Jul
1
2009
Action Plan Online, Part 5 of 10
Author: Alberta VentureRevitalizing Morale
Declutter the Office
The average person spends 4.3 hours per week searching for papers. The average exec loses one hour per day looking for misplaced information. Cut the clutter permanently by following these four steps to a more productive, efficient workplace.
1. Start Fresh
Make decluttering a whole office affair by shutting off the phones and email so employees can give their undivided attention to the task. Georgina Forrest, the owner of Calgary’s Smartworks office organizing services, says everyone should start with two boxes: one for paper and one for gadgets (CDs, staplers, etc.). Put everything on and in the desk into the boxes.
2. Clear the Slate
Now that the desktop is bare, keep it that way. Buy a photo box or similar container to store notes so your monitor doesn’t become covered with reminders. Create more file folders. Get rid of anything extraneous and tuck everything else in drawers.
3. Banish Ghosts
The stacks of paper on your desk can often represent how long you’ve procrastinated on a certain task, making you feel guilty every time you sit down. “You have to ask yourself, am I really ever going to do this?” says Forrest. “Sometimes we convince ourselves that it’s important, but as time goes on its importance drifts. If it doesn’t get done, who is going to miss it?” If no one will, chuck it.
4. Make Lasting Changes
There is little point in embarking on a full-scale decluttering if the papers will be piled high by Monday afternoon. Stop pressing the “print” button and learn to rely on your digital records. Make it an office-wide solution by investing in software that includes a digital calendar and an email program that is easily organized and archived. If you don’t have an automatic back-up system in place for your office network, now is the time to do it.
RELATED LINKS
Action Plan in Print, Part 5 of 10: Boost Employee Morale
In late 2008, the employees at Flextronics, a Calgary manufacturing plant, learned the plant would be closing. It probably seemed that the news couldn’t get any worse. But since the plant had to be dismembered, the 370 employees would be laid off in batches of 30 over the course of five months. Cheryl Bakke Martin, the career counsellor brought in to help, likened the atmosphere to that of a morgue. But with the concerted effort and support of the company’s management, the initial gloom lifted and employees put in their remaining time in a professional manner. If Flextronics could stop the mood sag, any workplace can. Here’s how. More >
Cut Waste, Cut Cost
The Tech Whisperer previews the best in new technology
by Scott Valentine
How Not to Be a Twit
Social Networking On Speed
Twitter’s usefulness has been seized upon by politicians, celebrities and marketers
www.twitter.com
Twitter, huh? Let me get this straight: I get 140 characters – about as long as this sentence – and maybe one web link to say what I want to say? Obviously these people have never met me.
Besides, don’t we already have text messaging, email, Facebook, blogging and every other form of written self-expression on the entire frigging Internet to deal with micro-messages? Do I really need to log onto a website to send one? Do I really need to put @in_front_of_every_name, #in_front_of_every_group and do I really need to continually re-broadcast other @people’s messages and recommend them to others, just in order to fit in and gain popularity? Haven’t we already seen wildly popular social media players of substantially greater meaning wither and/or die because of ill-conceived, build-it-and-they-will-come commercialization strategies?
Check out who uses Twitter. Once you sort through all the celebutantes telling you what you can already get on TMZ and wade through the flotilla of self-professed social media marketing experts (most of whom seem to have no credentials or experience in sociology, media or marketing), you’re left with a pretty brand-sodden and geek-infested run-of-the-mill web community, sans the fun stuff.
There certainly aren’t many eight- to 15-year-olds – the trendily adorned harbingers of new technology successitude – lurking on Twitter’s lag prone servers. And that’s why I’m warning you off.
The Lowdown
What is Twitter, anyway? Text messaging for celebrities, salespeople and folks who like to tell you what they had for lunch? Facebook for the vocabulary-challenged? Ashton Kutcher’s hope for a meaningful existence?
The buzz on Twitter is that its next-big-thing value is in its potential as a captive advertising platform. The vision is of a new content medium in the McLuhanesque sense – a disruptive channel of communication between content producer, marketers and consumers. So the business opportunity (supposedly) is to own as much of the advertising rights, methods, monetization and so on as possible on Twitter. A lot of folks think Twitter is the next billion-dollar baby, a cash cow with innumerable and bottomless gold-plated teats just waiting to be suckled by a technology advertising market with hungry eyes and chapped lips.
But TW is calling B.S. This thing is a pig.
Jul
1
2009
In the News
Author: Alberta VenturePandemic Prepping
You can’t spell pandemic without panic. It’s no wonder: the World Health Organization reported 719 H1N1 influenza cases in Canada as of May 22, and 15% to 35% of the workforce could end up catching the virus at any one time. – Stephanie Sparks
PANDEMIC PLAN
A highly communicable disease could hit the province hard before local companies know what to do about absent employees. “When we talk about business in general… I would say they’re not as prepared as they should be,” says Bob Klay, the president and founder of Klay Information Management Consulting Ltd. in Calgary. If the company has a smaller staff count or its business doesn’t provide “essential services” (like the police, firefighters or hospitals), it likely hasn’t considered a pandemic plan.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY
Historically, pandemics have occurred only three or four times per century, according to Health Canada. But should a breakout of infection arise, companies without pandemic plans can turn to their business continuity plans, in which they can “identify what things you can prevent, what things you can mitigate and the other things that are just imminent,” says Klay. “And then the question is, ‘What steps can we take to continue business or even recover from an incident?’”
LEADERSHIP
Every ship needs a captain. If management start to feel under the weather, “one of the starting points is figuring out who will be in charge and what their responsibilities and roles are,” says Katie Virtue, a management consultant at Klay. Management team members are just as vulnerable to the flu as their employees, and it’s hard to lead with a high fever.
WHO’S YOUR BACKUP?
Because the mailroom clerk isn’t qualified to serve as CEO, it helps to establish the skills and qualifications of employees. Klay says using a skills matrix can help identify individuals to fill critical roles. “Not every function you perform in a company is critical.” Employees in critical roles (ones that make or break the company’s success) should have a backup person, either already on the payroll or willing to take a temporary position The purpose of pandemic planning: to reassure your employees that they belong to a well-prepared organization.
Jul
1
2009
Charticle
Author: Alberta VentureSmoothie Operators
The obesity problem in North America weighs on minds everywhere and consumers are seeking healthy food options. Helped by this trend, both Jugo Juice and Booster Juice got their start here and are expanding to all corners of the world. Is this another round in the battle of Alberta? –Stephanie Sparks
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| Jugo Juice |
Main Squeeze
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Booster Juice | ||
| Derek Brock and Jason Cunningham |
Founders
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Dale Wishewan and Jon Amack | ||
| Calgary’s Eau Claire Market, December 1998 |
Grand Opening
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Sherwood Park, November 1999 |
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| 34 in Alberta, 95 worldwide |
Current Locations
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55 in Alberta, 188 worldwide |
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| 40 locations in 2009 |
Coming Soon
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16 locations to open in India in the next three years |
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| Philippines |
Juicy Locales
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Kingdom of Bahrain and the State of Qatar |
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| Pom Star Protein (402 calories in a 24 oz serving) |
Highest Calorie
Intake |
Funky Monkey (517.2 calories in a 24 oz serving) |
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| Jugo is Spanish for juice but the chain pronounces it as “joo-go” |
Just a Taste
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Mixed the Guinness Book of World Records’ Largest Smoothie in 2006 |
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| www.jugojuice.com |
Savoury Site
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www.boosterjuice.com | ||
Jul
1
2009
Cool Science
Author: Alberta VentureDrug developer Isotechnika takes on a new partner in the final push to market
by Stephanie Sparks
Leaving the University of Alberta’s faculty of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences in 1993, Robert Foster wanted to practise “some cool science” and knew the necessary funds would be easier to attain through his own biopharmaceutical company. Getting appropriate levels of funding for drug discovery through the university was “basically impossible,” says Isotechnika Inc.’s chairman and CEO. “We’re looking at maybe about $800 million to $1 billion to get a drug all the way from the discovery stage to the patient.”
Starting with Foster, his colleague Richard Lewanczuk and one technician, staff at Edmonton’s Isotechnika worked hard to find a drug they felt could advance the furthest. They worked on the discovery of different drugs, for antibiotics and lowering blood pressure. By 1996, Isotechnika had the beginnings of voclosporin.
Voclosporin is based on cyclosporin, around since 1982. Like its predecessor, voclosporin suppresses the immune system and reduces transplanted organ rejection. Cyclosporin, by contrast, has many side-effects, from changing a patient’s risk profile for cardiovascular disease to affecting cholesterol, lipids and kidney function.
By 1995, scientists had determined cyclosporin’s reaction in the body and Isotechnika was able to “use that knowledge to come up with a more potent version of cyclosporin,” says Foster. “Anything you can do to help alleviate some of the side-effects should be helpful to the patient’s overall health picture.”
With only cyclosporin and Japan’s tacrolimus (with which patients risk developing Type 1 diabetes) currently used in transplant patients, “the market is predicted in 2010 to be US$4 billion just for those two drugs,” Foster continues. “If we can chisel our way into that huge market, even if we only get 20% or 25% of the market, that’s still a billion dollars worth of sales.”
Isotechnika’s voclosporin is in the final stages of human clinical testing and has been used in more than 1,600 patients. Now with a staff of around 35, Isotechnika has also conducted clinical trials on other diseases caused by an overactive immune system, such as uveitis (inflammation of the eye) and psoriasis. Ready to get voclosporin to market, Isotechnika announced a partnership with Montreal’s Paladin Labs in May. With Isotechnika’s strength in research and development and Paladin’s strength in acquiring and selling products, “the two teams together seem to be in a real natural marriage.”
“Right now the biotech industry in general is in rough shape,” Foster explains. “With Paladin, we’re reorganizing our company through a ‘plan of arrangement.’ We’re bringing in Paladin as a major shareholder (holding 19% of the company). The way we’re picking up Paladin is to reorganize Isotechnika so that all current shareholders together with Paladin move into a new company called Isotechnika Pharma Inc.
“This deal is going to make us stable enough that we’ll be able to ride out some economic storms and come out landing on both feet. So it’s good for both companies.”
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