Dear readers,
I am writing with a year-end message to thank you for the constant support of our publication through our journalism, advertising, events and digital services. I hope your holiday season is restful and that you can find time to take care of yourselves and connect with loved ones. I would be remiss if I did not thank our outstanding BIV team for its exceptional effort in the year under this prolonged adaptation to new conditions.
I also want to outline some changes in store for BIV in the next year, subject as always to the ever-changing environment in which we operate in a pandemic that won't soon disappear.
Our growing audience for our online stories and newsletters continues to be a source of strength and optimism for our operation. The appreciation of trusted, fair-minded local business journalism is evident in the received letters and community encounters. In the weeks ahead we will remake our biv.com website to a more efficient platform that will be easier to read and more effective in serving your needs through mobile and personal online search. Following that, we will outline details of a new subscription program that will continue to furnish much of our content free online but provide new features and benefits exclusively for subscribers. Our approach won't be to charge for content we have historically provided freely, but to add substantial value to the proposition of a subscription.
As part of this plan, our approach on print subscriptions will shift so that we produce fewer newspaper editions in 2022 to reflect the changing pattern of readership and advertising. On those weeks, we will provide in their place one of our many magazines. We have taken great pride in introducing during this time an Indigenous business magazine, Mákook pi Sélim, and the BC500 annual publication of the province's most prominent leaders, as part of a portfolio of more than a dozen titles. You will of course continue to have online access to breaking news, features, commentaries, weekday podcasts and other content, along with your choice of our twice-daily newsletter and weekly newsletters.
We are hopeful that we can rekindle our in-person events in 2022. They offer expert insights at panel discussions on important issues for the business community, opportunities to broaden professional and personal networks, and in many cases a celebration of excellence and accomplishment in our midst. Our plans are to stage some smaller events in the first half of the year, along with more significant gatherings for our annual Influential Women in Business awards in March, for our recent announced Forty Under 40 recipients in April or May, and for CFO of the Year in May or June. We are buoyed by the successes in November of in-person BC Export Awards and a combined CEO and CFO of the Year celebration, and with our fingers crossed that we are not subjected to another wave of restrictions on gatherings, we look forward to seeing many of you.
The pandemic has been very disruptive to the pattern of business we established over three decades in this community, and we at BIV are heartened that many have stepped forward to bring support to our operation in this time. It is deeply appreciated, particularly because we know that many of you are living with your own uncertainties about the future of your firms and occupations. But our challenges, like many of your challenges, remain in the time ahead. We will be asking for continued support of our organization and of those firms that support us.
I welcome your thoughts (send email to [email protected]) on how we can serve you better. Please stay well and safe this season and have a great 2022.
Kirk LaPointe,
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.
