About Mike Klassen
Email mike [at] thinkcap.com
Follow me @MikeKlassen on Twitter.
Mike is proud of his Vancouver roots. He’s a lifelong East Vancouverite, a husband, father, community advocate, and the entrepreneurial President of Thinking Cap Inc., a communications consulting company he established in 2001.
He’s been a leader, an organizer and a ‘do-er’ for his entire life. For years, Mike’s been speaking up for walkable communities, public rapid transit, and appealing public spaces. He’s a supporter of smart growth as a guide to livable city-making; a critic of sprawl development; and a thoughtful communicator who listens as effectively as he blogs.
A successful business owner himself, Mike is also a champion of a healthy business community, and understands the responsibility of a city government to support and enable a strong and diversified economy.
He’s walking the talk, too. During 2007-2008 Mike served as Vice-Chair of the respected Vancouver City Planning Commission, developing long-term urban policies focused on sustainability, community development and adaptive re-use.
He worked with the Commission to define policies that will help Vancouver grow into city it could be. And should be.
Mike has achieved a significant level of high profile success, and still lives and works where he grew up, in Vancouver’s east side. He’s a passionate community supporter, a tireless worker on behalf of local organizations, and an active supporter of the local public school where his daughter is a student.
His political career started when he was elected president of the Student Council at Killarney Secondary School, and he’s been involved in public affairs pretty much ever since.
After graduating from the University of British Columbia and roaming the European continent for six months, Mike landed a dream job with a production team at Expo 86, Vancouver’s first hugely successful welcome-the-world party.
That led to being offered a media-monitoring job during the 1986 provincial election, and a new career was born. Mike fused his two major interests – media and politics – and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
It’s been a high profile, high intensity career. Radio, movie and television productions. Corporate communications. He even earned his certification as a member of the Directors Guild of Canada and picked up more than a few awards along the way for his community TV productions.
Along came the Internet, and Mike was hooked. He saw the new medium’s potential for reaching out and touching people with an immediacy and impact the world had never seen before.
Mike produced his first web project in 1994, before most people even knew their way around an email. His new media ‘chops’ lead to an opportunity to work Electronic Arts Canada in the design and production of what would become the world's best-selling basketball videogame series, EA Sports' NBA Live for the Sony Playstation.
Levering this success, Michael returned to his work in the internet space and founded Thinking Cap Inc., to serve as a vehicle for his web development and marketing work.
In 2008, Mike co-founded the popular CityCaucus.com blog focused on politics and urban affairs, and also produced a weekly column for 24 Hours Vancouver, Metro Vancouver's third largest circulation daily publication, as a political columnist.
He had a significant hand in Vancouver’s second hugely successful welcome-the-world party, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. He created the ‘Where to Be For Free’ on line events guide, which attracted a staggering 2.5 MILLION page views, and is credited with attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors into Metro Vancouver's core free attractions. It also helped turn around some Vancouverite’s initial less-than-enthusiastic feelings about the Games and produced the most feel-good time in our city’s history.
He and his wife are also unabashed boosters of the B.C. wine industry, maintaining strong connections to key figures throughout British Columbia's winemaking and marketing business.
And he plays street hockey every chance he gets, especially when it’s for a good cause.
Mike ran for public office in 2011, seeking a seat on Vancouver City Council. He received over 47,000 votes and came within 800 votes of gaining a seat on council.
About this website
A published writer since 1989 and web "publisher" since 1995, Michael Klassen's articles have been read by tens of thousands from around the globe, attracting responses from North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and even from a White House Webmaster.
"I have employed all the Wit and Humour of which I am Master in the following History; wherein I have endeavoured to laugh Mankind out of their favourite Follies and Vices. How far I have succeeded in this good Attempt, I shall submit to the candid Reader, with only two Requests:
First, that (s)he will not expect to find Perfection in this Work; and
Secondly, that (s)he will excuse some Parts of it, if they fall short of that little Merit which I hope may appear in others."
Henry Fielding, 1749
Preface to Tom Jones
As with the quote from Fielding's momentous novel Tom Jones, Mike's words and ideas are humbly submitted to readers on this website in the hope they will enjoy some part of them.
