One of the more agreeable drawbacks of being in the media business for these many years (nearly 40) is that we are frequently celebrating an anniversary of one kind or another.
Our rough rule of thumb is that it’s not much worth celebrating until you get to 10 and still there needs to be a very good reason.
I was thinking the other day it would be just as meaningful (sometimes even more so) to celebrate the anniversary of things or ideas that didn’t work.
Takes me back to a men’s wear show (Manstyle) we started in Toronto to support our failing Menswear magazine at the time that was incredibly successful for a couple of years but disappeared just as quickly. We made an unconscionable profit in the first two years and gave it all back in the third year for a variety of reasons we need not go into here.
Then there was our fabulous foray into property management software for hotels, lodges, and bed and breakfasts (Innystems).
We were going to revolutionize how communities managed their hospitality inventory and everyone agreed it was brilliant. It just wasn’t quite brilliant enough to do right away. We ran out of money and shut her down. Of course what we wanted to do is commonplace today.
Recently, a bold investment into curated content we made some five years ago quietly passed into another’s hand for not much money and no return on investment.
Perhaps we’ll celebrate our boldness on this one in five years. I’m thinking of anniversaries because last week we celebrated our 10th anniversary of the Community Builders Awards program in Sudbury. This is an event organized by our weekly newspaper in Sudbury (northernlife.ca) and supported by the events staff here at Northern Ontario Business.
Event planning is part of our DNA and started more than 25 years ago with the Northern Ontario Business Awards program which travels to a different city in Northern Ontario each year. NOBA is about courage, risk, competitiveness, determination, pride and creating wealth in this economically volatile North.
The Community Builders Awards, on the other hand, are about love, social entrepreneurialism, community development, giving back and, for the most, part selflessness.
It is about the anonymous, often unheralded, glue that makes a community a civil community. We decided to do very little about our 10th anniversary of the CBAs except do what we do every year and enjoy it more. This event is so complete, so satisfying and so uplifting nothing can amplify it because it is about extraordinary people caring about other people.
This year again there were extraordinary winners in the arts, education, economic development, environmental, health-care, young leader, sports and recreation, and hall of fame categories.
Again and again we learn that individuals or small groups of passionate people can move mountains, and create traditions, connections, organizations, and legacies that are breathtaking. Here is how a young professor at Laurentian University described getting involved in creating an adaptive rowing program in Sudbury.
“Minna Mettinen-Kekalainen, a local athlete with a disability, approached the club about adaptive rowing. I was impressed with her spirit, with what she was trying to do against almost impossible odds. We got Steve on the water in the summer of 2007. Minna had never been in a boat before. Steve had never been in a boat. I had never done any coaching before, so we were all equally unprepared... it was exciting.”
The coach who hadn’t coached and the athlete who hadn’t been in a boat went to the Paralympic Games in Beijing a year later and soon they will build a new fully accessible Northern Water Sports Centre in Sudbury.
In 10 years 80 people or organizations that change who we are and how we live have been honoured. It is inspiring and, as someone who has operated a number of newspapers in Northern Ontario communities, I know this spirit goes with the territory.
If you would like to know who that professor is and meet the rest of our winners go to www. cbawards.ca.
What a great anniversary!!!!
