OCRI’s Hockey Team Still a Player or Two Away

The 3rd Annual Bell Sensplex/OCRI Technology Hockey Challenge (Feb. 19-20)

This one-of-a-kind hockey tournament provides Ottawa’s technology sector with a unique chance to get together for good times on AND off the ice. A portion of all proceeds benefit The Christmas Cheer Campaign.

As for the OCRI team… they looked good and showed some flashes of brilliance. The four games they played really could have gone either way but unfortunately went in the oppositions’ favour. With the final scores 4-1, 4-2, 3-1 and 4-1 the team is optimistic they can rebound in next year’s tourney. On a side note, there are no better fans than OCRI fans! It seemed like 80% of the fans in the stands were cheering on the good guys.

Thanks to Scott Lawryk and his crew at the Bell Sensplex for putting on such a fun and well-organized event.

2 Actors from Corner Gas + 380 MPI Members = 9882 Breakfasts for Students In-need

Darlene Kelly-Stewart (President, MPI Ottawa Chapter), Gabrielle Miller, Christine Lauzon-Foley (Manager, OCRI School Breakfast Program) and Tara Spencer-Miller 

 

An impromptu live auction broke out at the MPI Charity Auction in support of the OCRI School Breakfast Program at the Westin on February 13th. The prize: roundtrip airfare for two to Regina, accommodations, dinner for the winner, their guest, Tara Spence-Nairn and Gabrielle Miller and a tour of the Corner Gas set. A bidding war broke out and in the end two lucky (and very generous) people shared the winning bid for a combined total donation of $8400. Thank you bidders, Tara, Gabrielle, Tourism Regina and MPI for your support of the program!

Put a little Rock’n Roll in your Life

Do you find when listening to your favourite tunes, your feet start moving, fingers tapping and then all of a sudden you pick up your stapler and start signing?  If you have any of these symptoms then it may be time for you to break out of your cube and put together a band for Ottawa’s Battle of the Technology Bands - Tech Rocks!

Last year OCRI’s Battle of the Technology Bands saw 21 bands hit the stage at O’Connors Pub in Kanata!  So, get out of your office into a garage or studio for some practice time and then sign up at www.techrocks.com.  It’s all about the music – and having fun!

Face-to-Face

Well I must say that I enjoy doing the Face-to-Face event…. It is so different form the day to day issues of planning events…. Locked away in a quiet office, it took me the better part of 5 full days to set some 500 plus appointments for the post secondary students to meet over a 4 hour period with 20 employers.  Each student submits 5 appointment request with companies that are seeking students to match the current job openings. It all gets loaded into an excel spreadsheet.  Going through each request one at a time setting up the “speed dating” job interviews for each student.  Once complete I then search for appointment conflicts for each student…. after finding some 50 conflicts and resolving them – we then sort the spreadsheet in various ways to extract each of the 20 companies set of appointments – most companies are sending 2 sets of staff to run simulatneous interviews – 2 sets of appointments for most companies.  This is followed by sending out 114 emails to all of the students confirming their 5 appointments.  It all works like clockwork until we arrive on site at Tudor Hall to find out that some of the students that had to cancel etc due to illness or conflicts.  I proceed to update all of the company appointments with the students cancellations - only to find that some student names were not appearing on company appointment lists…..How can this be?  I used the 1 master spreadsheet for all confirmations — in total I found 4 names that were confirmed appointments that somehow were not on the company lists… I was very stressed — the event was about to start in 30 minutes… how many more students would show up that had conflicts?  Again how could this happen?  The event starts and I wait to see how it unfolds…first set of appointments no problem, second set fine… but we get to the third round and here comes the first conflict — the conflict is resolve — and so when is the next one, how many more am I going to face in the next 3.5 hours…….  NONE!!! 

The rest of the afternoon for all students and companies went off great!!! 

 What a great and unique way to do a “job fair” – we set appointments and match students to employers….  We even had a student there this year helping with the interviews who was a student at Face-to-Face 2007 — he was hired and now he his back doing the hiring!!!