This was likely their way of addressing the rather dramatic deflation of that facility in the winter of 2007, when the ceiling literally collapsed during a storm.   This sounded like a good idea — it was anchored on attracting a Major League Soccer franchise to the city and for PavCo was designed to foil proposals for a ~$70M, 20,000 seat shoreline stadium fronted by Greg Kerfoot et al, owners of that MLS franchise (the Whitecaps). BC Place opened in 1984 and has never once turned a profit.  Presently it loses approximately $6.3M per year of taxpayer dollars.  It was built for Expo ’86 and was designed as a modernist building in an era when the city around it was humble and underdeveloped — a shining example of the future, or what we thought it might hold architecturally, way back in 1980.

In the intervening 30 years, the City of Vancouver has very much grown up around it, both physically and spiritually.  Many glass and brick (honouring Yaletown’s storied history) buildings have grown up around it, and as a result BC Place now stands as an architectural anachronism casting its giant hulking bare concrete mass amidst what might otherwise be termed a neighbourhood.

I think I am not speaking out of turn when I suggest that it is objectively, fundamentally, and irreparably ugly. At $150M though, retrofitting this beast with a retractable roof (which it always should have had) seemed more sensible than a new stadium which we were told could cost 3x-4x as much — of taxpayer dollars, of course.  So there we set the course.  Fund it.  Build it.  Move on.

Had this been any other city, any other country, or any other province it might have ended there.   But of course it hasn’t. By January 2009, this $150M price tag was inflated to $365M.   Construction costs for the roof and supporting structure were attributed to “seismic upgrades”, “plumbing”, and other euphemisms to mask the fact that the project began experiencing overruns even prior to commencement.   Then by the end of 2009 it was announced that the official budget was now $458M… with no mention made of earthquakes or plumbing. This now exceeded the cost of the proposed Whitecaps stadium (which was also to have a retractable roof) by 650%.

… and now rivalled the cost of building brand new structures around the world with retractable roof capabilities and much, much more.   Munich’s Allianz Arena, which I toured just after it opened, was completed in 2006 for a cost of €286M and seats 60,000.   That stadium houses two Futbol teams and is near capacity for every event.   In a disastrous project gone wrong, the good citizens of Indianapolis still ended up with a massive 70,000 seat stadium and conference centre for the bargain price of $700M (and which actually looks like it might fit in nicely in Yaletown).  By comparison, BC Place has 50,000+ seats — but it has almost never been full in 25 years of operational history.

Kerfoot’s earlier proposal highlighted the fact that Vancouver doesn’t need a 50,000 seat stadium.   So to get to a stadium of the size we really need?

An example might be Seattle’s SafeCo Field, which seats 30,000 for football, at a price tag of about $516M 10 years ago. But not us.   We didn’t need a huge stadium but we’ve got one, and now we’re doubling down on a 30-year-old bad bet by Bill Bennett which, it was revealed today, doesn’t even work in the rain.   That’s right.   We live in the rainiest big city in North America, and the retractable roof cannot retract in the rain. So… let’s see.   We’re spending more than the cost of building a brand new stadium that could be designed to fit into the neighbourhood around it.

And as the curtain is lifted on the publicly-funded project it’s becoming quite clear that the finished product is doomed to cast a huge, ugly shadow over the entire city, doesn’t function as promised, and has a capacity hugely in excess of that which we need.   Have I got everything correct? Thought so.

** UPDATE Nov. 5/2010 – Bob Mackin reveals the new price tag is now an unconfirmed $563M.

I want Connect and the BCIC to be successful and was very impressed both years, particularly with last year’s conference which was so well-conceived that it was a shock to my system to see such a good conference happening in Vancouver.  So I hope that you, fair reader, as well as the folks at BCIC understand what place these comments are coming from.. purely in the interest of helping stimulate some conversation with some ideas from the peanut gallery.

A few points:

1) More constructive sessions.

At the $50 cost-of-entry, Connect attracts tons of would-be and might-be and first-time entrepreneurs. Invite companies like mailchimp.com, ringcentral.com, 37signals.com and salesforce.com to present short sessions which show entrepreneurs how to use their tools. This is also a good gateway to get them to sponsor, and a cheap way for those companies to get customers. This hands-on stuff is right for that crowd and needn’t be super-technical. I found that some of the presentations were inspirational but very hard to connect to real decision-making for most of the crowd.

2) Fewer politicians.

This is about the only place in the world where the Lt. Gov would show up and keynote at a tech conference. He’s clearly a nice guy but by his own admission was a little out-of-place at such an event.  The speeches from BCIC officials like Greg Aasen and Dean Rockwell; and politicians like Iain Black and Hisoner the Lew-Gov aren’t inappropriate taken on their own, really… but stacked neatly together as they were this year made for a fairly content-free 70 minutes. What did attendees learn there?

3) Cut the fluff.

Also, and although I’m Scottish, the pomp and circumstance with the piper and Seargeant-at-arms was a little over-the-top. In the tech industry we have learned to afford people our respect based on the quality of their ideas and the nature of their success putting those into practise… so the Grand Entrance made by the Lew-Gov came off as pretentious and overstated, even if he is the Queen’s man in the Colonies. We also indulged a precocious science fair winner from Ontario with his own Keynote… this was an eye-roller.

4) Do it in the daytime.

Actually I think you could strongly argue the case for doing it in the evening: soon-to-be entrepreneurs can skip work a little early and attend without fear of discovery from the boss. But “serious” business conferences seem to happen in the daytime. BCIC knows its audience better than I do but hanging in the Convention Centre for 6 hours at night was a bit much for me… particularly with the soul-sucking hour of Keynotes right in the middle of the affair.

5) Sit-down meals are better.

For dinner, delegates muscled their way thru a series of buffet tables and loaded tiny plates with Tapas.  The stand-up dinner isn’t conducive to conversation, and encourages people to gravitate more to one or two people they know. Walking into a dining room and trying to find an empty seat at a table leads to serendipity and forces people out of their shells. It’s a kickstarter. With the stand-up buffet you’re too busy hunting and gathering your dinner to actually have any real conversation.

6) Embrace the lobbyconners.

Lobbyconning is key to any conference. Having big long breaks between sessions gives you cushion for time overruns but also nurtures serendipity and bump-ins, not to mention impromptu break-out sessions. If you’ve ever been to a Web 2.0 conference at The Palace in San Fran you’ll know what I mean about lobbyconners.. it’s a sport there and deals do get done.

7) Open with a big speaker.

You need to make sure people get there on time to maximize the traffic flow.  Most tech conferences begin with the Keynote that everyone wants to hear.  This year’s Connect was the inverse.

8)  Close with a party.

Bar tickets are how you keep ’em hangin’ in there through the low points (and there are low points in even the best conference).  Folks used to criticize Jeff Pulver for blowing scads of money to hire marquee rock bands to play his parties at VON. But you know, there was genius in this design.  The chance to see a hugely popular band in an intimate setting virtually guaranteed everyone at the conference would attend, as did the open bar.  This made VON parties hugely successful for business development, relationship-building, and sealing friendships.  You knew people would be there.  And there is still a strong VON community as a result of these bonding experiences.  We don’t need Smash Mouth or the Goo Goo Dolls, but we do need *fun* built into any conference design.  And this needs to be compelling and it needs to come as a blowing-off of steam after a long and busy work day.

9)  Share their wares.

This would be a great place for local companies (such as maybe NVBC finalists) to demo their products in front of an interested and sympathetic audience.  And a great way to pre-launch products and services.  I might not have taken up that opportunity but others certainly would have.

On the whole I’d absolutely pop in on Connect in the future, as I think should any local entrepreneur or aspiring company founder.  With some tweaks (not all of my suggestions will hold water here) it could become the perfect local tech industry conference.

"Vesting over what period, you say?"

Over the past way-too-many years I’ve had occasion to interview north of 250 individuals for dozens of positions at both startups and large companies on both sides of the border.  Having spent my teething years (professionally) in the maelstrom of Silicon Valley I have come to be able to recognize many different character types and motivational fulcrums when it comes to tech industry employees in marketing, engineering, business development, and customer support.

Based on that experience I am rather unsurprised but still a little disheartened to hear thru the grapevine that Thursday’s $38M+ acquisition of Verrus by a UK-based company netted big wins for the company’s management team, but sweet bubkus for their employees.  This is because Verrus did not widely incent their employees with stock options. Stock options may be the oxygen coursing through the bloodstream of Silicon Valley.  But up here?  They’re an afterthought.

Down South, when companies are successful and are acquired or achieve IPO (I still remember the nineties, yes) they very often create windfalls for their employees.  As an example, when I worked at Cisco one of my co-workers, a Product Manager who had been with the company for about 10 years, was vesting stock at the rate of about ~$210,000.00 per month.

This is a gross exception to the rule, but is a fun example.  He was a bit of a hockey nut, and once turned to me and asked whether I wanted to help him build a rink.  I said “in your back yard?” and he replied “No, like a two-rink complex as a business.”  These windfalls buy some degree of freedom, for sure, but more often than not are a few hundred thousand dollars in total.  Don’t call the architect just yet.

But a good exit of a few hundred grand is enough to leverage that hard-working employee into a more senior role at another startup, as often happens; or for a talented coder it buys a few years of freedom to pursue their own startup idea without the pressure of drawing a salary.  More often still the windfall buys the cushion so that employees can take riskier jobs with bigger upsides, cavalierly walk from companies that they are convinced will ultimately fail, or help smart folks make major life-changes and start small businesses in industries not reachable via the http protocol.

In many ways stock options, or rather the wealth they create, can be seen as antibodies to failure.

When I went to Cisco I failed to negotiate hard on my stock options (or rather, I did not negotiate at all).  This is a shame because during 15 months of working at Cisco my initial stock option grant grew in value from $12 to $84.  But I came by my ignorance honestly — I was after all from Vancouver, where I had barely heard of stock options, and where I knew not a single person who had materially benefited from them.

You can’t walk fifty feet in Palo Alto without tripping over someone who made a fortune on their PayPal stock options — in those days everyone from the caterer on up was granted them, and even commercial landlords took options on top of astronomical office rental fees.  There is a culture that recognizes their risk and upside and there are plenty of examples of folks who’ve done well by them.

I have been frustrated in hiring folks in Silicon Valley by savvy employees who negotiated stubbornly against their stock option packages, fretted about terms within the option grant such as accelerated vesting and cliffs, and who actually in a few cases pushed for lower salaries or bonuses in favour of more options.

Conversely, I have not once had an interviewee in Vancouver haggle over stock options.  In fact very few folks have an even remotely strong understanding of what they represent and how they work.  In the past it’s occasionally even been difficult to lure people to full-time employee status versus working as a contractor.

Vancouverites in the tech industry and Canadians in general, in my experience, still have a fairly Neo-Marxist view of the employee – employer relationship:  you sell me your labour for the negotiated price and, where surplus value is created, this is absorbed not by the company as a group but instead by its managers and investors.  The labour is unsually neither ineffectual nor is it inspired, and the employee has no fundamental interest in the company’s success beyond remaining employed because the company continues to exist.  If it fails nothing is lost by the employee, except for a few weeks of rest before they move on to sell their labour to the next buyer.

For a while when I started working with startups locally around 2004-2005 I used to offer equity (mostly as stock options) because I am a nice guy and because I understood how equity has always motivated me as a worker and as an entrepreneur.  Almost universally I found that these options were unappreciated and indeed oftentimes misunderstood.  More recently, recognizing that my prospective hires are more compelled by salary and flexibility (we all love the Vancouver lifestyle … many of us too much so) than by upside I have ceased to offer stock options at all.

After all, since those stock options are ultimately dilutive to my own benefit as a partial owner of the business in the event of a successful exit, I have grown much more stingy with them.   Why incur the paperwork hassle and decrement my own long-term financial benefit for someone who ascribes no real value to these options?

The mercenary culture of workers on the Vancouver tech scene — likely a product of some combination of the province’s dominant organized labour mentality, of the very fly-by-nite startups that emerged here in the mid-late-nineties, and of the relatively pithy (and thus very unstable) financing amounts received by practically every company in technology — is a real problem and an obstacle for success to these companies.  Employees who are materially invested in a company’s growth are necessarily harder working, more committed, and more thoughtful employees.  Those who aren’t are likely to flit away at the first whiff of trouble (and believe me, startups here and in general encounter plenty) or for dumb reasons like a few hundred more dollars in their pocket monthly from another job.

So, it may be a chicken and an egg thing.  Employers do not have an obligation to offer stock options.  Qualified candidates will benefit from understanding them and recognizing their true value.  And if folks aren’t buying ferraris with their options, or pivoting into their own startups with lots of runway, we have few examples to point to as encouragement.

I strongly believe that the long-term health of our technology community depends on more people benefiting from successful companies via stock option payouts; and that we need to talk more openly with employees and prospects about how they work and what they mean.  The community needs to see more rich guys slacking at coffee shops who were simply low-level workers at hugely successful companies.  Believe me… when you see gardeners living large on the stock options they earned for mowing the lawns at the corporate offices of flotsam.com, you’ll get religion too.

On the other hand, you’ll have to really impress me these days to convince me to hack off a few thousand pieces of paper from my dream business and give them to you.  I have learned through hard experience that, even after options having been granted to local workers, their value has little additional motivational effect on employees.  And these days, even my unabashed generosity has its limits.

I’m doubly convinced that while the VANOC Gestapo is concerning itself on the front lawn with ebbing peaceful protests, sweeping our homelessness and drug problems under the rug, and thwarting any attempt by commercial enterprises to steal some Olympic mojo; they’ve left the back door open for morons who might claim some affiliation to the non-existent Al Qaeda to blow up a rented cube truck filled with god-knows-what in my neighbourhood.

Reinforcing my fear of their ineptitude, today it is revealed that Kinder Morgan, the company that has brought local residents a string of oil spills over the past few years, have .. um .. misplaced at least two tonnes of ammonium nitrate which was in a truck en route from Alberta to North Vancouver sometime over the December holidays.  Kinder Morgan is attempting to play this off as a “clerical error” however we’ve heard that from them before, as oil gushed into Burrard Inlet and drowned an entire Burnaby neighbourhood in a thick black film.

They lost two tonnes of ammonium nitrate.  In Vancouver.  You can’t be serious.

As Global Security reports, ammonium nitrate is used to make about 95% of the bombs in Afghanistan, and was also the medium of choice for the foiled efforts of the Toronto 18, who had themselves obtained 3 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.  The reason for this bomb-making method’s popularity is that the recipe for making such a device using ammonium nitrate is so simple an idiot could do it.

In 1995 Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (two complete idiots if I’ve ever seen one) used a 600-pound ammonium nitrate bomb, mixed with a fuel oil called nitromethane, to attack and destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City.  The attack killed 168 people.  McVeigh and Nichols had purchased exactly two tonnes of ammonium nitrate prior to constructing their bomb, which they assembled in the back of a cube truck.

Ask yourself this: do you trust with your safety the very same public officials who will allow a couple of tonnes of high-explosives to disappear while simultaneously announcing that you are no longer able to take books on airplanes?

UPDATE: Bob Mackin points out that Kinder Morgan’s North Vancouver dock will also host a cruise ship providing visitor accomodations during the Olympics.  Good luck with that!

This goes to the heart of the difference between the Left & Right. The left sees issues like prostitution and homelessness as social issues where the people directly involved are victims of ineffective systems, and they are most effectively resolved using early prevention and education – the right sees prostitution snf homelessness as law & order issues where the victims are the people who are reminded of the ineffective systems through the presence of prostitutes and the homeless, and this is best resolved using laws & the police, and gentrification.

Indeed.  The real victims of social problems are those who endure their ignominies.  The only place to start solving the problem, if it actually is one, is with them.

However, in this case perhaps neither side of the debate is correct.   Some argue quite compellingly that prostitution isn’t actually a social problem at all.  They would paint the community activists and neighbourhood residents who report this as a crime as self-righteous and prudish.  And while the “problem” of prostitution may be widespread in society, they argue that it is a rather personal one imposed by the religious or moral upbringing of the offended individual — not of the women or their Johns.

An interesting conceptual approach, and not sure whether it’s one I agree with.  Having lived in Yaletown a few years in the 1990s and now within a block or two of the “Stroll”, as I’ve just discovered they refer to it, I have never found myself disturbed or upset or otherwise offended by the presence of scantily-clad female professionals.  Having never been a prostitute or even known one, I can’t speak with authority on whether or not these women are victims of a social problem.  I do suspect that some are afflicted by other social problems, such as abuse or drug addiction.

I do suspect if it were happening out front of my house, on the other hand, that the cat-calls of horny young males accompanied by horns honking and other immaturities that follow these ladies would probably get to me.  I wouldn’t object to the hookers themselves but the noise would certainly affect my lawful “quiet enjoyment” of my residence.  So perhaps the Police aren’t really misstating facts when they claim: “Really this is in response to the change in demographics, the complaints and the comments we have been receiving in increased numbers from the new residents in there, and that is how we are approaching it”.

These women present an interesting moral dilemma if they’re well-appointed, clean, and disease- and drug-free.  Since prostitution itself is not illegal there are limited laws which apply to discouraging their activity, thus failing to appease the needs of the right.  If the victim label cannot be applied to them then does this not reduce the ammunition that the left can bring to bear in flagging this as a social problem?

If people are encouraging law enforcement to herd away prostitutes from newly-high-rent neighbourhoods (as is frequently the case) because it offends their moral sensibilities, or because in some way they’d rather not be reminded of what they consider to be a social problem, then I would find their behaviour, and that of the police, to be quite despicable.  If you feel that strongly that prostitution is a social problem, then you should be working to help those whom you consider to be its victims.  I suspect you might be surprised to find that the notion of being victimized by their customers is news to many of these women.

The sad thing is that more likely than not this is just yet another example of NIMBYism of the worst kind — moving into a neighbourhood where an activity has thrived for years and then clamoring for others to eliminate it.  The police do not exist to service selfishness, in my view.

And, by the way, the corner of Davie and Homer is frequently a stroll for one or two male prostitutes.  Are we as offended by their lingering on corners as we are the women?  It will be interesting to find out.

Dave Sifry Lobbyconning at Web 2.0 in 2007

I attended the Connect09 event this evening and was pleased to see such an active, engaged turnout and such a well-organized event. Hardly the picture one would paint if they’d already drawn the conclusion that the tech economy in this province was dead.  But I did have one of those ironic interactions last night that reveals the clash of cultures that still tends to occur with events such as this in Vancouver.

In speaking with an acquaintance he offered me his card, and asked for mine.  I declined his.. we’ve already emailed and talked on the phone so I know how to reach him, know his role and his company and its relevance to mine.  These things are memorable.  I also mentioned that I don’t have any business cards and don’t intend to get any.

A woman overheard our conversation and mockingly snorted “You came to a networking event and you didn’t bring any business cards?”

Guilty as charged, Ms. … whatwasyourname?

My personal brand is simple and established:  ianbell.com.  Hard to forget once you’ve met me and we’ve had a material conversation.  For those who haven’t met me yet I tend not to have immaterial conversations.  And if I haven’t made enough of an impact that you can remember that much then you probably had too much beer and/or I wasn’t interesting enough for you to pursue acquaintance with.  For the record I find both explanations completely acceptable.

If, on the other hand, I have dazzled you with my brilliance (this is sarcasm, folks) then you should have no difficulty remembering ianbell.com.  After all, you’re here right now.  And I’m no Patrick Bateman:

If I really needed to kill a bunch of trees so that people remembered me, then I would think that my time would probably be better spent looking for more ways to be memorable to the people I met in conference lobbies than in designing the perfect business card in Palatino font on imported off-white 25g weight stock.  Advice which strikes fear into the hearts of Kinkos managers everywhere, I am sure.

During this time the practise of Policy by Press Release rose to prominence as ill-founded concepts like the “Bomber Gap“, “Missile Gap“, and “Submarine Gap” were leveraged to justify a massive expansion in military spending.  U.S. Doctrine from the end of the Vietnam era to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was to essentially outspend the Soviets while engaging them in proxy guerilla wars in weak communist ally states and financing developing countries through the World Bank.  It is thought by many (mostly Pro-Reagan) historians that it was indeed the US Military-Industrial Complex that won the Cold War and bankrupted the Soviet Union by simply outspending them.

Nowadays, we live under the spectre of far more benign [perceived] enemies.  Most of us in the technology industry fear Microsoft’s Goliath and align with Google’s David more meaningfully than any political discourse, though we only rarely cower under our desks in fear of a Vodka-soaked phone call between Steve Ballmer and Eric Schmidt (which I am positive has happened).

Google only stumbled its way into Microsoft’s crosshairs nine years ago, whereas Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates has long sought to get in on the action on the Internet and the Web in particular.  The two are presently in a pitched battle on a number of fronts, including Search (Microsoft recently launched Bing), Mobile (Google’s Android is a pattern-cut copy of MSFT’s Windows Mobile strategy), The Browser (Chrome versus the dreaded IE), Email (Google is making inroads into institutional and corporate email services), and Productivity Applications (Microsoft Office as an app and a hosted service versus a number of nascent Google Apps).

Most recently, Google responded to the Bing launch by going after MSFT’s supposed crown jewels with an announcement about Chrome OS.  Microsoft then parried with its own vapourware announcement about Web Office.  Engaging Microsoft on another front on an increasingly expansive battlefield might seem like the smart thing to do, but as Kevin wrote, Spite is not a business strategy. This is akin to pissing in your neighbour’s yard just because he took a whiz in yours.

The Soviets, like our more modern evil empire whose Kremlin sleeps in the dales just outside Seattle, were more cagey than we might have thought in those days.  They didn’t match the US and NATO move-for-move in force expansion, and rather than counter Reagan’s famous SDI initiative with a Star Wars system of its own, they simply rejiggered their ICBMs to penetrate airspace using different methods and geared fighters up to be able to shoot down satellites from within the mundane confines of our atmosphere.

No … the Soviets didn’t join in the arms race — instead they were quite content to watch their enemy blow its own brains out, expanding US debt in leaps and bounds (US debt doubled under Reagan in a single year, mostly on the back of military spending) while their own programs pursued less lofty goals, financing battlefield weaponry and troops on the ground in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

We didn’t know it at the time, thanks to a lot of propaganda from our own leaders, but the Commies were actually the underdog.  And like any underdog, the Soviets capitalized on American fear and loathing to nurture an inflated perception of its own militarism and level of armament, hoping that the US would collapse under its own weight trying to keep up — and it nearly worked.  Some would argue that it has — and that our current and previous economic hiccups, heaped atop rampant social problems in the US, are the reckoning for decades of rampant Cold War spending — and may not be remedied anytime soon.

Google is apparently trying to match Microsoft on every front in the technology industry — but it too is an underdog.  It’s attempting to do so with far fewer employees (Google has 20K employees – Microsoft has 90K), far fewer financial resources, and no apparent profit model associated with many of these businesses.  Microsoft has also had the benefit of nearly 30 years — all supported by revenue growth in the rising tide of the PC revolution — to expand its business aspirations from its core business of supplying Operating Systems.  Furthermore I would argue that the core of Microsoft is no longer Windows, and has instead long been its much more expensive product offering, Office.

If Google is attempting to parlay its underdog status into some sort of puffer fish role, in forcing Microsoft to compete on many more fronts than search, then the insincerity of these efforts is pretty transparent to most of us.  And it will fail.  I use MS Word and Apple’s Pages, but would not even consider using Google Docs.  As a web app, it delivers a far poorer user experience at the point of my absolute maximum requirement for efficiency and dexterity.  Google’s Chrome browser isn’t much better than Firefox, and as I’ve pointed out frequently, Android is a duplicate of Microsoft’s own floundering efforts in the mobile space with little improvement.

Microsoft is likely snickering (I know I am) as it watches Google’s many flailing attempts to strike it in different arenas.  Particularly so in Operating Systems.  Slapping a GUI onto Linux, particularly when said GUI developer is Google — a company apparently bereft of UX designers — is a cynical, me-too play that will alienate the Linux Community and pale in comparison to OSX.

According to Yahoo Finance! on MSFT and GOOG, Microsoft has 3x the revenue and 20% more cash reserves than Google.  That’s an amiable war chest and revenue stream that means it’s unlikely that Google can cause Microsoft to spend itself into oblivion.  Google, on the other hand, is moving in too many areas and executing poorly in most of them.

If Google truly wants to hurt Microsoft it needs to double-down on a sincere effort to unseat Microsoft Office and Exchange and thereby dominate the ways in which we communicate at work.   Otherwise, much as the Soviet Union really collapsed due to radical downward shifts in the price of oil and lack of access to credit, Google may suffer from a decline in CPC advertising and all of the air will spew out from its puffer fish act.

In May Day parades, the Soviets would invite Western leaders to the review stand, as bombers and missile launchers would run circles past the parade ground.  These Westerners would return to their peers wide-eyed with parables of impressive arrays of weaponry and massively inflated estimates of actual force sizes.  Unlike during the real Cold War, Google’s foe is not self-invested in grandiose estimates of its enemy’s fortitude and the rest of us are quite aware that in many cases, such as the ill-fated Orkut and other flailing products, Google’s emperor has no clothes.

And unlike our former evil empire’s round-faced leader, Ballmer is under no pressure for Perestroika.

It’s a pre-game faceoff between Stan Smyl and Mario Lemieux, with Michael Jackson (yes, here we go again) doing the honours.  Jory asserts that there is actually a confluence:

• The Canucks hosted the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Pacific Coliseum on November 16, 1984 and beat them 7-6.
• Michael Jackson’s Victory Tour stopped in Vancouver to play three shows on November 16, 17 & 18 at BC Place.

It’s possible this is the correct date.  1984 was Lemieux’s first season in the NHL, and (there is no C on his sweater) was not yet captain of the Penguins.

On the contradicting side, Jory also points out that there’s “no red carpet” as there is in this photo.  However, if you look behind Michael Jackson, you’ll notice the penalty box.  The red carpet typically extends from the players’ benches for these sorts of things, since the penalty boxes and scorekeeper’s bench do not have exits, and those benches are clearly behind the photographer.  Furthermore, the photog is clearly standing on the ice, and for safety reasons would only be standing on carpet himself… so just because you don’t see the carpet doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I did some digging and here’s a photo of Michael from 1984, wearing what seems to be the same outfit.

I’ve got to say he really foretold the whole bedazzled revolution, didn’t he, Wal-Mart shoppers?  Must’ve liked that jacket, because here it is again (also in 1984) with the sleeves rolled up.

So there you go, sports fans.  I have resolved this issue of critical importance to the hockey nation.  Michael Jackson did in fact drop the puck at Mario Lemieux’s debut game in Vancouver in November, 1984.  Please now relax, drop an ambien, and head to bed happy.  The speckled one loves hockey.  Though perhaps not as much as Gary Coleman:

Here’s a question:  Where do you host your email?

Gersham and I are rather well-known for a business we started in 2002 called Geekmail.  By 2003, we were on the cutting-edge of IMAP-based email hosting and ran thousands of mail accounts on a cluster of 9 servers hosted at Peer1 Network in Vancouver.  We pushed the envelope in anti-spam technologies: combining advanced whitelisting techniques with behavioural, bayesian and heuristic anti-spam technologies and using our own common-sense approaches to deliver very high anti-spam effectiveness with a too-low-to-track false positive rate.

What we achieved, in essence, was a sort of email nirvana.  In those days, giving someone 1GB to store their email on your server was unheard of… but we did it.  Hosting catch-all email accounts was a novel concept … but we did it.  Hosting custom email domains was tough stuff too, even, but we did it.  We also had a hell of a launch party. 

A couple of things conspired to force us to close Geekmail… a situation which I will always regret:  1)  We were taken to court by a fool fellow whom we’d (our mistake) taken on as a business partner, and whose sole objective was to kill the company; and 2)  Google launched Gmail.  The latter was far more significant since it was A)  Free and B)  From the web’s hottest property.

Now, this all is the long way of explaining that I am perhaps something of an email geek.  I’ve used one form of computer-based electronic mail or another since 1985.  I co-founded Geekmail, of course, and also did a considerable amount of strategic work for FrontBridge — the world’s #2 message management service provider before its acquisition by Microsoft in 2005.  BuzMe and RingCentral, two Unified Communications services I helped bring to market, were among the first to deliver voicemail to their users via email (believe me, a novel concept in 1999/2000).

Be that as it may, it rather surprises me that even today GMail (which has been in Beta for 5 years) still pales in a number of key features (including anti-spam) to the technologies and quality of services we provided with Geekmail.  While we didn’t have nearly the scaling issues that Gmail has to deal with (except for in our very early days) we never experienced the kind of multi-hour outages that Gmail regularly hands to its users.  We also focused the users’ experience on Secure IMAP, not a web-based interface (though we had one of those too) and offered lots and lots of storage to go with it.  And in our later version of Geekmail, the anti-spam functions were tweakable: if you didn’t like the default settings, you could turn on and off different techniques that were used to combat spam on your inbox.

When we were forced to let Geekmail die a rapid death, we scrambled around to find a company who could take our subscribers and whose service closely mirrored our own.  The short answer was:  there weren’t any.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I began talking with John Capo; founder and operator of Tuffmail.  In addition to being a pretty nice guy, John runs a service that is the closest analog to Geekmail that I can find anywhere.  In my view this ranks Tuffmail as the very best email service provider for email geeks anywhere.  And so it has been for about 4 years that I have blissfully run my personal email address at ianbell.com on this service — and am now at a point where it is so critical to how I do my daily business and live my life that I would be miserable without it.

As these screen shots should reveal, Tuffmail is literally like having your own mail server cluster up in the sky somewhere.  By that I mean practically every aspect of its functioning is customizable to your whims and needs.  I can change how it responds to spam, I can block certain servers from sending me mail, I can blacklist any email sender from connecting to the server, and so much more.  I can also have a catch-all, which many email hosts hate to do because it creates spam honeypots, but which has become a critical means for managing my accounts online.

I don’t do any filtering or routing of email at the client level.  This would be impossible, since I access email from four different devices on a day-to-day basis.  Instead, I have input a complex set of rules into Tuffmail’s extremely robust email rules interface (sorry I can’t show you this — classified!) and all incoming mail is stored in the appropriate folder when I check it from my MacBook Pro, my iPhone, my Mac Pro, or whatever.  Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, yahOo! Mail, your ISP’s Mail Server — they all wither by comparison because they don’t allow this sort of granularity — and because they don’t fully embrace standards-based IMAP email messaging.

I keep all my mail, as well, nearly 5GB at the moment.  So if you said something in 2005, it’s pretty easy for me to find that message in my email clients (this could be the reason why mail.app sucks up most of the free memory on my MacBook Pro) and regurgitate it.  This is extremely handy and it reaffirms email’s rightful place at the fulcrum of my life (sad but true).  This is only possible because I have an enlightened email hosting provider who A) embraces large mailboxes and B) embraces large message sizes, which means I can send around presentations and big graphics files without fear of them bouncing back (unless the receiver’s mail server is a dunce, of course).

I don’t ever receive spam in my InBox anymore, because I have the settings and filters perfectly tweaked to my needs on Tuffmail.  But blocking spam is easy these days.  The real problem is blocking it without also blocking legitimate messages — this is much much harder.  And this is where GMail, which uses the Postini service (which is not directly integrated to GMail), tends to fall over.

Have you ever heard the excuse “Oh, I sent you the email, but maybe it got caught in your spam filter….” before?  Sure you have.  That doesn’t happen to me.  The benefit of the Realtime Reports (screen shot above) is that I can go in to the server logs  and actually see when a message flew through or was rejected by the Tuffmail server hierarchy.  I just view the page, do a Firefox search for the person’s email address, and if they sent a message it’ll be there.  I’ve caught anyone who’s ever made that excuse to me in a white lie… not that I hold it against them.  🙂

There is one downside to all of this, of course… with Tuffmail, I have created a monster.  I have so many settings and tweaks, and I have the spam filters so well-trained, that the pain of moving to another provider would be excruciating.  Most likely, I never will.

I don’t endorse products very frequently (and I never do it for any sort of remuneration) — but Tuffmail is one of those rare birds that truly deserves the kudos.  Email hosting is a tough business and in many ways I’m glad I’m no longer in it.  On the other hand, when I use Tuffmail I get pangs of jealousy and nostalgia.  Ah, what could have been!

Below is a chart on several key players, some relevant data, and what I think I might try to do:

	Roberto Luongo Age: 30 Salary:  $6.75mm Expires:  2010 W-L:33-13-7 GAA: 2.34
It becomes quite difficult to solidify a reputation as the best goalie in the league when you continually play for dog teams that can’t perform in the playoffs.  This team (and every team you’ve played for) leans far too heavily on your unique talent but east of Cambie street you get very little respect in this league.Giving you the captaincy (even without the C sewn on) was a bullshit PR move and could only have served to cause you to lose focus and get off the bead of what it is that you do so well.  Get back to being “just” the greatest goalie ever, stick with us through some changes, and for emotional balance leverage the two guys you have in your own back yard that have lots of mental toughness and carried weak teams through the playoffs:  Richard Brodeur and Kirk McLean.  The armchair GM would be happy to hire them as consultants to focus on the mental aspects of your play.
	Mattias Ohlund Age: 32 Salary:  $3.5mm Expires:  2009 25 points
I think we’re going to lose you to an East Coast team in bidding this summer. Vancouver fans don’t respect your contribution enough.  I think you’ve had a tough couple of years trying to fit into the Vigneault system, which has required you to take too many penalties and lose focus from your offensive play.I don’t want to lose your grit, but the budget’s tight.  I’d like to sign you to a multi-year contract at your present salary, but I doubt you’d go for that considering who’s been calling.  So I would hope to keep you here with a two-year at $2.5mm — and it’ll be hard to find room under the cap for that.  You’re a franchise player.  Stay here 3-4 more years and we’ll retire your jersey, give you a shot at a cup with some rebuilding, and you can play in front of the home crowd for Sweden in 2010.
	Sami Salo Age: 35 Salary:  $3.5mm Expires:  2011 25 points
What, are you made of porcelain?  We need you to play a whole season.  Please ensconse yourself in bubble wrap and suspend yourself with bungee rope in a lcoked room between games.  We’d like the keys to your Porsche — we’ll be sending a driver in an armoured, padded vehicle with a 7-point safety harness to pick you up for games from now on.If you can put together a full season you’re awesome — but we can’t keep backfilling you.  Fans love you.  I like saying your name with a Squire Barnes lisp.  What the hell: you can’t go anywhere, we’re not trading you… get out of my office and back to the gym (though please pick up some tensor braces and make sure you stretch thoroughly in order to prevent injury or strain).  Please do not buy a Segway or any two-wheeled vehicle.
	Taylor Pyatt Age: 27 Salary:  $1.575mm Expires:  2009 19 points
You are six-feet four, and you weigh 235 lbs.  In today’s NHL that is neither lean enough to be fast, nor thick enough to be tough.  You’re a UFA this summer.  I don’t understand why Vigneault continues to throw you on the ice in critical situations — end of the game, power plays, penalty kills, etc.  You are almost always behind the play.You were a healthy scratch several times in the past two years.  You are being given chances to showcase your skills (probably because we were hoping to trade your ass) but you’ve really let us down.  19 points in 69 games, especially given the guys you’ve played with, means you haven’t been a factor at all.You have NO grit, speed, nor puck-handling dexterity.Happy to let you go — but if you want to stay here 1) figure out what kind of player you are, 2) hire a personal trainer and develop this summer, and 3) we’ll pay you $1M on a one-year contract.  Sorry about your tragic loss, but this is a business.
	Mason Raymond Age: 23 Salary:  $833.33K Expires:  2010 (RFA) 23 points
In your case, I don’t think the stats have told the story.  You’re a hungry, fiery player with grit and I feel that AV has completely underutilized you.  For a 6’0 guy to be the team’s fastest skater is impressive.  You’ve gotten your feet wet in the league, you played your way onto this roster, and you’ve tasted the playoffs.  Now you need to play your way up to the second line.  I think you could be huge as a forechecker and your hands are awesome.This is your sophomore NHL summer.  You’re only 165 lbs. soaking wet.  Would like to see you bulk up without losing speed, just to prevent you from getting knocked around too much.  Work on the upper body, not just the legs, and eat a sandwich once in a while.  You’re great kid, now get out of my office so I can deal with the next guy.
	Willie Mitchell Age: 32 Salary:  $3.2mm Expires:  2010 23 points
Hockey loves the hometown boys.  Port McNeill is pretty close to Vancouver.  Check.OK somebody liked you last summer and gave you a pretty rockin’ deal despite a weak season.  This year you did a lot better, so she time is right to keep that momentum and own the zone.  At times this year I watched you and you seemed to have your head in the clouds, crossing over inexplicably and floating the puck when a slap-pass was required.  Your turnover stats look pretty bad.  You are, though, a big part of the breakout.  If Ohlund goes this summer, you’re a huge part of the defensive corps and the younger kids will be looking to you for leadership.  At times you seem disinterested in defensive play.  Get angry in September and find your grit.Step up, and we’ll renew next summer — no probs.  Want you to finish your career here.
	Alex Burrows Age: 28 Salary:  $2mm Expires:  2010 51 points
You have played your way onto every team throughout your career.  With 52 points in 82 games you have really delivered in 2008-2009, particularly since AV has not always played you on top lines.  You’re probably the fittest player on the team, and a role model for guys making twice your salary.Your unique attribute is your work  ethic.  You need some bulk up top, because when you eventually settle into second line left-winger status you’re going to get tossed around like a bean bag.  I think you’re going to look like the bargain of the century in two years.  We’ll get you a speedy centre to get things going.
	Kyle Wellwood Age: 25 Salary:  $998K Expires:  2009 27 points
I’ve known and played with a lot of guys like you who never got the chance to play in The Show.  You’re immensely, naturally gifted as a player but as a teenager it always came so easily to you that you never really developed a work ethic.  After a few years with the Leafs you became a guy constantly on the bubble, and nowadays that is what is driving you.Wake-up call:  We signed you and put you on waivers (for no really good reason) last year after you failed the fitness test, and nobody even called.This is it.  I’ll sign you right now for $800K for a year because I know I’m the only guy who’ll take a chance.  You’re still on the bubble.  We saw flashes of brilliance this year, but you’re still falling behind.  That’s OK if you use this summer as your time to train like crazy, make me a liar, and come back to camp in lean and mean shape with some speed that can match those hands.  Keep skating all summer.
	Mats Sundin Age: 38 Salary:  $7mm Expires:  2009 28 points
You’re no Neidermeyer.  You’ve proven that you can’t sit out half the season and expect to compete in the NHL.  You came back from semi-retirement old and slow and not nearly pissed-off enough.  You hoped the Sedins and Luongo would carry you to your ring but we did not get the leadership on the ice I’d expect to see from a guy who’s been a consistent 70-80 point-getter for 10 years — and one that we paid $4 million bucks for.So yes, this is goodbye.  There’s no role on this team for you, but I think you knew that.  I always knew you were a summer rental.  See you at the retirement press conference, and enjoy the flight back to Sweden.  And when the Rangers call?  Don’t do it.  You’ll smear your glorious Leafs legacy (choke).
	Ryan Kesler Age: 24 Salary:  $1.75mm Expires:  2010 59 points
When we originally signed you, we thought you were the next Trevor Linden.  It hasn’t exactly been an easy path, and so you were often on the bubble.  This past year you really shined.  What I’d like to see you deliver is a 75-80 point season in 2009/2010 as a center.  If so, you could be our future and we’ll hit you with a contract at least as sweet as your wild-eyed three-year, $2.475-million entry level contract a few years ago.Time to step up and deliver on the promise that we saw when we passed up Mike Richards and Corey Perry for your ass.  I’d like to think you could be the captain of the team but not yet.  One more season like this year’s and we’ll talk about it when you’re up next sumer.  You play better when you’re hungry.  You ought to be a second-line centre by now.
	Kevin Bieksa Age: 27 Salary:  $3.75mm Expires:  2012 43 points
This was the best year of your career, despite a couple of injuries that had us leery.  You’ve showed real toughness at times and delivered 43 points offensively which made you the top-scoring D-man on the team.We have however noticed your defensive play suffering.  You’ve made some brutal bets on the pinch and lost, creating momentum-killing 2-on-1s and leading to some highlight reel goals for other teams.  Luongo can only do so much to cover for a defenseman who’s not even in the play.  Additionally, while we like your grit, we hate your timing.  Pitchforking that guy in Game 5 vs. Chicago with 6 minutes to go almost definitely cost us a Game 7.Clean it up and work on your D game and you’ll be worth every penny.
	The Sedins (H D) Age: 28 Salary:  $3.58mm Expires:  2009 82 points each
You each got 82 points this year — one each per game — with no injuries.  Once again, you were absent for much of the playoffs.  You need to understand that people will key in on you and work with the Right Winger we give you.  Because you are a package deal, any team that signs you to a big contract is going to mortgage their whole future to do so.  I know the Rangers will call. Anyone who can sign you both won’t be able to field a very good team beyond your line.We have invested a lot in you and consider you to be franchise players.  I would match any offer up to $4mm each and for 3-4 years, but above that I’m pretty hamstrung by trying to surround you with the league’s best goalie and a strong D.  But ANYONE who signs you at your presumed asking price, given that there are two of you, will be challenged to surround you with a talented team.
	Alain Vigneault2007 Jack Adams award winner 2007/08: 39-33-10 2008/09: 45-27-10
Some coaches are able to work their magic in the locker room, some do it by running perfect practices, and others do it behind the bench.  In the regular season great practices, and solid locker room and off-ice leadership keep teams healthy, prepared, and in-the-game.  In the playoffs, though, coaches do their work behind the bench.As this was your first career NHL playoff run as a coach, I guess we can’t be too harsh with you for losing.  I have to be honest — watching what happened in Chicago, where the Hawks clearly changed the entire complexion of the play without any adjustment or response from the Canucks — I wanted to fire you.  But then, reflecting on the stats of the regular season, I think we just need to develop you and get you some help.Speaking of which…
	Trevor Linden Requires no introduction.
Hey Trev, ‘sup?  Feeling refreshed after a year off, freed from the shackles of watching Naslund flail as a Captain and watching the NHLPA eat itself alive trying to maneouvre with that weasel Gary Bettman?We miss you.  Fans still show up to games wearing #16 jerseys.  You cast a long shadow, my friend, and rumour from some former Canucks players has it that even thought you didn’t wear the “C” these last few years in Vancouver, you were.  Suffice to say:  You cast a long shadow.Within the next 16 months, Ryan Walter or Rick Bowness will be moving on.  I’d say you’re a shoo-in for Assistant Coach.  The salary sucks, but face it — you bleed blue and green.
	Cody Hodgson Age: 19 Salary:  $875K Expires:  2011
I think we made the smart decision growing you slowly this year, sending you to the Battallion, letting you play on Team Canada in the Canada-Russia series, and now pulling you up to the Moose.  Your play has been exceptional — now you know what it’s like to spread your wings and rock the ice and be a dominant force.Next season please arrive at camp prepared to play in the NHL.  Speed and dexterity are your biggest assets, and you’re big enough not to get tossed around.  Toughness and grit will have to come over time.  You’d make a great roommate for Burrows — only you’re a little more talented than Burrows — because he’ll keep you focused on your fitness and work ethic.  Don’t let this go to your head, we’ll give you a lot of PP ice time next year, probably playing on the Right Wing.
	Marian Gaborik MINNESSOTA Age: 34 Salary:  $3.2mm Expires:  2009
Wanted:  RIGHT WINGER who can hold his own with the Sedins, stand in front of the net when he has to, and wire shots top-corner while hapless defensemen chase the Swedes around in the corners.  Hey Marian, know anybody?Oh that’s right… your pal Pavol is on the Canucks, hit 53 points, and will be here til summer 2010.  Unless of course we can’t attract you as a free agent this summer, in which case we’re going to trade his ass (he nets a $4 million salary).  Since your injury makes you a bit of a risk, I’ll throw $3.5mm on a one-year contract to you but would discuss anything up to $4.0mm on a two-year deal.  If the latter, then you’ll be riding to games in the bubble van with Sami Salo.We’ll try you with the Sisters, and if that doesn’t work out I’m sure you’ll enjoy spinning around the ice with Demitra.  And hey, Willie’s here too… you remember him?
	Ossi Vaananen Age: 28 Salary:  $1mm Expires:  2009
I checked my magic 8-Ball: “future hazy”.  Will re-sign for 2 years at $875K.  Otherwise, seeya.  Thanks.  See you in September.  PS – there are too many vowels in your name.
	Alexander Radulov Age: 22 Salary: $919K Expires: 2009
Ok now, if ever there is a Russian player destined for first-line greatness in the NHL, it is 22-year-old Alexander Radulov.  He is, though, the centre of a huge controversy between the NHL and the Russian Kontinental Hockey League.  Last year, though he was signed to a pithy $1mm contract with the Predators, he ended up inking a three year deal worth $13mm with the KHL’s Salavat Yulaev Ufa.  This contract was signed days before a treaty agreement was reached between the NHL and KHL regarding transfer of players. The Russians view this as payback for the yanking of Ovechkin and Malkin, among a host of others, into the NHL from domestic clubs. What’s happened to the Preds now is essentially what might have happened to the Canucks had they not been able to lure Bure overseas after picking him so many years ago.  This summer, the stage is set for a Battle Royale between the NHL and the KHL’s Alexander Medvedev — the outcome of which might mean Radulov’s return to the National Hockey League as an unrestricted free agent.  This will be THE story of the summer.
	Maxim Afinogenov Age: 29 Salary: $3.5mm Expires: 2009
Building on the Russian Right-Winger theme:  Hey Max!  How would you like to play with the twins?  I know things have been sucking in Buffalo lately.  You need a change of pace!  Your scoring is off, but I think you’ve got potential.I’d throw you a three-year, $3.0mm bone to head over to Vancouver where the ladies will love ya, the Sedins will pass to you, and you can head back up the roster to the first line and net around 75+ points.  Sound good?  Sign here.

Going back over this post, I have committed the Canucks to around $50mm, give or take $2mm.  For instance I’d obviously be happy to say goodbye to Pyatt were Afinogenov to be lured to the team.  But with a cap of $56.7mm next season for team salaries, that leaves very little room and I have filled 15 of 23 roster spots.

According to HockeyBuzz O’Brien, Bernier, Rypien, and Hansen are also key free agents this year.  They will be demanding salary bumps and presently the four of them account for about $4.5mm all in.  Add to that Edler’s $3.25mm salary, Demitra’s $4mm, and various odds & ends, and that’s another $9mm unaccounted for in my planning.

The reality is that the Canucks are not going to be able to strengthen the roster substantially from within the Free Agency market.  The youth movement, as Chicago has evidenced, where underpaid young players overperform, is where teams get a solid strategic advantage these days. This places heavy emphasis on Hodgson to crack the lineup and be a dominant player in 2009-2010, as the Canucks don’t have much else under development.

That said, a couple of things happened this past year:  1)  Salaries inflated across the board, but teams are seeing revenue decline, and 2) The economy collapsed, and the NHL started talking about lowering the cap in the next few years.  This will see teams being far more conservative in their offers to Free Agents, which will be enhanced by the frankly startling diversity of talent that is set to hit the market in June.

So:  Will Ohlund take a pay cut to stay with the only NHL team he has ever known?  Will Bernier (and other teams) recognize that he’s not worth $2.5mm yet?  Will Hank and Daniel bankrupt the team that has developed them into Top 20 players by making a big cash grab, or would they like a shot at the cup?  If they reach for a $6mm salary each, as some suspect, the twins and Luongo alone could account for more than one third of the team’s salary cap at nearly $20mm.

Mike Gillis has a real problem.  If few or none of these situations plays in his favour, then I suspect it’ll be 5 or more years before they have a team in contention… and they’ll have to do something the Canucks are rarely successful at doing:  developing a group of players from the draft into top-line players right away.  It could be a very long winter indeed, even by Vancouver fans’ standards.

… all of which underpins the fact that, strong or not, this was probably Vancouver’s best chance at a Stanley Cup for the past 15 years, and at least the next 5.