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Oktoberfest

October 17, 2019 By

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Oktoberfest Gemuetlichkeit VIP Night at the Concordia Club in Kitchener.

It was sponsored, as usual, by BMO, Deloitte and Miller Thompson. It was an evening that included networking, food stations, keg tapping and door prizes. And beer !

Dignitaries from our sponsors about to Tap the Keg !

There were lots of local dignitaries; Mayors, Councillors the Regional Chair and representation from the Waterloo EDC. I was able to connect with some friends in the data industry as well as make some new friends and connections.

The Concordia Club is one of the five German Clubs in Kitchener area and is the largest ethnic German Club in Canada. Based on the original German Oktoberfest, it is billed as Canada’s Greatest Bavarian Festival, and is the second-largest Oktoberfest in the world.

The Black Forest Band getting ready to start the polka party

If you ever get a chance, come down to Waterloo Region around the Thanksgiving weekend and join in the fun, the Gemuetlichkeit , which is German for congeniality, or warm friendliness.

Prosit !

Filed Under: Adventure, Humour

Pumpkin Spice Telecom

September 9, 2019 By

Are you ready ? It’s here ! Pumpkin Spice Telecom

Nothing says home like the delicious aroma of pumpkin spice. So we have introduced Pumpkin Spice telecom !

Call your family; call your mom; call your friends from school. Surprise them all with pumpkin spice over the phone !

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Filed Under: Humour

Eat your own Dogfood

August 28, 2019 By

What is the best way to know your customer’s needs ?

Over the years I have developed very close ties with my customers. I like to say that at AurorA and Amitel I do business with “Friends and Family”. The best way I have found to really know my customers needs is to actually become a customer of theirs.

It is a variation on the concept of “Eating your own Dogfood” where employees are expected to use their own products and services as a way to understand its real world experience. By using my customers services, I have some skin-in-the game and really get to know my customers intimately.

Over the years I have bought SIP Trunks, DID’s, Internet Services, Voice Termination, PRI’s, T-1’s, and more from a wide variety of my customers. I have also been happy to refer prospects to them, looking for the same types of services that I’ve been buying myself. I feel confident in recommending a service if I actually use it myself and can honestly vouch for it.

The best part is that all of these companies are part of the competitive telecom and internet landscape, competing against the oligopoly. We are all in the fight against Big Telecom together.

So the next time you need a telecom service, look to your customers first. If it is something that they don’t provide, contact me ! If it is not something that AurorA and Amitel provide directly, I would be happy to recommend one of MY customers to you as I am probably using their service already myself.

Filed Under: Competition, Humour, Oligopoly, Quality

Who wore it better ?

October 30, 2018 By

I posted this earlier last week on LinkedIn and Twitter. In September I had some new social media profile pictures taken, and for the last few we had a little bit of fun. I emulated the iconic picture of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, looking all jacked.

So who wore it better , me or Bezos ?

A big thank you to Ema Suvajac for the great photos, and to my trainer Matt Daciw at Titan Training for the changes in body composition.

Filed Under: Humour

Some Interesting telephone trivia

March 26, 2014 By

Did you know ?

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– The origin of the phrase ‘to put someone on hold’ was Alexander Graham Bell handing over his telephone instrument to his partner Mr Watson and saying, “here, hold this”.

– The very first phone call was “Watson come here, I want you!”
It was made on March 10 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson.

– As a tribute to Alexander Graham Bell when he died in 1922, all the telephones stopped ringing for one full minute.
On the day of Bell’s funeral, the USA and Canada paid tribute to him by closing down their telephone systems for a minute’s silence, affecting over 14 million telephones.

– Telephone operators used to be young men. But they were prone to prank calling and chatting up female callers… “In the first exchanges, boys were generally engaged as operators, but due to their inquisitive spirits, mischievous behaviour etc they did not give their best attention and girls began to replace boys in this role..”

– The automatic switchboard was inspired by undertaker rivalry. Almon Strowger was an undertaker in Kansas City, USA, who suspected that he was losing business to a rival. The rival’s wife worked as a telephone switchboard and he thought she was diverting calls to her husband. One morning his suspicions were founded as he read in the newspaper that a close friend had passed away and been buried by this rival. This was Almon’s incentive to replace the human operators (who were not universally loved) with an automatic switchboard.

“I am often told that the telephone girls will be angry to me for robbing them of their occupations. In reply, I would say that all things will adjust themselves to the new order of change. … The telephone girls replaced the messenger boy as this machine now displaces the telephone girls. Improvement will continue to the end of time, strike where they may.”

The new system was described as “girl-less, cuss-less and wait-less”.

– One of the first answering machines was popular with Jews. Valdemar Poulsen, the Danish telephone engineer and inventor, patented what he called a ‘telegraphone’ in 1898. The telegraphone was the first practical apparatus for magnetic sound recording and reproduction, and enabled telephone conversations to be recorded. This was followed by Willy Müller who invented the automatic answering machine in 1935. It was a three-foot-tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath.

Source – EPH

Filed Under: Humour