A week ago I received a call from my friend Ian letting me know his boat was free for the next weekend. As luck would have it we did not have any plans. So I took a day off work and made it a last minute long weekend.
Après un hivert sans pareil, avec très peu de neige sur les montagne locale, on a passer un weekend a Manning Park qui est suffisamment Loins de la mer et assez haut que la neige y est quand même tombé.
I had the great fortune to be able to participate in the FuTurisme.com conference plenary discussion on mass tourism and the future of tourism at IMTM 2015. I was there at the invitation of Tel Aviv Global which is a municipal corporation tasked with promoting the economic development of the city attracting investment and developing tourism.
One theme that was very prominent in their strategy is to leverage the tech start up ecosystem of the city.
The conference had 42 travel related digital startup companies pitching their ideas and vying for the mayor’s digital travel award.
The Roschild boulevard at the heart of the city is a wonderful pedestrian and cycling oasis.
Getting a tour of the startup ecosystem in Tel Aviv. The big questions seemed to be that starting things was happening in an organic way but holding on to the dividends of that innovation was the challenge. Keeping successful startups in the city and making sure international investment was not just pulling the human capital out of the city.
That evening I was invited to a cocktail at city hall with the mayor of Tel Aviv where they unveiled a commemorative stamp of the city. Tel Aviv has been recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site for its white city collection of Bauhaus architecture. It also recently was recognized by UNESCO as a creative city in the digital sphere and they are running with it as a branding element for the city.
The Tel Aviv Global team also came up with a wonderful idea to put a call out to students to volunteer as local hosts for the conference speakers. This was an opportunity to meet someone with an interest in your subject matter, but also they acted as ambassadors and sometimes interpreters or even personal assistants. I found it to be invaluable and rewarding, helping me develop more insights and broadening the conversations I had.
My student host Marina Balkarey
Speaking on a panel discussing mass tourism and implications on destination development.
After my presentation I was interviewed by Ayal Zaum, a City & Place branding consultant that also writes a popular blog called cityncountrybranding.com
here is the article he wrote:
http://cityncountrybranding.com/2015/02/12/%D7%9C%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9B%D7%AA-imtm-%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%A0%D7%95-%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%94-%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%9C%D7%9E/
Suite à la publication de l’article dans Skift que j’ai poster récemment. J’ai reçu une invitation a participer a un congrès de tourisme international a Tel Aviv le 10 et 11 février. Avec tout juste un mois de préavis je n’étais pas sur que l’invitation soit sérieuse, mais après un échange de communication au ralenti à cause des onze heures de décalage. Ils m’on confirmer qu’ils cherchait réellement à me fair participer à une colloque avec le ministre de tourisme de Israël, le consul général de Israël à New York entre autre. Le thème est de discuter le future du tourisme et l’impact sur le développement durable des destinations. Je vais parler de mon travaille et le contexte qui le met en valeur a Vancouver.
Continue reading Un article mène à de nouveaux horizons
Yesterday with a group of friends we continued a tradition of meeting down at the Jericho Sailing Centre, donning our wetsuits or drysuits and heading out into Burrard Inlet for a stand up paddle. This year we waited a day after our usual boxing day outing to match up our paddle with the highest high tide of the year, which was a 5m tide. Fortunately their was little wind or waves and the tide did not bring with it any flooding or damage to the coastline. But after the last king tide earlier in the month where the wind came up, the Sailing Centre was prepared with sandbags.
Dominique brought a his medium format film camera to capture the moment which was fun. We needed to flag down a runner to actually trip the shutter.
Here is my picture panorama of the set up for this.
We had a 6-8 knot breeze from the SE for our paddle. As we made it close to the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club docks it started to rain, so unlike the year before where we managed to go hang around the freighters in complete calm and sunshine, our excursion this year was a little closer to shore but just as memorable.
Today my friend Dom asked me to help him take his boat RedFive, a J30 back from the boat yard in Steveston where it had bee hauled out and sanded down, to the RVYC marina at Jericho.
We set off at 14h00 in a light drizzle and a rising tide.
By the time we got to the Fraser lightship station at the mouth of the south arm where we would be able to turn north, the wind had freshness up to 12 knots out of the northwest. As we moved towards Point Grey the wind rose steadily and peaked at about 20 knots with a solid set of waves hitting us on the nose.
We finally saw the bell buoy Q62 at sunset.
And turned east into the darkness as the wind started to freshen up behind us.
We tied up the boat in the dark and were quite happy to stop in the club for a bite to eat, warm up and watch the final game of the regular season for the Whitecaps on the television in the corner.
This August we had the pleasure of spending two weeks aboard my friends Ranger 33 Sylvia. We set out from Victoria on August 15th to explore the Gulf Islands National Park reserve as well as a few other anchorages.
I’ve created a Flickr group album
with loads of pictures from the trip https://flic.kr/g/q6NHB
Nous avons fait un petit tour a Manning Park a 2h 30minutes de Vancouver pour trois nuits juste avant Noël. On a eu la chance d’avoir de la neige, et d’avoir Brigitte et Maël avec nous.
Loic et Itziar se sont vite mi au ski de fond.
In the spirit of making memories and not garbage; I met with my friends Ian, Dominique and Frederich for a stand up paddle around English Bay. Starting at the place that links us all. The Jericho Sailing Centre somehow courses through our veins, with a deep connection to the ocean, non powered recreation and fun.
We met at 9:30am and set out to paddle around the tugboat boy just west of the entrance to False Creek. There we met two busy bald eagles who had taken up temporary residence to feast on what seemed to be a recently caught seagull carcass.
Eagle on Tugboat Boy
We the headed west with the current and paid a visit to one of the dozen freighters at anchor waiting in the bay for its turn to load up on Canadian cargo.
The weather could not have been milder, I was overheating a little in my wetsuit. I was very happy to spend my Boxing Day morning this way.
