Rob Cottingham

Category: Vancouver

  • Vancity takes on climate change with new mortgage

    One of the best things about having a client like Vancity is that they never stop doing astonishingly cool things worth passing on.

    Their latest initiative kind of takes my breath away (and then kindly gives it back again).

    Usually, when a bank or credit union offers a new mortgage product, they spend money hand over fist on TV ads, print ads, brochures, balloons, clowns, elephants… whatever it takes to sell it.

    Vancity and Citizens Bank are doing something different. They’re making a deal with their customers: “If you don’t make us lift a finger to sell this new mortgage to you – if you just phone up and ask for it – we’ll take the money we would have spent promoting it, and invest it in a fund to fight climate change.”

    They call it the Climate Change Mortgage. (I call it the Don’t-Make-Me-Come-Back-There Mortgage, which is why they don’t hire me to name their product lines.)

    Their site explains the potential:

    • The average mortgage in Canada = $250,000
    • Take 10 basis points or one 10th of a per cent each year of that mortgage
      over a five-year term = $1,250 per mortgage into the fund
    • 100 Climate Change mortgages = $125,000 in the fund over 5 years
    • 1,000 Climate Change mortgages = $1.25 million in the fund over 5 years
    • 10,000 = $12 million and so on.

    The remarkable thing about their pitch is that it doesn’t appeal to customers’ wallets; you don’t save a dime over their usual mortgage rates. Instead, they’re appealing directly to the prospect that a customer’s choice of mortgage could make a difference in one of the greatest challenges of our time.

    They also acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers yet:

    Right now we have our Vancity and Citizens Bank of Canada climate change experts exploring the best way to invest the funds. It also depends how big the fund gets, but at this point we expect our focus will be on ways to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

    We will keep you posted as we continue to work with the brightest minds in the climate change field to determine how the fund can be used to have the highest impact.

    If you’re interested, check out their web site or call them at 1-866-566-6651.

    Incidentally, Vancity CEO Dave Mowat talks about the Climate Change Mortgage on YouTube:

    Between that and his blogging on ChangeEverything, he’s just a podcast away from a Web 2.0 trifecta.

  • The crocuses are up, and our cherry tree is covered in little pink buds

    There, I’ve said it. Readers east of the Coast Mountains, you may commence hating me… now.

  • ThinkCity: What are your budget priorities, Vancouver?

    This just in from the Think City folks:

    ACTION BULLETIN: Submit Your Budget Priorities By Friday, Feb. 16

    Dear Think City Supporter,

    Vancouver’s 2007 budget will be decided by March 13 and Think City wants to hear your priorities for the city.

    Please complete the Citizen Budget Priorities 2007 form on our web site at thinkcity.ca by Feb. 16.

    This is a prosperous city – but not everyone is benefiting. Homelessness is up. Rents are skyrocketing. Buses are overcrowded. Our public services – like our libraries – are under threat of budget cuts.

    For me, as a former library board trustee, I know our cherished library system isn’t able to fully serve the public because of the lack of adequate public funding.

    Longer opening hours. More storytimes for children up to the age of five years. More access to public computer terminals. More materials in other languages to reflect Vancouver’s diversity. These are all things citizens want from their library, but there just isn’t enough funding to provide them. These are my priorities for city council’s 2007 budget. What are your priorities?

    It only takes a minute to let Mayor Sam Sullivan and city council know what you want for your city, so please go right now to thinkcity.ca and fill out the online comment form. Think City will pass on your comments to council at the Feb. 20 special public meeting on the $840-million annual city budget.

    Regards,
    Anita Zaenker,
    Think City board member and former Vancouver Public Library trustee

    P.S. The more submissions we can send in, the harder it will be for Vancouver city council to ignore citizens. Please forward this message to a friend.

  • Mandatory recycling in Vancouver?

    Over at ChangeEverything.ca, Kate is asking whether you support mandatory recycling in Vancouver – including fines for miscreants.

    I’m voting “yes”, but with a heavy heart. Why is it so damned hard to buy things that don’t need throwing away in the first place? Why am I a freak for wanting milk or takeout food in returnable, reusable containers?

    And why do we make recycling so hard? Cardboard boxes have to be not just flattened, but sliced up. Any plastics other than nos. 1 and 2 are verboten.

    And why is this stinking cold still clinging to my throat with talons of fire?! And does that have anything to do with the crotchety tone of this post?

  • You could be The Tyee’s new webmaster

    One of the nicest, most talented folks in Vancouver’s independent media scene is leaving town. Dawn Buie is off to Toronto… which means there’s a dream job opening up at The Tyee:

    Position title: Webmaster, Full time
    Salary: Competitive; based on experience
    Application deadline: Wednesday February 14th, 2007
    Start date: Late February – early March

    The Tyee is expanding its team. Are you the newest member of BC’s best independent online news source?

    Personality Traits and Interests:

    You enjoy figuring out how things work and continually improving systems. You are a calm and articulate communicator and enjoy helping others solve their technical problems.

    You are a whiz at HTML, know what a URL, RSS feed and a podcast are, and you keep up to date on the latest web fads by reading your favorite blogs and books. You’ve maintained or built a few basic websites and you want to keep expanding your repertoire of web skills.

    You’ve used Photoshop to crop images, change resolution and color balance. You know the difference between a .jpg and .png. You know what QuickTime, RealMedia, Flash and YouTube are, and that one of these is not a format.

    You are able to manage your time well, can prioritize tasks, and always respond promptly to emails.

    You are detail oriented, and will find it quite normal to maintain a log of daily activities, back up site log data and will store your documents in a logical manner. You may have enjoyed creating lists and queries in Microsoft Excel or an OpenOffice spreadsheet program, or have used an Access or a MySQL database.

    You will be The Tyee’s ‘power-user’. While you will not be responsible for the development of new site features, or high level maintenance, you will be expected to have a strong understanding of how the web site works, how the various systems on The Tyee work, and be expected to be able to independently and confidently troubleshoot common site problems.

    Required responsibilities:

    • General trouble-shooting and systems maintenance.
    • Add and update office email addresses, email aliases and help office staff set up their personal email accounts and spam filters.
    • Format, copy-edit and send Tyee eNewsletters. Answer subscriber questions.
    • Format articles in HTML (using a program like bbedit or Homesite), and publish the content to the site using the Bricolage CMS. You will also be asked to make fixes to Tyee stories throughout the day, and to help other staff troubleshoot posting on Bricolage.
    • Monitor and moderate reader comment forums, and respond to basic problems.
    • Ensure that articles, graphics, audio, video, and podcast files are properly hosted and displayed on the Tyee – using Bricolage.
    • Work as part of team with the editors, business director, consultants and programmers on implementation of new web features.

    Other potential responsibilities, depending on skill and interest:

    If you have strong skills and experience as a copy-editor, this position could be tailored differently to incorporate that responsibility.

    Qualifications, skills and abilities:

    Required:

    • 3+ years of webmaster experience
    • HTML expertise
    • Basic understanding of CSS
    • Experience with databases such as MySQL, Access, or Excel
    • Ability and desire to learn new programs, concepts and languages
    • Strong Photoshop skills
    • Basic editing and formatting of audio and video files
    • Strong communication and interpersonal skills
    • Keen eye for detail, self-directed, analytical. Takes initiative, curious, able to solve problems on one’s own, and knows how and when to ask for help.
    • Has an interest in new web technologies, web publishing, and in particular, independent online media.

    *** There will be at least a one-month overlap and in-depth training with the Web Technology Director.

    Application information

    Applicants must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Applicants must also be willing to work mostly in the Tyee’s Vancouver office, so only applicants living in the Greater Vancouver area will be considered.

    If you have expertise in other programming languages, please include that information in your resume.

    Please send resume, including at least two professional references, and a brief cover letter to Michelle Hoar at mhoar@thetyee.ca with subject line “Webmaster job posting.”

    Application deadline is Wednesday February 14th, 2007.

    Interviews will take place between February 16th and 20th, and the position will start as early as possible. Only applicants considered for interview will be contacted.

    Salary is competitive, and based on experience

  • “Women on Top” to run at UBC

    I’ve corresponded with Matthew Klippenstein a few times over the past few years, and found him to be an engaging, entertaining writer. Now I learn that, in addition to being an engineer at Ballard Power Systems, he’s also a playwright.

    So I’m pretty disappointed that I’ll have to miss the staging of his first play… but that doesn’t mean you have to!

    The details (updated – dates changed):

    This is part of UBC’s Classics Week, so it’s based on an old Greek comedy (“the assemblywomen”) wherein a bunch of women disguise themselves as men, enter the Assembly (Athenian Parliament) and vote themselves absolute power. And since it’s a Greek comedy, it’s got the three C’s: a chorus, cross-dressing, and coarse humour. All fortified with three musical numbers!

    Dates: Jan. 27-30 (Saturday through Tuesday)
    Time: 8 p.m. (with a 3 p.m. performance on Jan 28)
    Cost: $10 (I think)

    Show: “Women on top”

    Plot: The women of ancient Athens disguise themselves as men and vote themselves absolute power. Hilarity ensues

    Where: Dettwiller Theatre, in the Dettwiller Pavilion of the UBC Hospital, just south of the main building (Google map)

    Parking: Hospital parking is expensive, but there’s free parking after 6 p.m. all along Western Parkway just south of University Boulevard. (See map.)

    Tickets: if you know when you can make it, I’ll pass the news along to the co-producer / booker, to keep some seats open at that show :-)

  • What the hell is this icon?

    The nice people at Bloglines offer a number of services apart from aggregating RSS feeds… and one of them is weather forecasts.

    But check out Thursday in their seven-day forecast:

    Weather forecast

    What the hell is that? Did Doctor Who wet himself inside the Tardis?

  • Get started blogging, keep your New Year’s resolutions… and win $500

    Our good friends (and clients) at Vancity are running a contest on ChangeEverything.ca. The $500 first prize is great, but the cool thing about it as far as I’m concerned is, it’s the ideal way for a beginner to dip their toes into the blogging waters.

    Here’s how the Viva la resolution! contest works in five easy steps:

    1. You sign up on the site. (It’s free, and no salesperson will call.)
    2. You decide on a resolution – something you want to change in 2007 about yourself, your community or your world.
    3. You blog on the site about your progress in making that change and include the tag (i.e. keyword) “resolution”.
    4. A panel of judges checks out your resolution and blog posts, and picks out the top three resolutions.
    5. If yours is one of them, you walk away with a $50, $100 or $500 Visa gift card.

    So why’s it ideal for a beginning blogger? Here are five handy reasons:

    • ChangeEverything.ca is a friendly community. Your chances of getting helpful, supportive comments are excellent.
    • It takes just seconds to set up a blog, and you have an instant built-in readership: the hundreds of other members of ChangeEverything.ca, and the thousands of visitors to the site.
    • Site moderator Kate Dugas is happy to help you if you run into a roadblock.
    • If you made New Year’s resolutions, you have built-in fodder for writing blog posts.
    • A $500 Visa gift card would be a pretty good reward for a first outing.

    So if you know someone who’s been itching to start blogging, this could be the ticket. (And feel free to download the poster [PDF, 250kb] for the contest if you want to spread the word.)

  • Small victories: recycled toilet paper at London Drugs

    If you’re downtown over the next few days, and you want to make a little difference, you might want to drop into the London Drugs branch at Granville and Georgia and ask for the recycled toilet paper. Dawn Buie did, and describes what happened on ChangeEverything.ca:

    3 months ago I asked the London Drugs on Granville Street to stock recycled toilet paper. They never did. Last week I spoke to the manager and made the same request. At first he responded that recycled toilet paper didn’t exist. I told him I was able to buy it from their Hastings Street store.

    He then changed his tune, and said because they had such a small store there wasn’t room to stock recycled toilet paper, and no one would buy it. I said- oh so you did stock it before?

    He said yes they had done tests but no one bought it.

    I said- times are changing. Perhaps you should try stocking it again.

    So he took my phone number and agreed to bring in some packages. i just got the call that they have arrived.

    I’m going to go buy as package from them tomorrow and I think it would be great if anyone who has the chance go there and make the same request.

    Ideally it would be the only kind they should stock in a small store.

    If you do end up doing it, and bless your heart if you did, then be sure to drop by Dawn’s thread and let her know.

  • BC Place: Now the weather INside is frightful, too

    Egads. And you thought it was just our driving that falls apart when there’s a little snow on the ground.

    Here’s hoping nobody was hurt.

  • Where to go see salmon in the Vancouver area?

    You’d think we’d all be issued little booklets with this information the moment we cross into the city limits, but no. So all you old Vancouver hands: where should we go to take our kids and see a salmon run?

  • Do you have spare winter clothes? Someone needs them.

    I’ll let Kate do the talking:

    There are some really cold people in Vancouver right now. I was struggling trying to figure out how I could get my extra scarves, blankets and hats to them because my car won’t drive in this stuff. Then I thought I would call some car rental places. I ended up talking to someone at the Car Coop and it looks like they might lend me a car.

    I need to get a sense of numbers and I need to keep it all in one place. This is going to be a lot to organize. So, if you have stuff that I could come pick up, please let me know by replying to this ChangeEverything.ca post.

    Also will you do what you can to spread the word? We’ve gotta move quick. These folks are having a really hard time. Please consider sending this email to all the people you know in Vancouver who might have an extra scarf or a couple of bucks – it will really make a difference to some folks who are having a really hard day today. (plus they might get a visit from me ;)

    Kate

    ps – if you or someone you know wants to help me out, I’d be glad for the company.