Overheard on the 3rd Floor

Consilium, Stonecircle, Aarluk were recently visited by Frick and Frack (two men who come in to do minor building repairs, but create an unusually large amount of noise), here to fix the washroom door on the third floor.

The washrooms in our office are unique, in that the men's and women's signs are graced by stylized images of Inuit, as shown on the right.

The following exchange was captured by researcher Kory Goulais while the door was being fixed.

Frick: Why do they have weird dudes on the doors, wearing ponchos?

Frack: I don't know, just hold the door. 

Well, there you have it; two potential customers for our Aboriginal Awareness training!  

7th Annual Habitat for Humanity Golf Tournament

Team A (for Awesome)

It was a scorcher of a day at the Chateau Cartier Golf Club on Friday August 24, 2012. Why is that relevant? Well, it was the site of the 7th annual Habitat for Humanity (Iqaluit) charity golf tournament. As always, Aarluk sponsored a hole at this event. However, unlike years past, there were two Aarluk teams who played in the event.
Team one, or the “A” team, consisted of Ron Ryan, Chris Grosset, Michelle Turpin and Terry Forth. ('A' also stands for Awesome!) Team two, or the “B” team, consisted of Aarluk manager Jimmy Jacquard, Chuck Gilhuly, Kory Goulais and Daryl Diblee. I know what you are thinking, who picked these teams? Well, let me tell you. Aarluk manager Jimmy Jacquard handpicked both teams based on a set of 24 criteria established in his evaluation matrix and following interviews with each individual he cross referenced the matrix and each attribute to determine who would work well together based on their skill sets. Ok, who am I kidding, he stacked his team.


In this particular tournament, both team A and B ended up teeing off together at the same hole, the 16th. The 16th hole was supposed to be where the Aarluk sponsorship sign was located; however, due to some sort of mix up, the Aarluk sign was placed at the 15th hole (which was a hole in one to win a car hole). Talk about sponsorship value!

Unlike the David (Ryan, Grosset, Turpin and Forth) vs. Goliath (Jacquard, Gilhuly, Goulais and Diblee) matchup, there was no Cinderella ending. The match finished as people would have anticipated. Although, Team A made it perfectly clear to hole attendants at the tournament that their team was far more fun.

 

Following the tournament and shellacking that Team B handed Team A, both teams sat down and enjoyed a very nice meal. A very successful tournament, a very memorable day was had by all!

You have to start somewhere - answers!

One week ago we asked you, the reader, to try and figure out what each Consilium, Stonecircle, and Aarluk employee did before they got here. Not familiar with that blog piece – click here to read. After scratching your head trying to figure out who did what, here are the answers to last week’s small trivia challenge.

Fred Weihs (the economist) was a maintenance repair person in a hospital.

Galin Kora was an agronomist! I don’t know about you, but I still think that’s a pretty cool job.

Kory Goulais was a gas station attendant.

Michelle Turpin worked at a toy store (a total retail maven as she recalls).

Chuck Gilhuly worked at home hardware (I wonder if Fred ever bought his supplies from Chuck?)

Leslie Sutherland worked in the K-mart cafeteria (was fired for being too awesome).

Jennifer Bradshaw worked at Steinberg’s grocery store in the accounting department removing staples. I would tell the whole story but there isn’t enough space.

Chris Grosset worked at a bottling plant.

Geoff Rigby was a Northmart cashier.

Christian Cloutier was also a gas station attendant (although he wasn’t as good as Kory)

Jennifer David was a high school tutor (go figure!).

Well, there you have it, some of our roots. I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about us here at Consilium, Stonecircle and Aarluk. As for who had the best first job, I am going to go with Kory Goulais and his gas station attendant job. Mind you, this may be a biased selection considering I am writing the article.

Congratulations Tim and Anne!

The happy couple

On August 11th, 2012, Consilium Senior Consultant Ron Ryan was a busy man. What was he doing, you might ask? If you haven’t figured it out from the title of this article, he was watching his son Tim marry his long-time sweetheart Anne. From all of us here at Consilium, Stonecircle and Aarluk we would like to say a heart-felt congratulation to Tim Ryan and Anne Maffre. In traditional fashion, we must also link you to the following video.

Word from our Senior Consultant is that the wedding went off without a hitch, although I beg to differ. It would seem that getting “hitched” was the entire reason they were there. Regardless, a good time was had by all. However, I cannot comment on the wedding because I was not there. I did however come to learn that three important things took place during the wedding 1) the marriage, 2) the reunion of family from across Canada, and 3) the open bar, three bands and poutine at midnight. Needless to say, Ron had the entire week following the wedding off (I think I know why).

More importantly (for me at least) was the golf tournament that occurred on August 10th, the day before. Ron organized a golf tournament at Edelweiss Golf and Country Club on the Quebec side of the border. Ron Ryan is the only person that I know who can organize a golf tournament full of family members and close friends (and have 32 golfers). In a nutshell, the tournament was very fun and rigged! Yes, you heard me, the tournament organizer also happened to win the tournament. Coincidence, I think not! Although that is not the purpose of the article, I digress.

Fathers of the Bride and Groom

Following the golf tournament and the mis-calculation of scores, everyone enjoyed a nice sit-down buffet style dinner complete with music and introductions of, well, everyone. The somewhat of rehearsal dinner more of families (Ryan, Fitzgerald, Clarida, Maffre) and friends being together consisted of over 100 people (like I said, Ron has a large family) who all introduced themselves and their association with the bride and groom. When it came for my time to shine, I stood up and explained that I knew Tim through tax season (don’t choke, don’t choke, don’t choke… ah, you choked). Needless to say they were polite and laughed. All in all a wonderful time was had by all.

Congratulations Tim and Anne!

Healthy Schools and Community Resources

Stonecircle can now add another organization known by its acronym to its roster of clients. The Ontario Physical Health and Education Association (OPHEA) approached Stonecircle, on the recommendation of the Chiefs of Ontario, to ask them to conduct research and prepare an environmental scan on health promotion resources that target Aboriginal students in a school setting. The majority of research will be in a First Nation context, primarily in Ontario, but with Inuit and Métis examples from across Canada also incorporated.

OPHEA was created in 1921 and has been working to support the health and learning of children and youth in Ontario. OPHEA works with school boards, public health, government and non-government organizations as well as private sector organizations to develop programs and services that promote healthy and active school communities. More information can be found at www.ophea.net

If you are aware of any health promotion activities documents or resources that could be shared in the OPHEA database, please email Kory Goulais.

You have to start somewhere!

On a hot and sunny Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, a discussion began between Consilium’s Jennifer Bradshaw, Stonecircle’s Kory Goulais and Aarluk’s Chris Grosset and Michelle Turpin. This discussion was unlike most of the others because it didn’t centre around the progress of projects (sorry Chuck), the latest sports news (sorry Geoff) or the fact that I can never remember to give my original receipts to Jing (sorry Jing, they are coming, I swear). Rather, this discussion was solely focused on the jobs that we worked at before finding our calling at Consilium, Stonecircle or Aarluk.

When you’re young, you think about your dream or ideal job and you naively assume that you will be handed that job once you graduate or enter the workforce. However, I don’t know a single person where that is the case. Reality says that you will likely work your first job in the service industry, perhaps at a store somewhere or a fast food establishment.

For example, Stonecircle researcher Kory Goulais' wife Alison worked at a pharmacy for eight years while she finished school then landed her dream job of being a teacher. The fact of the matter is that everyone at CSA started somewhere and based on that lunch, we felt that it would be fun to share our first jobs with you, kinda. 

Below, in no particular order, are CSA employees and their first job. Can you match the person to their first job?

Fred Weihs                          Steinberg's Grocery Store
Galin Kora                            Bottle Capper at Bottling Plant
Kory Goulais                        Northmart Cashier
Michelle Turpin                    Gas Station Attendant
Chuck Gilhuly                   High School Tutor
Leslie Sutherland                 Gas Attendant
Jennifer Bradshaw            Sales Clerk at a Toy Store
Chris Grosset                       Agronomist
Geoff Rigby                          Home Hardware Worker
Christian Cloutier                  K-mart Cafeteria Worker
Jennifer David                      Maintenance Repair Person

Answers will be revealed next week.

Just under the wire...

Sometimes our clients have to apply for funding in order to carry out their work, expand their businesses or develop new products or services.  Sometimes the application processes are very labour-intensive and time-consuming. Sometimes, especially during the summer, there is just not enough capacity to submit these applications for funding.

So sometimes, we are asked to come along and help.  Last week, Stonecircle and Consilium worked together to support the Eeyou Economic Group with just such an application.  Christian Cloutier took on the bulk of the work with advice from Ron Ryan, editing support from Jennifer David and formatting and writing support from Kory Goulais. The Eeyou Economic Group provides business support to Cree entrepreneurs in the region of northern Quebec called Eeyou Istchee.

It took hours of research, combing through dozens of documents, writing, making sure that EEG addressed all of the criteria in the application, and putting it all together into a very impressive-looking proposal and application, which ended up being more than 30 pages. All of this in just over a week!

Good luck to EEG and we hope they will be successful.

Up, up and away!

Today’s post is supposed to be about Consilium General Manager Leslie Sutherland's AWESOME hot air balloon ride over the great city of Ottawa. However, due to unforeseen circumstances (although you can see fog pretty clearly), she was grounded. Yet, ironically, fog isn’t a good enough excuse not to come to work. So, with that being said, Leslie is at work less one hot air balloon ride and blog piece.

Because Monday is a blog publication day, we needed to put something up here. I would like to introduce the new topic, which does involve the sky, and that is the Consilium, Stonecircle, Aarluk migration to the cloud. Wait, did I say that right? Consilium, Stonecircle and Aarluk (CSA) are not migrating to the cloud, but all of our files and internal systems are.

CSA will be ditching the old and clunky technology of an internal server and storing everything outside of the office, “in the cloud” as it is called. Essentially, it is the delivery of computing and storage capacity as a service to a community of end recipients (that’s us! Thank you Wikipedia!). Everything we used to run on our internal server will now be stored outside our offices (I have e-mailed Bill Gates to confirm). The migration has already begun and has transferred much of our systems and files to the cloud. This week CSA is moving many of our programs to the cloud, such as Web TimeSheet and Web Resource and SharePoint. A big thank you goes out to CloudIT for their assistance! But, let’s be real, with a name like CloudIT they have to know what they are doing.

CSA is one of the few companies that we know of moving to cloud technologies. But we figure if NASA can do it, that so can we! The sky is the limit, right? Well, maybe not for NASA, but it is about as far as we can go. In a recent article by PCWorld, they indicate that cloud IT is about as safe as any other type of technology if the proper precautions are followed.

To close, Leslie may not have been able to get up in the air for the balloon ride, but for the last little while she has had her head up in the cloud.

Happy Birthday Fred!

Fred Weihs, Senior Consultant

Founding partner, Fred Weihs is our lone birthday boy this month. Fred is actually on holiday (yes, he takes the odd week off… ) celebrating his birthday canoeing in the Ontario wilderness. Don’t get your cellphone wet again Fred. :- ) From everyone at Consilium, Stonecircle and Aarluk, we wish you a very Happy Birthday!

Consultants need 'down' time too

Working on the the premise that a) all work and no play is no fun for anyone, and b) it is always a good idea to try out something new every once in a while, Michelle Turpin and Chris Grosset (Consilium and Aarluk Senior Consultants) went with a group on a tree top trekking excursion on a recent day off. Can you call it 'down' time when the afternoon was spent 'up' in the trees?

Aarluk's Chris Grosset

Consilium's Michelle Turpin

It was Michelle's second time taking to the world of tree top obstacle courses and Chris's first time. Chris was in good company however, as many others in the group were new to zip-lining and swinging in the trees. The imminent thunder and lightning storm shortened some of the longer zip-lining and the group has vowed to return in the fall to finish the longer courses and see the autumn colours from a bit of a different angle! A fantastic day was enjoyed by everyone. This would be a great team building exercise - and Michelle and Chris would both be happy to lead other groups through the trees. Since we are now pros!

Boys and Girl of Summer!

2010 season and playoffs Champions
Kory "Chief Wahoo" Goulais and
Christian "The Heckler" Cloutier.

Hey, hey sports fans, it’s that time of year again - the Brass Monkeyz Old School annual season update! In traditional fashion, I will begin the article with a quote from famed/former L.A. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda – “No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference. ” Well, I’ll tell you that the Brass Monkeyz had a hard time with the other third and recorded one of their worst seasons in recent history. The Monkeyz finished 5-7-0 and are seated fifth out of six teams heading into the playoffs.

How do you describe this sub-par season? As Vance Law once said “When you’re in a slump, it’s almost as if you look out at the field and it’s one big glove.” This year, hitting, fielding and throwing all dropped off from each player. The reason why, you ask, Shortstop Kory “Chief Wahoo” Goulais thinks that it is because of the new Berryman’s Pub sponsorship. He states “I blame our poorer play on the extra pints they [the team] are ingesting after the game and sometimes before. The Manager [Clootch] is not setting a good example.”

In response to the shortstop, Manager Christian “The Heckler” Cloutier stole a quote from Leo Durocher – “If you don't win, you're going to be fired. If you do win, you've only put off the day you're going to be fired.” And by the sounds of that, Goulais was fired about 7 times this year.

So far, this article has been so negative! The Brass Monkeyz did play some good baseball this year. In the five wins that they did earn, there was an impressive display of talent and athleticism. As summer employee Julia “Scrappy Ju” Prokopick points out – “I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks in batting practice – Casey Stengel.”

Heading into the playoffs on a three-game winning streak, the Brass Monkeyz will face off against a tough second place opponent for the chance to move deeper into the playoffs. To close, I will leave you with a quote from Joe Schultz – “Well, boys [and girls], it’s a round ball and a round bat and you got to hit the ball square” if you want to win. Figure it out and you will be just fine.

Summer Vacation

I am happy to be back in the Stonecircle office here at 488 Gladstone Avenue. I was away for a few weeks on vacation. I was a busy man during that period, taking care of many things that I would have otherwise not been able to handle if I was in the office. I will give you a quick rundown of my busy time away.

Kory and Alison's new place

Before leaving for vacation I had indicated that my wife Alison and I had looked at a house that we really liked, and in my super efficient manner, I had purchased it (conditionally) by Monday. With the purchase coming three days before leaving for British Columbia, we had to fulfill all of the conditions prior to leaving. That meant obtaining approved financing, having an inspection and taking care of anything that resulted from that inspection. This all had to be completed on top of five baseball games (at night), helping my wife with the library (what happened to books on tape?) at her school and golfing. Needless to say after a hectic three days, all was completed.

In case you are wondering, the house is a three-bedroom, two and a half bathroom townhome.

First hole - Redwoods

Early Wednesday morning rolled around and it was off to British Columbia to celebrate Alison’s aunt’s 10th wedding anniversary (congratulations!). However, for me, this meant an uncomfortable plane ride, jetlag, and missing baseball games. But, it wasn’t all bad, by using the marketing skills that I have developed and honed during my almost three years with Stonecircle (blog article for that to come Sept. 14), I was able to secure a free round of golf at the beautiful Redwoods Golf Course in Langley, BC.

Following my five-day trip in British Columbia, I returned to Ottawa played golf a few times, enjoyed Ottawa’s War Museum, and played in a baseball tournament. All things considered, I am not sure if I really had a vacation!