Earlier this week in the news, CBC reported that Saint John was the happiest place to live in Canada. Both Chris Nadeau and Harold Jarche commented on this as well this week. As both mentioned, everyone is feeling positive about some of the great technology coming out of Atlantic Canada (visit the blog roll). PropelSJ stays on top of business technology and events happening in the SJ area. The regular news updates show that the Saint John area is becoming a business hub. And of course there’s no doubt that Atlantic Canada has some of the most beautiful vistas in the world.

This recent news is fortunate because for the past year Saint John and the Atlantic Provinces have mostly receiving failing grades in Health and Academic matters. In October of this year, Saint John was considered one of the fattest cities in Canada, likely attributed to poverty. People living in Saint John have the highest obesity rate, at 24.4 per cent of the population over 15 years old. The report card style study tracked the quality of life of Canadian communities in relation to poverty gaps, health, housing and the environment.  Saint John was not marked on track for any of these items.

NB also has some of highest caesarian rates in Canada. According to WHO (World Health Organization), 15% is the average c-section rate, yet in NB it is close to 29%. With northern NB having twice as many c-sections. Women’s groups wonder if it is about a lack of health resources or health professionals to deal with long labour. And certainly if looking at Northern NB where many hospitals were shut down, emergency rooms closing earlier, it would seem likely that is the case. This coupled with general long hospital waits compared to the rest of Canada also leads to a lack of resources.

In education, students in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick all performed significantly below average in science and math.

Again, does this come back to poverty/lack of resources due to low funding?

So if that’s the case, how come we’re so happy in Atlantic Canada?

Maybe because money really can’t buy happiness.

I want to wish everyone a very wonderful Season’s Greetings from meshEAST.  I will be back next week with a recap of some items over 2007.

I think Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation had the best holiday greeting out there this year, so I leave you with that.  Share 2007.

All the best,

Lisa

As per request from a meshEAST reader: 

I was thrilled when the 1st AIM conference was held in NS last year. Although I found out about it too late to attend.  The 2nd Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference will be held in Moncton, May 4-6th 2008. I will definitely be attending.

From their website;

Who should attend AIM 2008?
From management, to the team that makes your website work, AIM 2008 will open your eyes to what you can and should be doing online - and how to get it done right. AIM is for anyone who needs to learn how to succeed online including:

• Marketing Executives
• Marketing Managers
• Media Buyers
• Tourism & Travel Operators
• Designers & Programmers
• Project Coordinators
• Business Owners
• Consultants & Strategists

The line up of speakers at this point looks very promising. Ken Munro, the General Manager at Yahoo, Jordan Banks from e-bay, Jay Mitchell from AOL as well as 28 other industry experts.  I was also especially pleased to see some Atlantic Canadian speakers including a few women speakers (although still a small percentage) . Cheryl Chappel, Vice President - Integrated Marketing, Bristol Online, Krista White, Cossette Atlantic, Sarah Oldford, Online Media Manager, Colour, Wilma Hartmann, AppleCore Interactive, and Stephanie Lummis, ISL – Internet Solutions. If you follow the web 2.0/marketing conference circuit, you’ll often hear that one of the complaints is that there are not enough women in the speaker list. I’d like to see more women speakers but this is a good start.

I think 2008 is going to be one of the best year’s yet for Atlantic Canadians with conferences in online media. If you haven’t already don’t forget to register for The Power Within and Online Revealed. In the New Year, we’ll also hopefully have news on an unconference event as well.

I’m surprised that Dairy Queen hasn’t taken advantage of some interactive web functions. My son turns 11 this weekend. Every year, I take a topic that my son likes, scour the net to find the right image and then take it into my local Dairy Queen for them to prepare a customized frozen birthday cake. This year, I’m busier than ever, so I called my local Dairy Queen and asked them if they had an email that I could just send the photo and instructions to. They didn’t offer that option and I had to go in to the store to place the order.

Imagine how cool convenient it would be to be able to go online to Dairy Queen and interactively;

1. choose your cake type and size

2. then choose from a variety of suggestions for items to write that are more creative than just Happy Birthday or Congratulations.

3.  a selection of styles of cake printing fonts/colours that can be used

4. pre-set images searchable by topic (sports) /age etc. if you didn’t have a particular image in mind

5. able to upload your own artwork/photo for your own theme

6. then move all these items around on a virtual cake to see how it could look.

7. When done, save, place your order and based by location, a pick up place is identified or self-chosen.

Then all I would have to do is walk in, pick it up and it’s done.

Oh and if I wanted to take this a step further, have a save a cake virtual option as well so that I can make virtual cakes for my facebook friends. Facebook app Dairy Queen?

UPDATE: This is what I took into DQ, printed from the web.

I told them to take out the girl and overlay the compass in it’s place. I just got back from picking it up and they did a pretty good job with it. They really are missing out on having customers able to just email the images to them from the web. I suspect it would spark a lot more creativity for their cake line.