Memories of Christmas - Since 1972

Christmas is a very special time for me.

I was looking over some old photos today and thought I would create a visual memory of Christmas past. Whether traveling to see family, or going to Disney, Hawaii, Antarctica, or simply staying home - the season is packed with memories of family and friends.

So here are years of Christmas memories (back to 1972), in reverse order:

2025 - Christmas time again!

2024 - A trip to Calgary for skiing and Harrison Hot Springs for mom's new house!

2023 - A Disney Christmas!

2022 - A visit from Santa, also a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Antarctica!

2021 - Our second pandemic Christmas

2020 - Our first pandemic Christmas, rare picture without masks!

2019 - Christmas in our crazy pajamas

2018 - Christmas in our new home in Boynton Beach, Florida

2017 - First Christmas (in shorts) in Florida

2016 - Cali's First Christmas in New York

2015 - Family in New York, days before Cali is born!

2014 - Brooklyn's First Christmas in New York

2013 - Christmas in Myrtle Beach

2012 - Christmas in New York

2011 - Christmas in New York

2010 - Christmas in Chicago

2009 - Christmas in North Carolina

2008 - Christmas on Sunshine Coast, B.C.

2007 - Christmas at Disney World

2006 - Christmas in Markham, Ontario

2005 - Christmas in Markham, Ontario

2004 - Christmas in Markham, Ontario

2003 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

2002 - Christmas at Disney World

2001 - Christmas in Newmarket, Ontario

2000 - Christmas in Newmarket, Ontario

1999 - Mila's First Christmas in Winnipeg, Manitoba

1998 - Christmas in Winnipeg, Manitoba

1997 - Danica's First Christmas in Winnipeg, Manitoba

1996 - Christmas in Winnipeg, Manitoba

1995 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1994 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1993 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1992 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1991 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1990 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1989 - Christmas in Hawaii

1988 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1987 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1986 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1985 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1984 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1983 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1982 - Christmas in Calgary, Alberta

1981 - Christmas in St. Albert, Alberta

1980 - Christmas with Oreo in St. Albert, Alberta

1979 - Christmas with crazy dad in St. Albert, Alberta

1978 - Christmas in St. Albert, Alberta

1977 - Christmas with Grandma Dona in Shuswap, B.C.

1976 - Christmas with Grandpa Bob in Shuswap, B.C.

1975 - Christmas in St. Albert, Alberta

1974 - Christmas in St. Albert, Alberta

1973 - Christmas with Tracey in Virden, Manitoba

1972 - Christmas in Edmonton, Alberta

Christmas is also about music. Perhaps you have read my blog on my favorite songs.


Here are my favorite Christmas songs - in order. You can also listen to them all together in this YouTube playlist.


1. The Greatest Gift - Andrea Bocelli, Matteo Bocelli, Virginia Bocelli

2. Christmas Eve - Gwen Stefani

3. Christmas Time - Bryan Adams

4. 2000 Miles - The Pretenders

 

5. Happy Xmas (War is over) - John Lennon





6. Little Drummer Boy - Pentatonix




7. O Holy Night - Josh Grobin




8. Mary's Boy Child - Boney M



9. Do They Know It's Christmas? - Band Aid

10. Hallelujah - Pentatonix

11. Silent Night - Kelly Clarkson, Trisha Yearwood, Reba McEntire



12. The First Noel - Carrie Underwood



13. O Come All Ye Faithful - Josh Grobin



I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas & Holiday season and may all of your hopes
and dreams be fulfilled!

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Read some other stories from A Few Thoughts - Jay McBain:

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My Life Story - Have you ever thought about the impact of big decisions that you made in your life? How about the small ones or the ones made for you? How would have your life turned out if things went the other way?

My Love Story - Michelle and met on October 15, 2010 in a serendipitous way. We were both part of a charity in Raleigh, NC and one night at a dinner struck up a conversation about many things - including our love of travel.

My Housing Story - After 13 moves and stops in three Canadian Provinces and three U.S. States, here is my journey in pictures from the Northwest to the Southeast of North America.

My Car Story - I have the dubious honor of getting speeding tickets on all 6 driveable continents - lucky that there are no cars in Antarctica! Did I ever tell you the time I passed the Polizia in Italy with my mom?

My Travel Story - The story started with a "Rollerblades and Red Bull" journey to 100 countries. It is now expanding in every direction after hitting 7 continents and the 7 wonders of the world (most with kids in tow).

My Nautical Story - I am pretty sure the love of water started in 1972 when I was six weeks old and my grandparents Bob and Dona McBain retired to Shuswap, British Columbia, Canada, and built a log cabin.

My Crazy MBA Story - In the summer of 2017, while climbing Machu Picchu, Peru as part of my wife Michelle’s International MBA from Manhattan College, I thought – why not me?

My Hockey Story - As long as I can remember, I have been playing hockey. Over four and a half decades and thousands of games later, I still lace them up a couple times a week, year-round.

My Cycling Story - When the Covid-19 pandemic first took hold in March 2020 we responded quickly as a family - including strict stay at home orders and no outside contact until we could get a handle on the risks. My attention now turned to exercise - and biking across North America (virtually).

My Retirement Story - I have no interest in disconnecting fully from the work that makes me so fulfilled. I could never see myself  in bingo-playing retired life. I want to stay curious, engaged, and adding value past the (very specific) date in 2034 that I am aiming for.

My Music Story - My favorite music can be best defined as sad / emotional / multi-level slow music. Oddly, it is opposite of my worldview - which is normally overly-positive and optimistic.

My Movie Story - Oddly enough, I think Pretty Woman made me very interested in business. I named my cat Austin Powers - oh, and yes, "Danger" is his middle name. Our current dog is named August Rush (Auggie Doggy). Movies such as Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Forrest Gump, & National Lampoon's Vacation have become soundtracks to my life.

10 Things I Learned About the Channel This Summer

As the summer of 2014 is quickly wrapping up, I wanted to share some of my observations on the ever-changing technology channel.

I am seeing the very definition of the channel changing. The first generation of the IT channel opened its doors in the late 1970s, with business models around midrange computing, Apple education sales and hobbyist PC sales.

When IBM announced the PC on Aug. 12, 1981, the Microsoft/Intel revolution began. The channel grew quickly and weathered numerous storms such as Dell direct in the early 1990s, explosion of the internet in the late 1990s, Y2K and, more recently, cloud, consumerization, mobility and convergence.

The channel topped out at roughly 500,000 companies worldwide in 2007, employing more than 5 million people directly. In addition, tens of thousands were employed indirectly at vendors, distributors, associations and media organizations.

The deep recession of 2008 is not experiencing the expected bounceback most of us expected.  While the broader economy is trending back to a 6 percent unemployment rate, the channel continues to slide.

What is happening out there?

1. The channel is shrinking at an alarming rate: Recent reports from CompTIA and IPED show a current North American partner base of 160,000 companies. It may sound like a healthy number, but it is down 36 percent since 2008 and continues to face 10 percent to 15 percent annual attrition for the foreseeable future.

Keep in mind the 160,000 includes a much broader audience than just resellers—it also includes all kinds of consultants, coaches, etc. A more accurate number, including people who directly influence and resell hardware and software products, is closer to 75,000 (with half of those selling enough product profitably to sustain a business).

2. The channel is getting younger – much younger: Todd Thibodeaux, CEO of CompTIA, kicked off his 2014 ChannelCon keynote with a couple of pieces of research. First, an estimated 40 percent of the entire channel will retire in next 10 years.

Yes, 4 in 10.

Second, those retiring will be replaced by millennials. In fact, 75 percent of the channel demographic in 10 years will not have been alive when IBM made that 1981 introduction.
This generation grew up on computers and will be pursuing different business models than the traditional reseller models we have today. They will look more like vendors, with in-house development teams, software products and intellectual property.

3. M&A is strong but suffering from low multiples: With a 40 percent retirement rate and a 10 percent to 15 percent annual attrition rate, it has become a buyer’s market for VARs, solution providers and MSP companies. Larger companies are scooping up geographic assets for both the customer base as well as talented, local employees.

I am now hearing about M&A activity falling well below 1X annual revenue, which is unheard of in my 20 years in the channel. There are dozens of underlying facts to each deal, but suffice it to say that traditional IT businesses are not as attractive to investors as they were before 2008.

4. Managed Services has plateaued: One of the most surprising things I observed this summer is the research around the MSP market. Only 12 percent of channel companies report that more than 50 percent of their revenues are recurring.

While a much larger number of companies do offer managed services, they are a part of their offering and not the massive “do it or die” business model transformation that was predicted over the past decade.

Much like corporate outsourcing of IT, or direct hardware purchasing, there is a definite need for it in the market—but it won’t likely become more than a small slice of the pie.

5. Partners are getting mobile in a more serious way: Not surprisingly, 70 percent of the channel now offers mobile services on their line card. Taking advantage of BYOD, BYOA and the weekly consumer security scares, partners are implementing profitable mobile services.

Ranging from risk assessments, policy creation and deployment, mobile device management (MDM), providing infrastructure and support to ongoing strategy and integration, a large number of partners have carved out a successful new niche.

6. The channel is small business, and getting smaller: Much of the attrition that I mentioned above has come from within channel companies. Doing more with less. The average channel partner has eight employees, and 97 percent of them have fewer than 50.

With the rapid growth of freelancing (think oDesk and Elance), offshoring (Fiverr) and rapid software development (Mechanical Turk), many companies are outsourcing their own functions such as marketing, operations, finance and custom development.

Vendors are looking at opportunities to help their partners with these functions and keep them focused on (selling and) delivering solutions for end customers.

7. Vendor numbers are exploding: The above trends have an interesting side effect—the number of vendors in the marketplace is growing at a surprising pace.

Channel companies are leveraging their deep industry knowledge with unique integration skills (across dozens of vendors' APIs) and creating products and specific IP to address niche solutions.

At one time it was called “value add,” but today partners are incorporating these ideas into new companies and products and then going to market themselves. These products have narrow addressable markets and the need to find resellers will continue to grow.

I predict that in 10 years, the number of vendors will outnumber the amount of pure-play resellers.

8. Influencers and Connectors are becoming more important: Without naming names, our entire channel ecosystem boils down to a small number of individuals who connect large amounts of like-minded people. You probably know many of them!

For example, the North American IT channel has roughly 100 people that will get you one degree of separation from anyone else. These super-connectors are very different from one another—some are media, some run associations, others are vendors or distributors, others make a living on making connections for you.

Some things are clear: The amount of noise and clutter will not stop growing. People buy from people they like. Economic scarcity is evolving into information scarcity. The network effect will drive winners and losers in the next 10 years.

9. Consultants and coaches are struggling: The post-2008 economy combined with cloud, content marketing, consumerization of IT & DIY are squeezing average consultants and coaches out of the game.

Check out the daily job change notifications on Linkedin and you will see this group shifting jobs more than any other group.

The good news is that thinning the herd will have positive outcomes for the channel. The same way I want my real-estate agent to be the best in town, I want my consultant or coach to have successfully done what I am trying to do.

10. Convergence is being driven by cloud competition: I have spent a lot of time and energy explaining how pervasive computing and the Internet of things would drive industry convergence—finally bringing together IT, telecom, print, AV and all other technology channels under one roof.

Where I got it wrong was focusing on the network. I figured that all data would travel over a single protocol across one Internet and that would drive vendors to build and adhere to open standards, allowing disparate technologies to talk.

Well, not so fast. Twenty years later …

The cloud is creating competition in places we didn’t expect and almost every traditional vendor is threatened by the rapid growth of public and private clouds. Million-dollar customer deployments of hardware and software are being replaced by $20/user/month offerings that are being decided outside of IT.

Fifty percent of all IT dollars are now being spent outside of IT by people that vendors and channel partners don’t know all that well. Sales, marketing, finance, HR, operations and development teams are rapidly deploying technology and it is forcing the channel industry to get smarter.

These trends are reshaping the channel, not replacing it. As with every other threat in the past 30 years, the channel will come out of it stronger, more nimble and better able to serve evolving customer needs.

Now, what will fall bring?

Pictures from VSR Business Optimization Summit San Diego - May 2014

Just stepped off stage from "Future of the Channel" keynote at Vertical Systems Reseller - Business Optimization Summit in San Diego

Brooklyn Marie McBain born on April 1, 2014

Michelle and I are truly blessed.

Our little angel, Brooklyn Marie McBain, made her way into the world on April 1, 2014 at 5:35pm. She weighed 7 pounds and 11 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. She was born at Albany Medical Center in New York.

All of us are in so much love with Brooklyn - she is so beautiful.

Instead of words - let me tell the story in pictures and video. First chapter in the story was meeting Michelle in Raleigh, North Carolina on October 15, 2010:



I then convinced (tricked) her to move with me to New York.  :-)  She took me skydiving in Long Island for my 40th birthday and I surprised her back with a proposal at 10,000 feet!  Skip ahead to 1:22 if you want to see it:


And, we were officially engaged:

The wedding plans were set into motion and on July 4th, 2013 we were married in New Rochelle, NY with family, friends and furkids:



After the wedding, we set off on a honeymoon of a lifetime - visiting Casablanca Morocco, Cairo and Luxor Egypt, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Mumbai and Delhi India. It was a whirlwind, but we saw 5 world wonders - the Sahara, the Nile, the pyramids, Mount Everest and the Taj Mahal:

This is where the story of Brooklyn began. And a few months later, we were ready to share with the world:



In November, we learned the gender of Brooklyn at the same time all of you did - on a live action reveal video!



Michelle was rocking the bump over the winter months with grace and smiles  :-D

And then the big moment!  

We went to a boat show 60 miles away on March 29th, had our final doctor's appointment on Monday, March 31st, then off to a late IMAX movie (Noah) that night.

Michelle started going into labor during the movie and we came home (after finishing the movie of course), got packed up and headed over to Albany Medical Center by 4am on April 1st (4114)

After taking a dip in the whirlpool around 5:30am, Michelle went into active labor and it was game on!  12 hours later, Brooklyn made her way into the world!

After Daddy cut the cord, she was weighed in and spent some wonderful time on Mommy.

What a wonderful feeling! I will let Brooklyn get the last word:

The End of Michelle's Honda Accord...and a new beginning!

Michelle and I have just signed the paperwork on a new car after hitting a deer with the Honda on Friday:



The Honda served Michelle very well for 8 years - logging about 90,000 miles up and down the East Coast with Luka and Mirage in tow.

Here was Michelle's (the biggest animal lover in the world) Facebook status after hitting the deer:

Let me begin by saying, God was watching over us- and we- Jay McBain, Baby Mcbain and I are okay (Thank God!)- but a deer came out of no where and that poor deer, and my car were not so lucky  I cried all night, and had a dream he was with my grandma in a meadow in "Heaven" which gave me peace. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I adore animals... but we are lucky no one was hurt. He jumped a divider and came out of nowhere, poor thing- may he rest in peace. Today, they determined my car was totaled= so I guess it's a new car, new family, new start for the McBains. Thank you for 8 great years car, and thank you for keeping my family safe. Please be careful everyone, you never know what can happen - live each day like it's your last; love, laugh, live!

 — feeling Mixed with Jay McBain.

I do have to give a huge plug to Geico for handling the situation.  The phone call on Friday night got through immediately, and we had a great rep who was very polite and efficient.  I uploaded the pictures onto the website and booked a meeting with their adjuster on Tue morning.

The insurance adjuster (named Kevin Biggins, from Troy, NY location) was also very polite and let us go after only 10 minutes.  A few hours later he phoned with the news that it was a write-off (which we suspected).  He also sent a 30 page, 3rd-party analysis valuing the car across the NY region with dozens of real-time comparisons and adjustments. The amount was fair and we didn't feel they were taking advantage.

We brought in the Title for the Honda today and he already had a check cut for us to walk away with - another 10 minute meeting!

Stay tuned for the big announcement of Michelle's new car!