yesterday, i was reading the daily news at waterloo and noticed that harry rosen of harry rosen fame (you know, the high end clothing retailer in canada) would be on campus to give a talk. now, when you think of guest speakers you would hardly consider bringing a fashion designer to a highly technical school like waterloo; but for some reason or another, harry made it out here to talk to us. it turns out (much to my surprise as well) that the accounting society of waterloo brought him in. it just gets weirder and weirder.

fortunately, it was not an entirely useless talk. he spoke about how he started with an investment of $500 to hold about 40% of the high end clothing market in canada. he talked about the things that made him successful and imparted his wisdom and experience upon us. it was a throwback to the days before the internet as all of his ads were done in print in the globe. i don’t think techniques like that would work nowadays, but you don’t get someone like harry rosen to come to waterloo everyday now do ya?

on the topic of guest speakers; today brings a ton of weird people to campus. we have david suzuki launching the one-tonne challenge, ravi zacharias talking about absolute truth in the relavistic age and finally sex-and-the-media star josey vogels. fortunately for me, i’m too busy and have had my fill of speakers for the time being so i’ll pass on these ones (ooh malcom gladwell is coming on the 12^th!).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: gladwell, uwaterloo.ca