Welcome to my weblog

Welcome to my first post on this my second weblog adventure.

To set the stage for future publications I thought it worthy to tell you a little about me and what you can expect from this weblog.

Besides all of the work history below, I am a father of two great kids, and husband to the most supportive person I have ever met, my darling wife Kathy.

I joined GHY International in October 1988 as the first IT staff member in the firm's 100-year history. Currently serving as Vice President of Information Technology and a member of the executive team of the International Trade Services firm. Starting from my roots in International Trade as an in house Customs Broker for a Canada wide Manitoba based wholesaler/manufacture; I have been a conduit in developing GHY, along with Government initiatives, migrating from a paper-based environment to an electronic platform over the course of the last decade. The various initiatives, which I have directed over the last 17 years, have helped GHY become a leading player in the industry. Most recently the newest division, GHY USA, Inc. has become one of the fastest growing customs brokers on the US northern border, ranking in the top 10% of all brokers by volume nationwide. From my early education in EDI until today I have taken a leading role in the advancement of Electronic Commerce through various organizations including Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce Technology Innovation Committee (TIC), and past chair of the Electronic Commerce Focus Group, I still actively promotes electronic commerce as a tool to enable Manitoba Business to compete globally. I have dedicated my time to building the foundations for promotion of award winning Manitoba Business through the facilitation of the regional agreement between CIPA and the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce. In March 2005 GHY International was recognized by IBM and Common, an IBM midrange users group, with the first ever iSeries Innovation Award in the category of Infrastructure Simplification. It was for our work on a project called; good, better, best that combined Windows servers, Linux servers, Lotus Domino servers, and iSeries workloads onto two IBM iSeries servers in a virtualized environment and has created great savings for the firm With almost 2 decades of information technology experience and insights I have contributed time in the past to serve on various boards and groups including Canadian Society Customs Brokers (CSCB) Systems Design Committee, Data Processing Management Association (DPMA) Winnipeg Chapter, Manitoba EDI User Group. I am a founding member and Chair for the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce Innovation Awards (1999 to 2003) and was awarded Volunteer of the Year by the Winnipeg Chamber in 2001, Manitoba representative as a Judge on the national awards program for the Canadian Information Productivity Awards (CIPA) (1999 to 2002). Founding member (2004) of the CIO Association of Canada and currently serving as Member at Large on the Board for CIO Canada (2004 to 2005). I am currently enrolled in the Edinburgh Business School Heriot Watt University self paced MBA program. I am also an accomplished speaker with many national and international speaking engagements to my credit. I have been often quoted and there are numerous articles on my teams work that have appeared in many publications on line and in print including the Globe & Mail, Canadian Business Magazine, CMA Magazine, Vancouver Business, Les Affaires and many more technology related publications as well.

About GHY International: GHY assists companies that trade in the global and North American marketplaces with International Trade Consulting, Compliance Management Consulting, Canadian and US Customs Brokerage, Cross Border Logistics, Non-Resident Importer Services.