Ron Gilmore:  

After graduating from Hapnot, I spent the next few years at University of Manitoba with summers in Flin Flon working for HBM&S, finally graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering. Not all of the summer jobs were great but as an engineering student, I tended to be extremely lucky compared to the rest of the guys who worked in some really ugly jobs. My worst might have been the time I had to clean up a 45 gallon drum of molasses that had been parked upside down in the foundry and eventually leaked the entire contents into a small storage room. I can taste molasses to this day merely by thinking about it. When I graduated, companies were hiring engineers by the boatload so there were lots of opportunities. Eventually, I selected General Electric and drove off to Toronto for a series of 6 month assignments around the company, trying to find something interesting. After reasonably boring stints in street lighting, traffic control systems and heavy power transmission, I found some excitement. During the boring stuff, I got to experience the 1966 power grid blackout driving through downtown Toronto. I almost caused an assembly line strike at GE by merely walking down the line with a clip board. I learned how to reverse engineer our competitor's products. How is that for research in Canada? In Peterborough, I finally found something that turned me on in the real-time computer group. And I also met my future wife, Wendy. Some interesting assignments installing computers at Expo 67, a cement plant, a smelter and finally an icebreaker. My poor icebreaker computer suffered an intentional bucket of salt water on its shakedown voyage from a crew member who was not too excited about computers taking over! We married in 1967 and I went back to school at the University of Waterloo. Wendy worked while I studied hard, graduating in 1969 with a Master's degree in Mathematics with a major in Computer Science. Now, there were even more job opportunities. I told potential employers that I was bilingual - I spoke hardware and software! We moved to Ottawa where I joined Systems Dimensions Limited and enjoyed almost 10 years there while our 3 kids (Thomas, Melanie and Kimberly) were born. I began as a consultant and progressed to managing the consultant group. Then I moved into managing the computer network and finished my term at SDL in product marketing. We left Ottawa in 1978 and flew west to Calgary where I worked with my brother Tom in the cedar lumber business for a couple of years. No computers! In 1980, I joined Gellman, Hayward & Partners as a consultant. I truly enjoyed my years working with the excellent folks at G&H progressing to principal, then partner and finally managing partner for western Canada. We enjoyed some amazing assignments with some outstanding clients. In 1990, I left G&H and formed my own consultancy, Gilmore & Associates Inc. which continues today with several terrific partners. Management consulting in information technology has been a most rewarding career working with bright folks on complex problems across western Canada and sometimes beyond. In 2002, I took a team of consultants over to Europe for almost 2 years working on a series of as...Expand for more