An envious Edmontonian volunteered to report on the McQueen CE in Calgary, and was tempted to write it all in tabloid format. With apologies to Cowtowners, oops, I mean Calgarians, the headline was going to scream: WEBHEADS WOW THE COW! For entrepreneurs extraordinaire McQueen and Dematteo served up a wonderfully appetizing course of intranet intricacies, satisfying a hungry and appreciative audience in downtown Bankers Hall.

On a gorgeous Calgary morning, Howard McQueen made small talk to warm up the crowd. He related the glorious shades of purple witnessed at sunrise a day earlier in Lake Louise (24 bit color?) and the horror of nearly smashing into an elk that same evening. Fortunately for Canadian computer weenies, common sense prevailed: the elk charged right and Dematteo swerved left, and the intranet knowledge pool remained intact.

Jean Dematteo did an excellent job on the course handouts and the PowerPoint slide show accompanying McQueen's polished presentation. Her multimedia sound and animation files cracked up the audience several times and helped McQueen establish a better rapport. Perhaps unaccustomed to our polite but reserved national character, McQueen at first struggled to get responses from the Monday morning assembly. (Let's face it, folks, we're not as effervescent as our American colleagues.) However, Howard persisted and eventually found our less ebullient but just as lovable zone. We were all eating out of his hand by midday. Without getting into the content of the CE, our dynamic duo were well prepared and supplied excellent documentation. They were very sensitive to the needs and questions of the audience, and yet disciplined enough to stick to the course outline and cover all the intended material. They were informative and (dare I say it?) entertaining, too. Cool content and slick shtick, so to speak. No, they didn't pay me to write that; as a matter of fact, my company paid them, and it was money well spent. Initial feedback from randomly selected attendees elicited the same kind of response.

 
Technological Togetherness
Cathy Ross (left), Howard McQueen (centre), and Jean Dematteo strike a relaxed pose after noshing at a local Lebanese eatery.

32 participants attended, most from Calgary but some from as far away as Banff, Edmonton, and Regina. No one seemed overtly disappointed. The one criticism, which has some validity, is that lunch should have been more structured. Many attendees view lunch as an excellent networking opportunity, and would have appreciated a group reservation at a convenient restaurant.

 

Unfolding as it should
Calgary Director Cathy Ross breaks momentarily from her mountain of paperwork, and smiles at the success of the seminar.