The benefits of local knowledge

At times, you’ve got nothing more than local knowledge going for you. For all of the education, training, research and professional advice you can collect, local knowledge can sometimes be the difference between success and failure. That’s one the key reasons why we don’t chase deals in Austin, Texas, for example, from our Toronto-based head office.

I’m reminded of this having seen Guy Kawasaki’s post about his upcoming trip to “Kewlowna, BC”. As his destination is an Okanagan event, I assume he’s been invited to Kelowna, British Columbia. That just can’t have been a mere typo; the “L” and “W” keys are just too far apart.

Friends of ours in Boston are always teasing my wife and I about Canadian accents. While we deny having any accents whatsoever (certainly as compared to Beantown), I can only assume that someone called Guy up and invited him to “Quelowna” (as some might pronounce it), rather than the hard “K” K-low-na that I’d use.

At any rate, after his fun trip to the recent Winter Carnival in Quebec, Guy is obviously up for more Canada. Between the blogging and the tourism, one wonders when he has time to invest in start-ups?

UPDATE: Didn’t take long for the backtracks of this post to make their way to California…. Guy cleaned up the spelling by Monday morning.

MRM