Brown, Mike

Mr. Mike Brown, Senior Planner, Strategic Planning will present to the Scandinavian Business Club on April 11th on the following topic:

Building a Better Airport for BC

Vancouver International Airport celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2011.  Opened in 1931, the airport included a single runway, two hangars and a small terminal that consisted of an administration building and waiting room.  Throughout the years YVR has grown and expanded into an award winning airport served by 67 airlines and connecting businesses and passengers to 119 destinations around the world.

Looking forward to the next ten years, YVR recently announced a $1.8 billion capital program.  Mike Brown will explain the global context and the local benefits of this program.

About Mike:

Airports are operating in a much more competitive environment, including Vancouver (YVR). I am currently focused on strategies to respond, for example, by building closer relationships with its customers and creating new value propositions. This is particularly true in the case of 'transborder leakage', that is, with the strong Canadian dollar many Canadians are using US border airports. The bottom-line is that Canadian airports are going to have to work harder and hustle to win these customers back.

I have also built a forecasting model to predict airport passenger traffic in any country in the world based on two simple metrics: GDP/capita and tourism arrivals. These two variables explain 87% of the difference in countries' propensity for air travel.

I am currently half-way through an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation at MIT. This is a rich and rewarding program. Also, to better understand some contemporary issues I'm brushing up on my international economics through a distance course with Athabasca University.

 

Mike Brown spoke to us in April 2012.

Midsummer Festival

Each June we have a booth at the Midsummer Festival on the grounds of the Scandinavian Community Centre. In addition to handing out information about our club, we also sign up new members. Everyone is invited to come out to enjoy this fun annual event. If you have time available, why not consider volunteering to help with our booth?

Christmas Party

 

In December, instead of our usual monthly dinner meeting, we have our annual Christmas party. Our guests are welcomed into the hall by the cheerful sounds of the Runeberg Choir. We have a fabulous Scandinavian Christmas dinner, followed by dancing to live music.

Monthly Dinners

Our dinner schedule for 2024 will be: Feb 14th, Apr 10th, TBD. Social hour starts at 6:00pm, dinner at 7:00pm and the dinner speaker starts at about 8:00pm. The dinner is Scandinavian and usually starts with herring and salmon open-faced sandwich appetizers and ends with coffee/tea and delicious Scandinavian desserts. The theme for the after dinner talk is usually business related and hopefully with a Scandinavian connection but we also schedule other speakers of interest. Two meetings of the year we have no speaker. Instead, in February we have our Annual General meeting where we discuss business for the upcoming year and elect our new board of directors. In June, we have our annual joke-telling contest and discover who, among us, is the best teller of jokes.