Media Releases

12/2004 

Vancouver's coup 

Paul Sullivan © Globe and Mail (shortened version)

VANCOUVER (GlobeinvestorGOLD) — I’ve always had a nagging notion that journalists don’t always cover the real news. We’re so entranced by headline-grabbing hooks, we miss the stuff that’s not so easy to tell, and that’s the stuff that’s really going on.

The reality of daily — or weekly — journalism is that the underlying story is rarely told, partly because it takes a lot of work to dig it out, and partly because we suspect readers don’t have time for it. I’m not saying those suspicions are justified — it may be we’re underestimating the attention span of our readers by applying our own — but there they are.

Which brings me to this story: Vancouver has scored a coup. It has been chosen by the World Chambers Network, the Paris-based organization representing 12,000 chambers of commerce worldwide, as the location for its new “global business backbone,” an electronic connecting system that provides its members with everything from a powerful search engine to a way of appealing to financial partners and investors.

On Monday, the chamber eagles were gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery to discuss this international development — so truly amazing that it was buried on the fourth page of the business section of one of the local papers, and until this column, has rated nary a brief in the national media.

That’s because this a tough story to tell. It’s also an important story to tell. It’s more meaningful to Vancouver than Ottawa’s essentially symbolic designation of Vancouver and Montreal as “financial centres” when everyone knows that Toronto and Calgary already have all the money. But it doesn’t have any of the convenient handles that journalists like to hang onto — it didn’t cost a billion dollars, won’t generate thousands of jobs, and won’t require a shiny new office tower to house. In fact, much of “it” is a website, code stored on already-existing servers at the Harbour Centre, next to the downtown campus of Simon Fraser University.

But what a website, or I should say, group of websites. Together they mean a whole new spectrum of on-line services for chambers of commerce around the world, acknowledging the new business-without-borders reality that the Internet and free trade have spawned. And for Vancouver, they mean that our Pacific Rim city becomes a global business hub — a centre for the day-to-day business of international commerce.

The services themselves will be useful tools for chambers and their associated businesses, especially small-to-medium enterprises, known in global policy-wonkese as SMEs. Collectively, they'll be under the umbrella of a newly established Global Enterprise Innovations and Commerce Centre (GEICC), headquartered in Vancouver and related to Simon Fraser University.

This GEICC will focus on three fronts:

1) Applied R&D for business: right now, the centre is working on exploring how SMEs go about adding human capital to their organizations — there’s more going on than the old notion that businesses hire new people from the unemployed pool.

2) Online chamber tools for trade and trust services:

• ChamberIndex: a search engine for more than 12,000 registered chambers and boards of trade.
• ChamberTrust: a business-to-business, on-line verification seal and international registry system for chamber member businesses throughout the world. On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog – or a fraud. “We want to weed out the 14-year-old with his mother’s Hotmail account,” Mr. Knauf says with a chuckle. The registry will use local chambers to verify businesses as real, not merely virtual.
• Chamber e-Vault: an on-line “vault” for chambers and member businesses that need to store and notarize documents such as proof of copyright and ATA Carnets — customs documents that insure over $12-billion in goods a year. An essential tool for cross-border business.
• Fairs and Exhibitions: a central system for announcing business show events and other services to exhibitors.
• KBX: the electronic exchange for finding financial partners and investors.
• ChamberPortal: a tool for chambers to handle member management, customer relationship management, member on-line display, and communications.

3) Regional Hub Systems for major global regions: essentially organizing the network into big regions — for example, the Americas, China, Europe, etc. — allowing for more region-, market- and language-specific business themes and services.

Most of these services have already been operational on a test basis for up to a year. Mr. Knauf says they should be fully operational by the end of February. And once they’re up and running, they’re not subject to the usual vagaries that plague so many of Vancouver’s industries — commodity prices, currency fluctuations, changing tourist preferences.

It’s so trite to sweep your hand across Burrard Inlet from the deck of Canada Place and pronounce Vancouver a “world-class” city. World class is in the details, and if we are able to focus down, even for a few hundred words, on the detailed promise of the GEICC, we may be able to see a world-class city in the making.

2/2002 For immediate Release: 

Paris, France and Vancouver, Canada  - The World Chambers Network (WCN) and the Paris Chamber of Commerce & Industry (CCIP, the largest individual Chamber in the world) announced that Storm Computing Systems Inc. (Storm) of Vancouver, Canada has been awarded the contract to build the technical infrastructure for the international chamber's ChamberTrust Seal system, also known as TrustInfo. 

The system will use Storm's specialized database and search technologies for enterprise applications. In phase 1 of the project, 5 national ChamberTrust modules are to be delivered, followed by phase 2 which will see the additions of another 30 national modules.

"The major impediment to adoption of e-Business, especially among small and mid-sized businesses, has been trust and confidence in brand less and anonymous business opportunities represented potential customers and suppliers in the 'new markets' opened by the internet" said Georges Fischer, chairman of the World Chambers Network. "ChamberTrust was commissioned by the international chamber bodies as a new international chamber service similar to ATA Carnets (customs) documents, Certificates of Origin and Letter of Credits. ChamberTrust is also reminiscent of ISO certificates used for manufacturing standards, but covers the complete spectrum, including service industries. The B2B ChamberTrust seal is especially useful for firms transacting, or hoping to, nationally and internationally. It thus helps to lower costs and increase sales by greatly increasing the enterprise’s ability to attract potential business partners. It is based on making the local chamber the continuous gateway to e-commerce for its members, combining local knowledge and due diligence with international standards and systems."

1/2002  For immediate Release: 

After steadily expanding the number of individual business clients served over the last three years with business listings from five continents, Storm Computing Systems Inc. and other World-Ecommerce.Com management partners announced the new ChamberGateway© and ChamberPortal© programs for chambers of commerce and boards of trade.

ChamberGateway and ChamberPortal offer advanced but affordable web and data management options to chambers of commerce. 

12/2002 For immediate Release: 

Storm Computing Systems Inc announced today an expansion of the -Trakker ASP Member-Trakker system for chambers of commerce to include the GOLD EDITION. A series of added features, including .xml based modules to combine efficient server-based data handling with local workstation convenience and a powerful Event Manager module make the WCN Member-Trakker GOLD EDITION one of the most advanced and productive chamber business member management software packages available today.