week.
 
 
 
Valerie Machado, Business Development Officer for the City of Kitchener and Chair of the Waterloo MIN Advisory Board and Rod Regier, Executive Director, Economic Development for the City of Kitchener presented the update about Waterloo MIN. www.cityofkitchener.com
 
Waterloo MIN is supported by many local organizations, including the City of Kitchener and the Greater Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.
 
Many communities are watching us here at Waterloo Region…and they are watching the Waterloo MIN…they see it as a social networking business vehicle they should emulate. [that’s great news!]
 
Here are a few of the highlights Valerie and Rod presented:
 
About Waterloo MIN’s members & participants:
  • 173 ‘Full’ Manufacturing Members
  • 105 Limited Members – outside the region, government, academic, institutions, consortiums
  • 48 Promotional Members – advertisers, sponsors, expert bloggers
  • 182 Service Providers and Suppliers
  • 193 ‘Basic’ Members
About the most-visited pages of the Waterloo MIN website:
  • Homepage
  • Job Board - over 300,000 individual views and received over 13,000 applications for local manufacturing jobs
  • Blogs
  • Company Directory - Did you know 30% of Waterloo Region Manufacturers don’t have a website? Waterloo MIN provides these companies with a no-cost, branded web presence.
  • Calendar
As a Waterloo MIN blogger, I was pleased to see the blogs registering in the top 5 areas of website activity. I am sure most Waterloo MIN bloggers will be pleased to know this. They will be pleased to understand their blogs are of value to the Waterloo MIN members and supporters.
 
I mean – that’s what blogging as all about.
 
Blogging = sharing what we have learned and the way we think with others…in an effort to help them.

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Canada 3.0/2010

by Rick Baker
On May 11, 2010
How do we Canadians use digital media technologies to build value into 'our economy'?
  
How do we Canadians use digital media technologies to gain differential advantage in the global marketplace?
 
How does an individual Canadian, like you or I, use the power of digital media technologies to create commercial value?
 
These sorts of questions were running through my mind as I listened to the opening presentations of the "canada" conference. http://www.canada30.com/
 
We Canadians recognize we are in the midst of a technological growth explosion.
  
As a small example, this blog was written via BlackBerry...a tool I knew nothing of 10 years ago but prize as my most-valuable tool today...a tool created by [in relative terms] a young company, Research In Motion, which now shines as an example of business excellence in Canada.
 
As I wrote that last paragraph I looked to the person on my right...and saw an iPhone in use. I looked to the person on my left...a BlackBerry in use. I looked over the shoulder of the person in front of me...a BlackBerry in use. I looked behind me...another BlackBerry in use. (And, my son Jack was sitting beside me so he can verify I didn't fabricate any of this.)
 
So, there is no question the use of technological tools is rampant...and growing.
 
But, how do we Canadians use and build digital media technologies to gain differential advantage in the global marketplace? And, how will we Canadians know our use of technological tools and our development of new digital media technologies is building value?
 
It seems to me we Canadians need to first understand our strengths.
 
The leaders of the canada 3.0/2010 conference talked about the U.S. President Kennedy and the early-60's mandate he set for the placing the first man on the moon.
 
Yes, from what has been documented about the process President Kennedy followed as he reached his first-man-on-the-moon mandate, we Canadians can use this 'analogy' as a guide.
 
Speaker Tony Chapman talked of our Canadian strengths. He talked about the confidence around our capital markets, our positive multi-cultural fabric, our tolerant society where people work together toward shared goals, and he praised regional leadership such as 'The Waterloo Way'.
 
After Day 1 of the canada 3.0/2010 conference, I'm excited about ‘our moon shot’…and 2017...when Canada will achieve its goal of global, digital media leadership.

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