Globetrotting business writers impressed with city
Upcoming article on Alberta will reach influential worldwide audience
Gary Lamphier, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Thursday, November 09, 2006
Gabriel Gutierrez and Mieke Hesemans jet around the planet about as frequently as you or I drive to the local corner store for milk.
Now, the two young globetrotters have landed here in Alberta, where they've begun researching an upcoming report on the province's red-hot economy.
As editorial staffers for London-based Insight Publications, which produces international feature reports for U.S.-based Forbes magazine -- one of the world's most influential business publications -- Gutierrez and Hesemans have what most writers would describe as dream jobs.
Edmonton from a new angle?
Brian Gavriloff, The Journal
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Font: ****Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico and studied international economics in London before joining Insight last year, has worked on special projects on Kazakhstan, Tanzania, Serbia and Trinidad-Tobago.
Hesemans, who is from Belgium, completed applied economics and MBA degrees before joining Insight's staff in 2004. Since then, she's travelled to a dozen countries, producing reports on everything from Islamic banking in the Middle East to the Quebec economy.
The latter is due to hit the newstands in December.
On Tuesday, I caught up with the two bright-eyed twentysomethings over coffee here in Edmonton, where they've spent most of the past 10 days interviewing local execs and politicians. The list includes Epcor boss Don Lowry, PCL chief Ross Grieve, Alberta Energy Minister Greg Melchin, and Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel, among others.
The Insight team's upcoming report -- tentatively titled Alberta: Investing In The Future -- will be distributed to some 2.5 million Forbes readers sometime next spring. Millions more will read it online, at
www.forbes.com.
It's a big, powerful and important audience by any measure, and one that could boost Edmonton's profile on the international map.
Some 206,000 Forbes readers boast household assets of $3 million US or more; 242,000 are millionaires; 218,000 are CEOs; and 58,000 are chief investment officers. In total, the investment pros who read Forbes manage a staggering $14.5 trillion worth of assets.
"Alberta is internationally known for oil and gas, and people know Calgary due to the (1988) Olympic Games," says Heseman, who admits she's having a tough time adjusting to the chilly Alberta weather.
"So they know Alberta is very hot, it's booming, and there's cowboys and oil here. But there must be so much more."
Indeed there is, as she and her partner have quickly discovered. And although they're slated to head to Calgary on Friday, where they'll set up camp for the next few weeks, Gutierrez and Hesemans vow to return to Edmonton, a city that has pleasantly surprised them.
Although they knew it was the provincial capital, they didn't know Edmonton is also Alberta's manufacturing centre, the province's oil refining and petrochemical hub, the banking, biotech and retailing capital, and the leading health care and post-secondary education centre.
Now they know better. "I'm very surprised with Edmonton," says Hesemans. "We knew it was the political capital, but that was it."
"Edmonton has much more to offer than that. I'm gladly surprised."
Typically, when major U.S. media outlets dispatch reporters to chronicle Alberta's booming economy -- as The Wall Street Journal did last summer, and USA Today did last year -- their research seldom extends beyond the office towers of downtown Calgary or the strip mines of Fort McMurray.
So give Forbes some credit. Instead of engaging in the usual drive-by analysis, Gutierrez and Heseman will spend a couple of months in the province, doing their best to get behind the headlines so they understand the magnitude -- and the sustainability -- of Alberta's economic boom.
And as they now know, Alberta has two major business centres, not one.
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Font: ****Got some clever ideas to boost Edmonton's profile, the city's quality of life, or to enhance its economic development? Now you've got a free platform to pitch your proposals.
Connect2Edmonton (
www.connect2edmonton.ca), an informal online community of city boosters formed last March with the support of EEDC (Edmonton Economic Development Corp.), wants to hear from you.
Until Saturday, Nov. 18, C2E's members are invited to contribute their ideas and comments by posting on the website's Great Ideas for a Greater Edmonton forum. Those who do are eligible to win airfare for two to London, England, courtesy of Edmonton Airports.
A top-10 list of "the most transformational ideas" for Greater Edmonton will be compiled by C2E's volunteers, and unveiled in early December. The site currently boasts some 580 members in nine countries. Anyone can register for free.
Ideas can be submitted online, or by visiting the C2E's display booth at the Shaw Conference Centre's open house on Nov. 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Forget drive-by journalism. Now the folks at Bloomberg News are practising why-even bother-driving-there journalism.
A story the wire service carried Wednesday, entitled Oil Boom May Be Fueling Homicide Surge in Alberta's capital, was written by a reporter in (wait for it) Ottawa, and handled by an editor in (you guessed it) Toronto.
[email protected]
© The Edmonton Journal 2006
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Better hope it's way better than what Reimer came up with when she made a trip to Taiwan/China once years ago! 
(don't ask me if I remember exactly what, but I remember that it was disappointing compared to to other mayors did on their overseas biz trips to promote their cities!)
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