Are you reading our 3 millionth page on GenevaLunch tonight? If so, let us know!
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – We’d like to share a bit of great Friday night news: GenevaLunch in the next few minutes will hit the 3 million pages viewed mark. If you think nothing ever happens in the Lake Geneva region, you’re wrong – just ask the people who have read 3 million pages of news and information in the past five years. We’re small, non-profit, staffed by volunteer journalists, and we started with nothing much in 2006, but we’ve managed to make sure you know what’s happening in the area.
By way of thanks to all of you, we’re offering gifts to those we think come closest to being the 3 millionth page reader from Switzerland, France and our other main countries for visitors, Canada, the US and the UK. Check it out on Facebook!
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – GenevaLunch editor Ellen Wallace was named “Unsung hero” by the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce at its first Business Awards Wednesday 30 November in Geneva for her work in developing an online news source in English for the Lake Geneva region and Switzerland. GenevaLunch, staffed by volunteers, will soon hit the 3 million pages viewed mark, with 1 million of those in 2011.
The prize was one of five at the first annual awards by the business organization.
The other awards:
Company of the year: Withers LLP
Most Promising Business/Entrepreneur: Avaloq UK
Excellence in Customer Service award: La Cote International School, Gland
Corporate Social Responsibility: HSBC Private Bank
Some 150 people attended the awards dinner, including British Ambassador to Switzerland Sarah Gillett.
GenevaLunch has a strong commitment to high-quality journalism and is staffed by a core group of seven regular contributors and a number of other occasional contributors (see About GenevaLunch) who share a wealth of international journalism experience. Nearly 100,000 pages are viewed a month (November 2011). The news service provides not only daily news but an ongoing historical record of life in the region, in English.
The mission of the annual Business Awards is to recognize the achievements of companies who have made an outstanding contribution towards bilateral trade and investment between the UK and Switzerland, the BSCC notes. They are organized by the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Lloyds TSB Private Banking.
Ed. note: the awards dinner gave us the opportunity to talk to a number of businesses about their work and we’ll be adding them in the next few days to our resources section, which we are currently updating. Be sure to check back!
So Money Productions video about GenevaLunch, made for the BSCC Business Awards
Ed. note: I’ve posted a smaller version on Editor’s Notepad to accommodate those who have slower Internet connections, so if it doesn’t load quickly and smoothly, please view it here.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – GenevaLunch is one of 15 finalists for 5 categories of business awards given by the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce. The winners will be announced 30 November at a sold-out gala dinner at Beau-Rivage Hotel in Geneva. The awards night will feature videos of each finalist, made by a Geneva startup, video production company So Money.
The judges did not see the videos before making their decisions, but our visitors can now view all 15 videos on the BSCC web site and decide for themselves who most deserves the awards. GenevaLunch editor Ellen Wallace is in the running to be named an Unsung Hero, as are Guy Stevens of the International Comedy Club/Funny Laundry and Catherine Nelson-Pollard of Living in Nyon (both have long appeared on GenevaLunch, on resources and events pages).
We are of course prejudiced and we’re cheering on Ellen to have a chance to very publicly pay tribute to the wonderful GenevaLunch team, an entirely volunteer staff, who have brought you some 20,000 articles since 2006: quality news on Switzerland and the Lake Geneva region. We also want a chance to pay tribute to your, our visitors. At the start of 2012 we will have reached 3 million pages viewed. Thank you, all of you, for your support!
See us in action. And to learn more about GenevaLunch, visit our updated “About us” page where you can learn about our new sponsorship and donor options Show you care about your community!
Note to our readers: the server database at our hosting company was down part of Friday afternoon, which caused problems for some of our visitors: please accept our apologies. It also meant we couldn’t post some stories as planned, so we’ll be catching up today. Thanks for your patience. – Ellen Wallace, editor
Lake Geneva area and Swiss weather: daily forecasts now on GenevaLunch
Geneva / Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – GenevaLunch is doing more to keep you happy, and among our latest additions aretwo that will please many readers. Starting today we are providing weather forecasts from the Swiss national weather service, MeteoSwiss. You’ll find icons for Geneva and Zurich at the top of the home page. Select either one and you’ll land on the weather forecast page, where we will also frequently post current weather photos from the Lake Geneva region.
If you have weather photos you’d like to contribute, we’re happy to consider them: editor@genevalunch.com.
Crossword fans are already busy working on our new feature, crosswords created specially for GenevaLunch by Shirley Curran, a regular contributor to our winter ski reports and the person behind our book blog, Book my place. The crosswords appear on the blog. Shirley is an accomplished creator of general knowledge and cryptic crosswords for several UK publications, going under the pseudonym of Chalicea. You might want to start with this one, but don’t peek at the answers, of course, provided this week.
Our blogs are changing: two of them have new names to reflect their new focus. Geneva Living is where Laila Rodriguez, who is also a news reporter for GenevaLunch, shares her tips on life in the city. Now that she has four years in Geneva under her belt she decided it was time to change her blog’s name, formerly called New to Geneva? Me too! And Jared Bloch is focusing more on one of his real passions, anything and everything that has to do with wheels, so Man oh man is now called, not surprisingly, Wheels enthusiast.
We have new people lined up to contribute guest blogs on a regular basis, so you’ll get to know their voices on a variety of topics, and we’ll be opening up some of the other blogs to regular contributors.
And if you enjoy photography, you may have noticed our four GenevaLunch group flickr photos, which change frequently thanks to a group of 70 regular contributors.
You’ll see other changes in coming weeks, but for now, don’t forget to check the weather (tip: set your umbrella by the door for morning).
Notice something different? Find out more!
GenevaLunch has a fresher look and some new features, with more to come in the next few days. The site is faster as well, part of our efforts to make your visit enjoyable and informative. Read the details on the editor’s blog: Editor’s Notepad.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The 27,000 runners who participated in the Escalade race in Geneva Saturday 4 December can now download films of their finish, available Tuesday 8 December, a project by supermarket Migros and the Escalade race organizers. GenevaLunch was there, with runners, their families and friends sporting our distinctive colours!
Links to other sites: download finish films, Escalade race
Click on images to view larger
Harvard and Yale universities posted heavy losses in their endowment funds in the fiscal year to 30 June. Harvard lost $11 billion, or 27.5 percent, and Yale lost 30 percent to $16b. The university endowment funds invested heavily in hedge funds and private equity, which have suffered during the financial crisis. Both universities have responded by cutting costs and curtailing planned investment. Harvard has laid off staff and is stopping an ambitious construction project. Yale has projected a $150 million operating budget deficit for the next three years. The universities’ investment managers were among the world’s top investment performers over the past 10 years. Harvard Crimson, Reuters
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Health Organization (WHO) reported a 16 percent increase in 24 hours in the number of A/H1N1 (swine flu) cases worldwide, from 6,497 confirmed cases Thursday 14 May to 7,500 Friday. During the previous week, the increase was 200 percent. The statistics hide a more complex picture than the dramatic rise in numbers at first appears to show.
This is the second of three articles that together make up the English version of a feature published 2 April 2009 by Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine on expatriates in the Lake Geneva region. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo brings you the English version.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission.
[Part 2, continued] By Julie Zaugg and Mehdi Atmani In Geneva alone there are 65,000 expats, of whom 40,000 are international organization employees and their families. Philip Morris in Lausanne employs 180 of them, Japan Tobacco International, also in Lausanne 157, Procter & Gamble in Geneva 500 and Nestlé in Vevey 584.
Where do they come from?
Americans were still the majority of expats just a few years ago, but they’ve given way to Europeans, with the Schengen Area and the free movement of people as the impetus. Read more…
Cartoonist Patrick Chappatte
A reminder to our readers who have subscribed to the rss feed: you’re missing out on our home page Chappatte cartoons, which can’t be included in the feed (as well as our blogs), so do visit the site regularly to add a good laugh to your day!
Also please note that while automatic feeds should include all stories posted, the e-mail versions occasionally miss a story and updates.
GenevaLunch welcomes Ago Cluytens, who will regularly share as a Guest Blogger (his first post is now there) his ideas on branding and marketing, from his blog Branding Through People. In the next few days you will also see a new blog starting on GenevaLunch, “New to Geneva? Me too,” the perfect helping hand as you settle in.
Saint Prex, Switzerland (La Côte, Fre, available with subscription) – GenevaLunch (GL) features on the front page of the Lake Geneva area regional newspaper La Côte today. The article focuses on GL’s development as a regional community online newspaper in English and the new community news association, announced 11 December, that is being created to support GL and other future projects.
(Ed. note: please contact the editor of GenevaLunch if you would like to receive an e-mailed copy of the article.)
GenevaLunch is growing up, shifting into a more sophisticated community newspaper format to meet the demands of our readers, who have grown steadily in number each month since we began. GL has been free to everyone, entirely online, five days a week for two years and we would like to thank our readers by offering you an even better service.
What has changed Read more…
