Speaker 

President Ross Bannatyne started the Tuesday, October 11 meeting reminding the club of the “Object of Rotary” (in particular #2): 

Object of Rotary 

The Object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster: 

  • FIRST: The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service; 
  • SECOND: High ethical standards in business and professions; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society; 
  • THIRD: The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life; 
  • FOURTH: The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service. 

Vocational Services Presentation: Dave Carson

Director of Vocational Services, Derek Price, talked about the role of his portfolio. This includes off-site visits (like our most recent visit to the SHED brewery) and speakers on ethics (such as former Dean of Business at McMaster Paul Bates who spoke a couple of years ago). Derek’s idea is to use the “Reclassification” talks to inform new members about the career arcs of older members. These presentations will be in the range of 7-10 minutes and will typically arise during scheduled times for classification talks or spontaneously if a scheduled speaker is unable attend. 

The speaker this morning was Dave Carson. Dave titled his talk: “My Information/Telecommunications journey – a tooth on the smallest cog of technology change”. He graduated in 1969 and started his first job at the British Motor Company the same year. That is also where he began working with computer systems. 

From 1969-1976 he worked with three different companies developing and implementing computer systems. He came to Canada in 1976 (along with more than 20 other Brits) to work with Bell Canada and Northern Telecom. His project was the first all-digital telephone switch. 

He left for Saudi Arabia in November of 1980 and spent three and a half years there building a new telephone system with Bell Canada International. He was back in Saudi in 1987-88 working for Saudi Telecom. Bell spun off their computer systems department to form a separate company. 

In 1996 Bell sold the company to CGI. At CGI outsourcing consulting became his business. Setting up help desks for companies became a core business. He travelled overseas again in 2000-2001 to spend 15 months working in Portugal – again setting up help desks. 

He continued working with CGI working on outsourcing and setting up help desks until his retirement in 2010.