The view from 4 years on - tmc blog's birthday

Four years ago I penned my first post to launch both this blog and my journey here in Australia, re-establishing the consulting business I'd successfully run in London and before that in Montreal.

I'm very grateful that during the past four years I've had the chance to work with some great companies, make so many connections with terrific people, learn a lot and spread the word about how bringing out the best in your people produces better results, faster, with longer-lasting impact.

Who knows what the next four years will have in store... for the moment, to mark this anniversary I'll be diving into the archives over the next few weeks to find some of the best and well-discussed posts, which I'll repost with updated content and insights.

I'll also begin sharing details of the project that I'll launch in 2012 to increasingly be the vehicle for my work, building a community and a movement around the concept of promoting Positive Change.

So as usual, watch this space - to make that a little easier, subscribe to this blog! Just enter your email address in the "Get blog updates sent to your email" box in the top-right side of this page, Or, you can click on the "Get blog updates by RSS feed" button (Wondering how RSS works? Watch this video.) That way you can be sure to hear about upcoming posts as they're published. 

Save-the-world Sunday: Waterlife documentary film

On a train journey from Toronto to Montreal one time, a woman from England turned to me and politely inquired, "What's the name of that lake?" I replied, "That's Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes." Over an hour later, our train's route once again took us alongside a vast body of water and she turned to me, wide-eyed, and exclaimed, "Surely that's not the same lake?! It must be absolutely enormous!"

She was right, of course, it is physically enormous (although it's the smallest of the Great Lakes - the largest is more than 4 times the size and nearly 7.5 times its volume) but it's the environmental significance of the Great Lakes that is larger still.

In this Sunday's post I want to highlight a documentary film about the Great Lakes from Canada's National Film Board that I believe is well worth seeing. It's called Waterlife and below is the blurb for the film, plus a link to the interactive website.

If you are in the Sydney area, the film's Australian Premiere will take place on Thursday 20 August as part of the "Possible Worlds" Canadian Film Festival. Check it out!

No matter where we live, the North American Great Lakes - the last great supply of fresh drinking water on Earth - affect us all. As species of fish disappear and rates of birth defects and cancer rise, it seems something's not quite right with the water....

Fascinating characters tackle the big environmental issues surrounding water and explore the dangers of taking water for granted, in a film which is also an epic cinematic poem for the senses.

Filmed over a year with a variety of specialty cameras and innovative techniques, Waterlife is a documentary experience like no other. Narrated by Gord Downie, lead vocalist of The Tragically Hip, the film feature hypnotic, jaw-dropping imagery and features an ace soundtrack by Sam Roberts, Sufjan Stevens, Sigur Rós, Robbie Robertson and Brian Eno.

Winner Special Jury Award, Hot Docs Film Festival 2009

Explore the interactive multimedia website http://waterlife.nfb.ca

.