It has been a year since my trip to Bologna when a group of 15 Vancity staff studied co-operatives in this region of the world where co-ops are modern, big, profitable and also progressive and responsible. A new group of Vancity employees just wrapped up their adventure in Italy and from those I’ve spoken to, it sounds like they’ve had an equally amazing and inspiring time. Bringing back this knowledge and experience to strengthen our own financial co-operative is incredibly important as Vancity gets more in touch with its roots and focuses on our new vision of Redefining Wealth.
A couple of weeks back, Corporate Knights released a list of responsible companies in Canada and the top three are all co-ops. Vancity ranked third behind Mountain Equipment Co-op (Canada’s equivalent of REI) and The Co-operators, a large national insurance company (whom Vancity sold its Insurance division to last year).
In thinking about co-ops in a 21st Century context, it seems to me focusing on the seven co-operative principles and our system of governance is a bit of a non-starter. It is my opinion that as co-operatives, we should be adjusting our message to fit with the times. The co-operative message will still resonate with some, but I think that to many it seems outdated and esoteric. People don’t get excited about governance, or voting for a bunch of people for a Board when they don’t really understand the role of a Board or the impact of their vote.
But there is an increased consumer focus on the behavior of the companies they deal with. Social connection equals social responsibility and people can learn more about the behind-the-scenes actions of companies than ever before. Through social media, people are used to participating, and co-ops can offer ways to participate and engage that perhaps other companies cannot.
In Vancouver, where the term 100 mile diet originated, I think we have something in common with the locavore movement. Eat local, shop local, keep your money local. When Vancity talks about Redefining Wealth, to me that’s what it means. Profits can go to shareholders in another part of the country or world, or the profits from your bank accounts, mortgage, investments and credit card can stay local and be invested back into your neighbours and community.
Vancity has become a slang word for Vancouver and the idea of “keep your money in Vancity” seems like a strong value proposition.
In the art of acting there is a practice of memorizing your script and stage directions and character attributes perfectly so you can forget it all and improvise knowing you have that base to work from. I would say the same is true here. Internalize the co-operative principles, live by them, socialize them within your co-op, and then forget them and start improvising so you can increase the relevance of this movement to fit into today’s modern, connected world.
PS: I must credit Morriss and Gene for their posts that inspired me to write this.
For some reason, a lot of people have been asking me lately about my former life as a filmmaker, so I thought I’d post one of my most successful films, CheckMating on YouTube for all to see.
About 15 years ago, I was riding a bus to work in Seattle, where I was living, and a little nugget of an idea came to me:
A woman who tests her dates by playing chess with them. CheckMating.
So simple. At the time, I was a filmmaker working at a motion picture laboratory. I had recently completed a half-hour 16mm nugget called Greenwich Meridian, which was a pretty standard first film: artsy, opaque and pretty much unwatchable. I was ready for a new challenge – to make a film people actually wanted to see.
CheckMating had a number of things going for it. It was short – half-hour films were hard to program at film festivals because they were too long to open for a feature film and too short to stand on their own. I pictured CheckMating with no words, just images and music, which would make it perfect for the international film festival circuit. And I was pretty sure that I could shoot it on 35mm film, and have it look amazing on the big screen.
So I budgeted the film out at $12,000 and started looking for deals. Although I wrote, produced, directed and edited CheckMating, my biggest skill as a filmmaker was always as a producer. I found a free camera, free short ends of 35mm stock, a free editing location. My peers at the motion picture lab where I worked were willing to slide my footage through as “test” footage and not charge me. I ended up bringing in the film for 15% of my budget, a mere $1,800 all in.
It was a one day shoot at a friend’s house. The actors were awesome, especially Amy DeBourget who carried the film. The crew was a dream. The musicians on the soundtrack were brilliant.
It was a charmed little production. I was super-pleased with the final product and I started entering it into film festivals. I had entered my previous film into 18 film festivals and gotten rejections from all of them. With CheckMating, I was accepted into the 19th festival I applied to. Perseverance paid off. I found out after coming back to work from my honeymoon in July of 1996 that I got into the Boston Film Festival. More acceptances poured in, and by the time the film was done on the circuit, it had played something like 60 festivals, events and showcases, and picked up a few awards along the way.
And this little film inadvertently led me to where I am today. As a filmmaker I was an early adopter of screening my films online. I just wanted people to see the film, and wasn’t snobbish about how that happened. While many filmmakers were pontificating about the beauty of film (and not video or digital), I wanted to open source the damn thing (although I’m not sure I knew what open source was at the time).
I got a distribution deal with a little start-up in Seattle called AtomFilms. They were a great group and I was their seventh acquisition. They did extremely well as a company, defining what online film distribution could look like, and sold my film to airlines to show in-flight, to websites seeking quality content and to TV stations around the world (international sales validated my choice to make the film silent). I was written up in the NY Times and the San Francisco Chronicle as a filmmaker willing to try new things. The film was a success. CheckMating even made money, given the minuscule budget I was working with.
That early embracing of the web, as well as an eventual job at AtomFilms as a web producer in charge of their online community of 1.8 million fans steered me onto a new path of doing web stuff instead of film stuff.
And then more recently AtomFilms was bought out by MTV and the rights to CheckMating reverted back to me. And so I have put it up on YouTube where it can be seen once again.
One of the biggest lessons of filmmaking that I draw on everyday is the ability to work with people as they are. Directing actors was perhaps my favourite part of making films. The collaboration, the creativity, the connections. Every actor is different and the key to being a successful director is knowing how to connect and communicate with each actor individually to elicit their best performance. Some actors like line-readings, some like deep philosophical discussions about the character’s motivations, some meditate, some pick fights to work themselves up. Working with each actor in the way most suitable for them is a skill I still draw on daily as a team-member, as a manager and as a contributor to an organization I believe in.
I hope you enjoy this glimpse of my filmmaking side. It’s good to have this film out there again…
I was fortunate enough to be on the selection committee for a new agency of record for Vancity. We have a wealth of very good agencies here in Vancouver and Vancity wanted to ensure that we have the right partner to help us move forward towards our vision of Redefining Wealth.
Redefining Wealth is our vision of growing wealth for our members in a way that directly benefits our communities. We have only started communicating it publicly, and the first place it shows up is in our new Annual Report. The title is obviously provocative, intended to get members questioning what we’re doing and reading on to discover what Vancity’s doing for the “wealthy”.
As we embark on this journey, we met with many agencies in Vancouver, some very large and some very small. It was a great process, helped by a consulting firm, Reynolds & Fyshe. Dan and Mike (Reynolds & Fyshe) helped us steer a transparent, fair, thorough selection process that focused mostly on fit. This was not a beauty pageant where agencies simply wowed us with some superlative work (although we did get to see lots of great work), but a process evaluating our DNA to ensure we found a real partner in our mission.
In the end, we were very excited to discover our amazing fit with local agency, Wasserman + Partners. They demonstrated amazing knowledge of our brand and alignment with our vision. Their work resonated with us, they asked profoundly good and tough questions and have demonstrated real business results with their other clients. It doesn’t hurt that they are a member of our credit union and have been since they launched. They show a deep understanding of iconic local brands, and Vancity is an important player in that field.
I know W+P from their work on the province-wide projects they do on behalf of all BC-based credit unions (see their TV ads). They have been the agency for Credit Unions of BC for over ten years, and their knowledge of this sector is a real plus. I have seen their work get stronger and stronger and the results of their work break through barriers identified as chief obstacles to increasing credit union membership. I have seen the early results of their upcoming campaign, and it is truly impressive.
So, a new chapter opens in the storied history of Vancity. I feel very fortunate to be able to play a role in all of this, and am excited to roll up my sleeves and work with our new partner, Wasserman + Partners.
For the last two Septembers, Tim McAlpine, Gene Blishen and I have planned and put on BarCampBanks here in Vancouver. We have been discussing what to do this year and we think it’s time for new blood.
So here’s the deal: I’d love someone to step up and take over the planning of a BarCampBank here in BC. It’s a great event, but the three of us feel like we’d be re-hashing old territory and some new energy and ideas need to surface.
Leave a comment if you’re interested, and we’ll go from there.
A friend at UBC passed along a job posting for their Director, Interactive and Development Marketing. He described it as a
…strategic leadership role to engage over 400,000 UBC alumni and friends through a full suite of online media, including development of a UBC online community, and a significant ad campaign. Could be a real career milestone.
The job description is:
Reporting directly to the Development and Alumni Engagement (DAE) Chief Communications Officer, the Director, Interactive and Development Marketing is responsible for creating and implementing marketing strategies to secure donor and alumni engagement through traditional and social media. The Director will be responsible for supporting the University’s mission of providing alumni, donors, and friends of the University with meaningful opportunities for engagement and investment with the University. The Director works with various University clients to develop integrated marketing communications and outreach plans and campaigns in support of the portfolio’s priorities for the University with regards to donor activity and alumni engagement. The Director develops processes to oversee the execution of these plans, tracks deadlines, and manages issues, and budgets and ensures accurate reporting. The main areas of focus will be social media, traditional media, business activities, and issue management.
Jobs like this don’t come open very often in Vancouver, I think it would be an amazing opportunity for the right person.
In 2008, as the financial crisis was beginning, I remember thinking that it was going to be an amazing learning experience working at a financial institution through an economic crash.
Well, it turns out I was right.
The last eighteen months or so have been challenging, fascinating, frustrating and highly educational. I have been able to make progress on some amazing initiatives that perhaps I otherwise might not have, and watched others slow down to a crawl. I have learned a lot about my own abilities and limitations as well as my sense of intuition and common sense.
And then, just in the last couple of months, things have begun to shift. Things are getting clearer and easier. It’s very much like a fog has been lifted, and I can see the horizon again.
And I wonder if any of you have felt the same way.
Today was awesome. No other way to describe it. It is exhilarating to have the world come to Vancouver, and feel the great energy and vibe the city has going on.
I have been particularly excited about Stephen Colbert’s impending visit to Vancouver. My brother-in-law and friend, Eric is a writer on the show. Eric and I go way back, we were friends in high school, and traveled Europe together, and I’m married to his sister. Eric came with the crew here for the filming during the Olympics, and he was generous enough to let us into the VIP section this morning.
He was also the warmup act for the crowd to get them pumped before Colbert came out. It was exciting to watch him perform before a crowd of thousands in the city he went to high school in. Cool stuff.
The taping took place in the park literally across the street from my work. I asked a co-worker (whose meeting I skipped out on to go to the taping) to take a picture from our floor. Not sure how many people were there, but it must have been a few thousand by the time it started.
The camera guy was nice enough to take our camera and take some pictures of the crowd.
The set was great, and the backdrop was perfect. It was a glorious day here in Vancouver.
Our spot was amazing, and we had a great view of the whole thing. His guests were Michael Bublé and Bob Costas, who mounted a Moose used as a backdrop.
Many thanks to Eric for an unforgettable Olympic morning!
We’ve taken some photos over the last few days. Here’s one of my son, Ivan when he ran in to the Danish curling team at a local mall. He was so excited, and tonight during opening ceremonies, when he saw this curler, James on TV he went absolutely crazy. No way anyone could be more excited about Danish curling.
Here he is with a torch bearer and her torch.
And just to give perspective, here he is, even more excited to simply have a bird on his arm.
Here are some photos of the Olympic flame passing through our neighbourhood, including the van passing through a few minutes ahead of the runners, with a great license plate.
Here are some photos taken from the roof of Vancity Centre, which happens to be across the street from Olympic Village, the pavillion for the Russian Winter Games in Sochi in 2014 (normally Science World) and just down from a whole bunch of pavillions and stadiums where events take place, including opening ceremonies.
So the Olympics start tomorrow here in Vancouver. I gotta admit, if I had lived here when the vote took place to approve the olympic bid, I would have voted against it (we were living in LA at the time). I just wasn’t that into it.
Then I became complacent, I was resigned to the massive spending, and just hoped for the best.
But then in the last few months buildings started opening, the new SkyTrain line opened, the excitement started building and I became much more optimistic.
When I found out a couple of weeks back that the torch would pass right near our place, like four houses down at our nearest street corner from where we live on the flame’s way to opening ceremonies, my excitement increased.
Now, wandering around town, everything is ready. My work is across the street from Olympic Village and the Russian pavillion for the Sochi 2014 winter games. Our home is not far from the stadium where opening ceremonies take place. My life is right in the thick of things, and it’s pretty cool.
Because Vancity is a slang term for Vancouver, and I monitor what people blog and tweet about Vancity, I get to see where Apolo Ono is hanging out and how much he loves my hometown.
I’ll take pictures of the torch passing near my place tomorrow and take some photos from the Vancity head office roof and post them.
In 2008, as the financial crisis was beginning, I remember thinking that it was going to be an amazing learning experience working at a financial institution through an economic crash.
