gunnar blodgett / web and systems architect
heather morrison / marketing manager

glenna gravel accounting assistant
sharlyn gordon  administrative assistant

anita mcgillis / vice-president, sales

kassandra mitchell / sales and marketing assistant, edmonton

Peter Norman
I used to be as nocturnal as they come. I slept from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. before skulking to my night shift at Starbucks. Sunlight was anathema. People worried. I caught sight of my neighbour in his tool shed, sharpening a stake. Night is a fantastic time for writing: the phone doesn’t ring, friends don’t drop by, sunshine doesn’t stream through the windows to chide you for being cooped inside. So it’s with regret that I’ve seen my life co-opted by day jobs and the responsibilities of adulthood, and it’s with grateful joy that I accepted the assignment of writing about the often nocturnal world of private security. My previous work has appeared in Alberta Views, Vancouver magazine, Calgary Inc., Avenue and the anthologies The Best of Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets. I have published articles about hockey guru Don Cherry, physics guru Albert Einstein, carbon cap-and-trade schemes, the economics of global food prices, Newtonian physics and skinhead culture. And I stay up late whenever I can manage it.

Susan Hagan
At 3 a.m. I have wrestled haunting questions, cried desperately, wandered aimlessly, searched for after-hours clubs, met freelance deadlines, argued heatedly, sought meaning in a messy life, trespassed on private property, questioned who the hell I am, gone skinny-dipping, awoken in a cold sweat from a recurring nightmare, boarded a Greyhound bus for a 42-hour tour (each way), dreamt profoundly, considered that I might have psychic tendencies, poured another glass of pinot noir, made love freely, pondered the existence of aliens, held my dying dog, accepted revelations from a higher plane, tried to move a pencil with my mind, gone into labour, found the core of who I am, slept serenely, comforted my crying baby. In comparison, 3 p.m. tends to pass quietly: I do yoga and then drink green tea. During the day (plus countless night shifts) I have worked at the Edmonton Journal, Canadian Press and Saskatoon’s 25th Street Theatre. I also wrote and performed a fringe play in Vancouver a few years ago and now organize Edmonton’s monthly Story Slam.

Bryce Meyer
Why do I like the night? To put it simply – because I am a ninja. And ninjas work well in the night because we are all about stealth. I am so about stealth, in fact, I’m not even writing this right now. The only time I really leave my dojo is during the evening hours. Sure, during the day I am throwing so many kinds of smoke you will never see me, but to be honest it gets exhausting. Especially as I get older. And I’ve gotta be honest: I’m not as svelte as I used to be. There is nothing as sad as a middle-aged chubby ninja, but man I sure do love cheeseburgers. Especially during a 3 a.m. drive-through session after a night of heavy assassinating. Wait… what was the question again? Oh, nighttime, me and what not. Well, outside of being a middle-aged nighttime ninja midnight marauder, I not only shoot blow darts and mean stink-eye but also shoot the occasional photograph for clients such as Swerve and Avenue (Calgary). Something’s gotta pay for my throwing stars. brycemeyer.com

Lorne Bridgman
Problem is, I’m a nighthawk who likes the morning. So I often stumble around in a sleep-deprived stupor. Even when I don’t actually want to be up at a respectable hour, my body clock (and racing mind) ensures that I am. As night falls, my interest in my surroundings rises. I suppose it’s a combination of quietness and solitude, as well as the feeling that normal rules don’t apply… sort of like wandering through an amusement park after hours, I feel like it’s a time to give things a proper look while they’re not busy being used by the people they were designed for. And, being a romantic at heart, it’s so much easier to invest concrete and steel – or trees and rocks – with a significance beyond their basic material existence when the lines are fuzzy, the light dim. Of course, there can be surprises – noises and shapes emerging from the quiet and dark – but that’s part of the allure: the frisson you feel when encountering the unexpected. In this darkness, and in the light of day, I take photographs for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Dwell, ESPN The Magazine and The Walrus. lornebridgman.com

Kathryn MacNaughton
I tend to procrastinate during the day, so I usually rely on nights to get my work done. The phone stops ringing and the emails slow down. It gives me a chance to put on some music and concentrate. I love getting lost in my work and looking up at the clock in corner of my laptop to realize that three hours have gone by. I know this sounds strange, but my favourite things about my work are the happy mistakes I make while working late into the night. The personality of my drawings begins to show a bit more, and I become much more optimistic with my choice of colours and compositions. It’s almost as if I become a completely different artist. My inspiration comes from David Hockney’s intuitive and raw drawings from his earlier years. Clients that I’ve worked for include Cent Magazine, Zoot and the Globe and Mail. kathrynmacnaughton.com

Jeremy Derksen
A good night is a ticking bomb: you never know exactly when it’s going to end. Its unpredictable nature ignites an urgency that makes morning and consequences seem irrelevant. Once after a rugby party I walked pants-less across Edmonton’s High Level Bridge. Another time I fell off my roof because I’d lost my keys and decided to climb to an open second-storey window. And in a feat of bravado and stupidity, I once jumped aboard a freight train in Jasper. I’ve never really known what makes me do these things. I enjoy the obscure infamy it wins me, but it’s more than that. It’s a celebration of the fleeting moment, the exhilaration of taking risks. That’s something that I hope I’ll never get too old for, even if I do grow wiser. Lately I’m working on restraint. Coffee and Revenue Canada help keep me focused. By day I’ve written speeches for politicians, spun corporate PR and carved a niche as a travel writer. But give me absinthe fumes and moonlight and my alter ego might still escape. U

issue 8

Inspiration of the Week 

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In our inter-office travels, unlimited staffers found objects on (or near) people’s desks. More than just random décor decisions, we knew these pieces had meaning. So we asked ourselves to what faraway place does a plastic doodad take its owner when their mind wafts from the keyboard. Here are some of the answers. Click on any image to see a larger version and explanation. 

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What do you look to for inspiration at work?

Send us your explanation along with a picture to contests@unlimitedmagazine.com, subject “Inspiration”, then check back here each week to view the winning entries competing to win the grand prize valued at $50.

READ THE CONTEST RULES & REGULATIONS

Every issue of unlimited has a theme. In July/August we’re exploring the idea of “treading lightly” on the planet – the notion that success at business and work doesn’t have to come with an environmental cost, that leaving less of a footprint could in fact boost your triple bottom line. (That’s when environmental and social impacts are measured alongside profit, for those of you keeping score at home.)

Have you taken steps to green your workplace? Does your organization view going green as a growth strategy? Is there a green niche in the market that’s ripe for your picking? Tell us who you are, what you do and why we should be writing about you. Email drubinstein@unlimitedmagazine.com.

It’s not what a tech tool does. It’s how you use it

In every issue of unlimited, we highlight three people featured in the magazine who embody the issue’s theme. The Mar/Apr 2008 issue is an exploration of technology and media, and the many intersections between these two forces. We’ve asked three individuals to fill in the blank in this statement: “Technology will make the world a better place because….” Everybody who’s been “Unlisted” throughout the year will be invited to join keynote speakers, other panellists and you, our readers, at the inaugural Unlisted Summit, a leadership conference at the Banff Centre, from July 13 to 15. Please call 1-866-227-4276 x 244 for more info.

Malcolm Azania: radio DJ / TV host / author / journalist

My brother lives in Kenya. Not in Nairobi or another big city; he lives in a rural area, and he has internet access. So when election violence erupted recently, I knew he was OK. There still is a class dimension to technology, in that billions of people don’t have access to it, but if you live in a city like Edmonton, if you can get to a library, you can use a computer. For people who say the dominant impulse of human beings is material acquisition, I say look at the web – almost all pages are created by people who don’t stand to make a dime. It’s wonderful that technology has showcased that human nature is far more good than bad.

Technology is only a tool. A revolver doesn’t have to be used to kill people; it can be used for target practice. Technology can be used to make the world a better place by removing unsafe labour conditions and reducing ecologically destructive practices. But there is always a flip side. Every person who uses a cellphone or a computer is taking part in one of the greatest crimes of our time. Coltan, which is found in virtually all electronics, is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The war in the Congo and its spill-off effects has been compared to WWI, but it’s easier to get the resources when the country doesn’t have sovereignty over its own resources. It’s what people choose to do with technology that determines whether it improves or degrades our quality of life.

Online exclusive: Interview with Malcolm (7 Mb WAV file | 10.8 Mb MP3 file)

Hugo Bonjean: founder and CEO, Quantum Shift Media Inc.

From my desk, I see snow-covered pastures and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Not concrete skyscrapers. I can watch the sun rise while I message our web design guy in Panama or hold a video conference with staff in Guatemala and clients in Saskatoon.

Most of us live in boxes. We build one box, a house. Then we use another box to drive to another box, which we call an office. It’s an incredibly bad design. If people can find their spouses on a social networking site, you can build relationships with staff and clients. But in order to embrace the virtual office, the corporate world will have to rethink the whole notion of control, to focus on the results rather than how and where the results are achieved.

When I left the corporate world, I wrote a book, a fictionalized story, about my transformation as a business executive who was more concerned with money into someone who wanted to make a difference in this world. People told me that it changed their lives. But books only reach two per cent of the population. I thought, there are thousands of stories like this – what if we brought them together? That was the idea for Quantum Shift: to use new media to bring solutions from around the world, inspiring people to take action on environmental and social issues. Technology has been instrumental in winning wars, improving healthcare and building economies. It can certainly be used to reduce our footprint.

Online exclusive: Interview with Hugo (16 Mb WAV file | 23.5 Mb MP3 file)

Theresa Howland: vice-president, Bullfrog Power

Today we use the same type of electricity that we’ve used for the last half of the century. In Alberta, that means electricity that is largely generated from coal. But we use it to power more appliances, more tools, bigger TVs, more things that are meant to make our lives easier. In some ways, technology is a paradox: it leads the way toward innovation and a better way of doing things – we can monitor our energy use, change the way we use it so we’re using it at the most efficient times – but it also provides us with all these other tools that require energy.

The scope of the question – “how can technology improve our lives?” – is not a 250-word discussion. Technology is so ingrained in everything that we do and touch in our everyday lives and business practices. Technology and its usefulness for information sharing and education is fascinating. Consider the scope of climate change. What a great way to find out about the innovative things that people can do. You can look at the web, blog about it, check out Facebook and use many other technologically advanced ways of information sharing. Without it, I would not be able to create cleaner electricity or let people know that it’s available to them. Technology has created my job, and I’m able to use it to do my job better.

Online exclusive: Interview with Theresa (6 Mb WAV file | 8.5 Mb MP3 file)

U

Do the math. If your monthly salary is less than what the Joneses spend on clothing for their family dog, it’s time to sup-plement your income. Tina Wilson*, an admin assistant, has won $70,000 in cash and prizes in the last three years, and it’s all tax free. The Calgarian has travelled to London, Paris, Maui and several other U.S. destinations. She’s bagged diamonds, half a dozen iPods, a few digital cameras, concert tickets, hotel stays and a lifetime supply of paper towels. And that’s just last year’s loot. Wilson won’t divulge all of her secrets, but here are a few of her tips.

Make time
Schedule contesting into your daily routine. Wilson treats it as a part-time job, spending nearly two hours a day filling out entries. “I rarely eat in the lunch room. I’d rather spend my time in a more productive way, surfing for web contests.” If the prospect of typing out your deets dozens of times makes your tendonitis flare up, set up the forms application on your computer.

Play the numbers
Look at the odds. The fewer people vying for a prize, the better your shot. Local contests organized by radio stations, city newspapers and shopping malls often receive only a few hundred ballots, whereas national contests attract thousands of hopefuls. Which pool would you rather be in? “I’d guess that I went to 20 concerts last year,” says Wilson. “Every concert I’ve wanted to attend, I’ve been to.”

Get active
People are inherently lazy. They avoid any contest that requires even a bit of effort to enter. Few people will take the time to write an essay, take a photo or make a video. If the rules call for snail mail entries only, lace up your shoes and head to the post office. While that coach potato watches Survivor: Micronesia, you’re flying there.

[*Name has been changed. Her employer probably wouldn’t consider contests an office-appropriate activity.]

I shot these photos using a Polaroid camera over three months in a variety of locations around Edmonton, with a focus on immigrant women. I used a Polaroid so they could see how they were represented and so they could write their names, the countries they were born in, and their roles in society on the actual photo. Working with an Edmonton-based centre for immigrant women called Changing Together and advisor Kathy Ochoa, the project aims to celebrate diversity and feminine contributions, and to encourage people to consider what shapes the culture of their city. It’s part of “Towards Seeing Everything,” a photo-based project designed to give voice to NGOs working in Edmonton. It was funded by the Edmonton Cultural Capital Project.

“Towards Seeing Everything” will be on display from Jan. 4 to Feb.1 at Mandolin Books and Coffee Company (6419 112 Avenue, www3.telus.net/public/mbcc/). For more information, please contact Ted or go to edmontonculturalcapital.com or changingtogether.com.

Good chocolate, like fine wine, has many subtleties of flavour. These can be regional: Venezuelan cocoa beans have red-fruit notes. Beans from Madagascar have hints of orange. Flavour can also be induced: A pinch of salt brings out the sweetness. A trace of cayenne pepper creates a long, complex finish.

“This one has bits of crushed cocoa bean,” says Kerstin Roos, pointing to one of the chunky, beautifully designed bars in her Chocophilia line. Around her modern, downtown kitchen, plastic molds and bags of ingredients lie in packing boxes as she prepares to move her company, Kerstin’s Chocolates, into its first retail location.

Making a distinction between fine chocolate and the store-bought stuff, Roos says, “I want to introduce people to chocolate close to its natural source, instead of loading it with oil and sugar.” She buys her main ingredient in bulk from farmers in South America and Africa but not from the Ivory Coast, where child labour is common. Her single-origin chocolate bars are up to 72% cocoa. That means less sugar (fewer calories!) but by no means less sweetness. “Anyone who thinks dark chocolate is bitter hasn’t had good chocolate.”

Roos’ own chocophilia started as a kid in Germany, and she maintains those rigid European standards in her Edmonton-based company. The young entrepreneur sells her high-end bars out of her new downtown outlet, at stores throughout Alberta, and via kerstinschocolates.com.

Beyond dark, regional varieties, Kerstin whips up flavoured bars such as Lemon Dream (a top seller at this year’s Rocky Mountain Food & Wine Festival), Pumpkin Pie (a winter specialty), Fleur de Sel (the salted chocolate) and Hot Chocolate (the spicy one). There’s also “caviar,” crunchy cocoa beans dipped in chocolate and rolled in cocoa powder. And since fine choco-appreciation observes the same rules as wine, Roos puts on her own tastings. “People come up and tell me that they love my chocolate, like it’s a confession,” she says. “It shouldn’t be. Chocolate’s a pretty special thing and, because I love it so much too, I want to give them this other choice.” 

Stop right there Miss Like Um Y'Know. Your valley-girl vernacular is not only unintelligible to senior colleagues, it may also prevent people from treating you seriously at work. Take a tip from Tamara Woolgar. The 32-year-old has studied public speaking since age 11 and started teaching presentation skills at Calgary’s Mount Royal College at 18. Now working in oil and gas public relations, Woolgar has coached the mumbles out of senior execs and prodded bookish accounting-types into projecting their voices. Listen up and your shop talk will leap from hick to slick.

Choose your orator
Every self-imposed challenge needs a goal, so find a role model. Woolgar once coached a mousy young woman who wanted to speak like Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth. It was a tall order but, with that goal in mind, the client got there.

Was that a statement or a question?
There’s a Seinfeld slur for folks who tack an upward inflection on to the end of their sentences. Up-talkers. This common foible conveys doubt and uncertainty. Same goes for enders like “right?” and “you know?” Eliminating them gives your speech more conviction.

You've got to, like, stop saying "like"
There’s no magic formula, but Woolgar says being conscious of using it is a start. From there, make a concerted effort to speak slowly and thoughtfully. “I’m a big fan of the pause, both for dramatic effect and to give yourself time to collect your own thoughts.”

Supersize your voice
Singers and stage actors have training in diaphragmatic breathing. The power in your voice starts down in the abdomen, leading to greater clarity and volume. “It’s almost impossible to mumble and project at the same time.”

Know when to stop
When you’re speaking, it never hurts to stop for a moment and gauge whether you’re understood. “People have a tendency to keep rambling on to fill the silence.” If you’ve made your point, leave it there. Long-winded monologues are the hidey-hole of the timid.

Nerves: Wity you or against you?
The butterflies you feel in front of a room are just adrenaline. The red face? That’s the body’s response to a lack of oxygen. Remember to breathe, go slow. The best public speakers appear dynamic because they channel nervous energy into what they’re saying.

SPEAK FOR THE JOB YOU WANT
If you aspire to a position which requires a high degree of professionalism, don’t talk like you just rolled in from the hills. “People who emulate the language of their superiors are the ones who get noticed, moved ahead and taken more seriously.”

I stopped eating meat in 2001. There was no single reason. No, the terrorists didn’t win. My arteries weren’t hardening. My views on animal welfare didn’t shift. My religious beliefs, or lack thereof, didn’t move me. And my vegetarian friends didn’t suddenly start to proselytize. They ate, I watched and asked questions. Then I read Fast Food Nation and interviewed its author, Eric Schlosser, and the connections between North America’s agri-industrial complex – horrid conditions for slaughterhouse workers as well as cows – and my wellbeing became too clear to ignore. The book’s reportage, and Schlosser’s oft-repeated knockout punch – “There is shit in the meat” – made the difference.

After my daughters were born three years ago, however, I began eating meat again. My wife’s second-trimester cheeseburger cravings didn’t pull me back. There were a range of reasons. Our pediatrician, for starters, who said, in a tone we deemed patronizing at first,

“Feed the girls meat. Just a little bit. They need the protein. It packs more punch than beans.” We resisted until checking with a nutritionist friend, a vegetarian, who told us that Doc was right. So we began buying bison, then chicken, then beef, at farmers’ markets. And suddenly our dietary landscape had shifted again. Was it better to buy tofu imported from Asia, packaged in plastic and shipped thousands of miles, or meat from a farm just outside the city?

Changing your perspective, even about something as basic as what’s on your plate, is vital. Rigidity is the enemy of innovation, of positive transformation.

Even if you’re dubious about Big Beef, it’s wise to listen to people like Kirstin Kotelko, who I met at a suburban supermarket when I crashed her photo shoot. Kotelko’s company produces a line of hormone- and antibiotic-free beef. But wait a minute… she works hand-in-hand with Big Beef? Bern Kotelko, her father, runs Highland Feeders, the sixth largest feedlot in Canada and the parent company behind Kirstin’s Spring Creek Premium Beef. (Not that he’s indicted in Schlosser’s book, or party to the exploitation of immigrant workers at the multinational-owned slaughterhouses in Brooks, Alberta.) But wait again… Bern’s fourth-generation ranch also has a biogas plant, which turns manure into electricity and powers more than 700 homes. You try to make sense of it. Big Beef bad but biogas good?

These are the types of questions and connections we’re trying to explore in unlimited. Business, the economy and “markets” aren’t ephemeral constructs. They are what we eat, they are where we work, they are how we live. And like us, they are constantly changing.

The theme of this issue – transformation – seemed a sensible way to begin the new year. It courses through the cover story, in which writer Sophie Lees documents one women’s individual career change amid a much broader gender shift. “Transformation” is also infused throughout Scott Messenger’s feature on how to advance in your field (even if he bailed on his own first calling). And it’s central to the other narratives we present, stories about making music full-time, about navigating the divide between the secular and the sacred, and about overcoming an addiction that’s endemic to our time and place.

On a lighter note, coincidence abounds in this, our third issue. Three men named Bryce took photos for us, there are three photos of musicians, and three photos of people in cowboy hats. (Yeah, we know, that’s an Alberta cliché, but one is Kirstin Kotelko, an atypical rancher, and another is a decidedly non-country musician. OK, the third is a rodeo star named Denton Edge – the more things change, the more they stay….)

Finally, there’s one more coincidental trifecta: in our regular Unlisted feature, the three people who reflect on “transformation” are named Chris, Kirstin and Kris. The Chris, Calgary writer Chris Turner, whose book about sustainable living we excerpt, sums up my swirling thoughts on transformation and business circa 2008 quite well: “We have a fantastic opportunity to correct what I think are some glaring faults with how we’ve been living in the industrial age.” As long as we keep changing, that is.