Vancouver Canada

The past two weeks I've been flying to Vancouver Canada for work. It is a very interesting opportunity that I hope becomes a contract. I believe the partnership would work for both parties.

I travelled to Vancouver last September on a fact finding mission. It was my first time to Vancouver. During the next couple of months we sent other associates to Canada as we worked on our proposal. It was presented in December. Two weeks ago we had our first executive followup to that December proposal. It was the first time I met the executive suite and was there to answer any financial or scope questions. The meeting went very well and it appears there is interest in moving forward. That said, there were a lot of question they client needed to answer and several on our end. Last week was a followup meeting to review some of those questions and provide more clarity. I was the only one from Cerner to make the trip and I met with the CFO alone. We are making progress and while there is a lot of work left to do, I'm optimistic.

The only issue with the trip was the location of the meeting. I was staying downtown, surrounded by high rise towers. But the CFO was located in another part of town. Taking a taxi there was easy. But due to a convention that was going on during my stay, I couldn't get one back. So I had to walk about 3 miles to my hotel. I took three pictures as I was crossing the Burrard Bridge. You've got the bay, high-rise towers, and mountains all in one picture. It has quickly become one of my favorite cities in the world. The city at night is beautiful, as you can see from a picture I found on the net (you might have to click on it to see it better). There is quite a bit of Asian, especially Japanese, influence in the city. Like San Fransisco, it is a bit expensive, but like SF they also have great restaurants. It would be a great place to stay for a couple days before heading north on a cruise. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to share the city with Jen and the kids.