I wanted to take the time to send a giant “Thank You” to those who voted for the many worthy charities in our Annual Holiday Donation Drive. For the fourth year in a row, in lieu of sending out holiday cards we asked our customers, suppliers and partners to help us by selecting a charity (or providing a “write in” nomination) for us to make donations to and we had a great response (just like we’ve had in the past).

Authored by Michael Guerin, TeamCain

TeamCain has been in business for 16 years now and I can’t believe how much we’ve grown over the years. Evolving from a boutique consulting firm specializing in Distribution and Warehousing solutions for JD Edwards, we’ve grown to offer add-on solutions that can extend the value of your JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and World (and other) ERP backbone. The following video reflects this growth:

For the third year in a row, in lieu of sending out holiday cards we asked our customers, suppliers and partners to help us by selecting a charity (or providing a “write in” nomination) for us to make donations to.  For our 2011 Donation Drive we had a good response again, so we would like to send a big "Thank You" to all who responded. Not only are we able to donate to some well deserving charities, but by not sending holiday cards we have been able to save an abundance of paper waste from going to the landfill.

For the second year, TeamCain at the end of 2010 opted to make donations in lieu of sending out Christmas/Holiday cards to our customers, suppliers and partners.  In the greater scheme of things we think that we at TeamCain are pretty fortunate… even more so with the speed bumps the economy has thrown at us all in the last two years.  We try to be environmentally conscious as well, and having hundreds of cards end up in landfills just does not seem right.  So, as with 2009, we solicited from our customers, partners and suppliers the organizations to which we could make

I was watching a taped (well, PVR’d really) episode of Dragon’s Den tonight. If you are not familiar with it, people come on the show and pitch to 5 “dragons” to invest in their idea; there is a similar show in the US called The Shark Tank. The dragons are self made millionaires. So, kind of a reality show – entertaining oftentimes, sometimes makes you think “what were they thinking” (the people who pitch their ideas/wares for an investment). Anyway…

I was in San Francisco this week for Oracle OpenWorld (#oow10). A lot of walking around is expected at a conference like this: to and from the conference locations, to dinner, out for coffees and all that.  I was really struck by the number of homeless there were. Pretty much on every block, you would see several with signs or cups. The more engaging would be selling the Street Sheet, playing an instrument or something. 

Each year here in Toronto we have the Ride to Conquer Cancer … a two day bicycle ride from Toronto to Niagara Falls where riders raise donations for cancer fighting.  The funds raised go to the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, and the ride has raised $28.5 million dollars over the course of the last two years alone … an amazing feat.

As part of our TeamCain mission to be proactively aware of our Carbon Footprint, we decided for Collaborate 2010 that we would have a more environmentally friendly booth give away. For this conference, our hand out was Live Conifer (Evergreen) Tree Seedlings. They were a big success, we managed to hand out the majority of them, but there were a small number left over. We were able to donate the leftover trees to a school in Colorado, called Red Rocks Elementary School.

About two years ago, my twenty-something son was driving back from Haliburton, Ontario to our house.  On the way, he realized that he was dangerously low on gas, so he stopped at a gas station to put $20 into his car.  Getting to the cash, he realized that a) he did not have any cash, and b) his debit card was not working.  He asked the attendant if he could give his contact info (from his drivers licence) and get the money to them the next day … they (and I guess this is understandable) declined to do so, and basically said they would be forced to bring the police in.

This past Christmas we decided to do something a bit different from prior years.  Like many companies, we had sent our Christmas / holiday cards to many of our customers, suppliers, partners and friends.  While this is a nice gesture, we thought that it also: