William Stratas' Weblog

Greetings again, everyone! Blame the absence on software matters, blame it on client matters, good and bad, but I'm back!

Today, Planetcast released a web communication service for members of my business networking group, based in downtown Toronto. It's a referral forwarding script and a general e-mail contact script that allows us to network business referrals amongst ourselves from anywhere in the world. Very cool! So to all my colleagues at BNI Bay Street, I say: enjoy!

I attended an architectural presentation last night, at the Royal Ontario Museum, in downtown Toronto. A major design competition now is in its final two weeks. Three firms are presenting their detailed plans for renovation and expansion of the museum, a project headlined as Renaissance ROM. Culled from dozens of respondents who were in the original pool of architects, the three remaining firms have starkly contrasting views of how to expand the space and maintain respect for the heritage of the two original wings of the museum.

Presenting last night was Andrea Bruno Architects, from Turin Italy. He used a translator, which was fine, except that the rambling discourse and disjointed visuals were somewhat incomprehensible. Yes, I understood his idea of a roofline as a unity over underground vaults, something he pioneered in a small project in Cyprus, apparently, but such references seemed out of context for a major urban project.

Bruno's entranceway on Bloor Street struck me as being utterly undistinguished, and the intersection of a Totem pole through the roofline at entrance was simply bizarre. OK, I'm no trained critic but this proposal is going nowhere, I hope.

There is another presentation tonight and I will be there to gauge its potential

I'm back online and out from underground these last many days. A big project is happening and it's been total focus on that. So I'll resume the usual commentary starting later tonight.

The power of deliberate, randomized surfing: This afternoon I was doing a diagnostic traceroute for a down server, and happened to select a tracing server at the National Technical University of Athens. Then I clicked through to the English home page for the University and discovered this gem of a feature: a real-time traffic congestion map for Athens. Apparently the city is wired with sensors and a snapshot is generated at the transportation control centre every 30 seconds. If you've ever visited the capital of Greece, you know how bad the congrestion is. This web tool will be very useful to watch in August 2004, during the summer Olympic games -- assuming the Greeks are ready!

Yesterday and today, I've spent some time consulting with our client, Millennium Media Television Enterprises, regarding a response to attacks from Canada's national broadcaster, CBC, in a television report that will air tonight. Various options are being considered, and I'll await Millennium's decision.

Canada's national broadcaster is a financial sink hole, sucking away close to $1 billion annually from Canadian taxpayer pockets. Millennium is a small private production company, 3 years old, with a solid stable of well-watched programs. Thanks to the web, Millennium has a global platform to put its case out there in response to this public relations assault. This is a perfect example of a crisis communications role for corporate web sites. I'll be in touch tomorrow with Millennium's CEO, Garth Turner, and Planetcast will stand ready to assist.

I shared a great 3-1/2 hour dinner meeting tonight with Victor Crowl and Jason Burke, of Smile Music & Film Productions, Toronto. We became acquainted with each other a few months ago through membership in BNI Canada, where Jason is member of the St. Clair/Yonge chapter, and Victor is a new member at my home chapter, Bay Street. I'm sure that some interesting news releases will be published in future as a result of our collaborations. We had dinner at Johnny's Garden Restaurant, on Dundas just west of Bay Street. I consider Johnny's to be Planetcast's executive dining room, because Johnny Wong hosts me for lunch meetings several times each week. Back in March 2000 I also hosted Doc Searls, senior editor of Linux Journal (who was in town to speak at the InternetWorld Canada conference), at Johnny's Restaurant and I'm sure that Doc still recalls the ambience and hospitality of that night.

After a wild and crazy day, tonight I've run into a fascinating collection of stories about golf and business. One fascinating section recounts how Scott McNealy, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Tiger's dad, Earl Woods, feel about the game they all play so passionately. Also published is a summary of handicaps of 230 top U.S. business leaders - does this corelate to corporate performance?