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NORTH SHORE NEWS

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NEWS photo Terry Feiers

GENEVIEVE Graham works on one of her

designs.

Argyie grad’s
work honoured

GENEVIEVE Graham remembers being
the first in her school to wear bellbottoms.

People laughed, but she knew better. Later on
everybody was wearing them.

Nobody’s laughing now. The 22-year-old Argyle
grad recently won the designer of the year award from
the prestigious Helen Lefeaux School of Fashion
Design in Vancouver. She’s working on selling her gar-
ments independently, and plans to go to London in the
fall. On a recent wip, her work attracted cnough atten-
tion that she is confident she will be busy.

Although she only started sewing a year ago, she
received a scholarship from the school when she
applied. Most of her designs focus on highly detailed
handwork. She also loves texture: she burns fabric or
folds it, creating an effect like origami. The garments
she designed for the school’s final show were hand-
dyed and completely woven. Her couture work sells for
up to $3,000.

For more information about Graham’s work, call
609-0750.

~~ Marcie Good

‘2 | uckets
for the price of 1

Portfoli

West Van's Geof
Wheelwright
taps into the Net

Michae! Becker

Newsroom Editor
mtecker@nsnews.com

THE Apple IT was
bieeding-edge innova-
tion when West
Vancouver resident
Geof Wheeiwright
started writing about
computer technology.

He had bought the
machine after working a stint
at The Vancouver Sun as a
summer student in the early
1980s. At the Su he worked
with visual display terminal
computer technology.

Said Wheelwright, “It was
very cool and I could not get
used fo the idea of going back
to my old Underwood. The
Apple H was a 48K machine
with one floppy disk drive
and a dot matrix printer and
it was $5,000.

“I had to pay for it some-
how, so writing about it
scemed a good alternative,”
he said.

It wasn’t a particularly

friendly machine to use. It
took Wheelwright nwo weeks
to figure out how to print
something.
. Said Wheelwright, “It was
challenging, but there
weren't that many writers using computers in those days. If you
were a writer with any level of experience, there were lots of
places to sell stories.”

Along the way Wheelwright became the editor for The
Microsoft Magazine in the U.K. and U.S. and an editor for
Personal Computer World magazine in the U.K. Wheelwright
has reported for The Times of London, the Sunday Times, the
Financial Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. He is
also a regular contributor to the National Post.

In November Global Investment.com
Financial Inc. launched the Web site
Investment.com. Wheelwright joined the
company as chief operating officer and vice-
president of content development. Said Wheelwright, “I’ve
been lucky enough head up the development of the content for
the site as well as the hiring of a lot of the key members of the
editorial team.”

The Net is thick with business sites, but Investment.com has
a good name going for it and a niche focus. Said Wheelwright,
“The others tend to cover equities with perhaps a little infor-
mation on mutual funds, but they don’t give you a broad per-

‘

COMMUNITY LIFE

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NEWS photo Mike Wakefield

WEST Vancouver resident Geof Wheelwright is chief operator officer at
investment.com, a Web site that provides timely business information and more.

spective on your whole portfolio and they tend to be very U.S.-
centric.

“What we've uied to do is cover everything you hold in
your portfolio as an investment, whether it’s real estate, the
equity you have in your home, collectibles, antiques, fine art,
coins, mutual funds, insurance and equities. You get a complete
picture of where you are and news about all of those things.

“By having a global perspective you get a better sense of
how everything interacts. That's going to become more impor-

: tant as the world’s economies become more
conjoined.” :
Yet the challenge to keep the clicks coming in
to any Web site is real and relentless. “First of
all, you’ve got to provide an answer on the front page of the
site about what's keeping people awake at night right now and
how do we help them sleep a little better tomorrow night,”
Wheelwright said. :

Investment.com’s membership is global with most partici-
pation originating from the U.K., Canada and the U.S.

The site has also spun off two magazines: Inpestment.com
and Investment.com Mutual Fund Review.

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