Being Buff: Marketing the social economy

One of the gems I picked up at last weekend’s Podcasters Across Borders conference came from the CBC’s Tod Maffin. Tod did a presentation called Twenty Minutes of Epic Awesomeness (or “These are a Few of My Favourite Things” on the downloadable PDF program). In it, he shared twenty of his personal productivity and/or creativity tips – and this from a guy who scores high in both areas. Tod speaks internationally on technology and society and if you’ve ever seen him in action you get why he’s so in demand.

One tool he mentioned, the audio editing software Adobe Soundbooth CS4, solves a problem that’s existed since people started recording interviews: transcribing your tape. Yes, there is finally a program that will transcribe your tape for you! And it does it in all the cool, useful ways you want.

You can select a section of your audio, just like you do when you want to edit it, and have Soundbooth transcribe just that part. Or, after you have transcribed a section, you can highlight some text and Soundbooth will jump to that part of the audio file so you can edit it.

How much would you think editing software that smart would cost? $600? $700 $1000?…

Nope. All that and more for a little over 200 bucks.

I don’t think I’ve every heard so many people say, “I am so getting that.” as during Tod’s presentation.

Tags: Adobe, audio, editing, Tools, transcribing
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Podcamps never cease to amaze me. They are amazing conferences full of inspiring speakers and they’re free. In addition to that, if there’s a topic that’s not covered, you can create your own session. Depending on what it is, you’ll probably get some of those amazing speakers to drop in and give their two cents.

For example, I’m heading to Podcamp Toronto at the end of February and I’ve noticed there are currently no sessions on mobile marketing. So I’m going to suggest one and ask some of the speakers who are doing cool things with mobile if they’d be willing to take part. All it will cost me is the humility to accept if some or all say no. Even if they do, I’ll be able to get a group of smart participants together and come away with insights on mobile marketing that would be hard to get otherwise.

In these lean times there is really no excuse for not taking advantage of great free learning that events like podcamps have to offer.

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The title of this post is inspired by the wildly popular (average of 1000 comments per post), satirical website of the same name, Stuff White People Like, and the fact that I just checked out the group photo from Podcasters Across Borders 2008 (PAB2008) and was surprised to see that this year’s PAB looked less diverse than last year’s – and last year’s didn’t set the bar very high. I’m not saying that is the fault of PAB or its organisers – I’m just stating a fact.

PAB, and unconferences like it, are amazing opportunities to learn and network but, unlike most conferences, they’re free or very cheap. For many brown communities that are economically disadvantaged these are golden opportunities. However, for some reason, very few brown folks come out to these events (at least the ones I’ve been at) and this only widens the digital divide.

One way to change this is for the folks who do attend to make an effort to connect with other communities, let them know about these events and encourage and help them to attend.

So I make this pubic commitment now: I will personally bring at least two young brown folks to PAB2009 to join and diversify the conversation!

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I attended the first day of MARCOM 2008 this week; a conference focused on public sector and not-for-profit marketing. Now, marketing being a broad subject, the MARCOM organisers could have gone a lot of different ways with the opening keynote but I was happy to see that they invited Environics Research Group president, Michael Adams, to share some very valuable information related to one of marketing’s key commandments: know thy audience. Adams talked about the findings in his new book Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism. In the book, Adams argues against the notion that Canada’s multiculturalism means that it is just a matter of time before we suffer violent conflicts like those seen in France and other countries. He provides results of Environics research that shows that, despite the global economic slowdown, Canadians are not following the sadly historical route of blaming it all on, and targeting, immigrants.

Some of the stats he shared:

• Toronto has the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world
• 77% of Canadians said no when asked, “Do you think immigrants take all the jobs?”
• 63% said no when asked, “Do you think immigration is too high?”
• 77% feel immigrants have a positive influence on society
• However, a majority (sorry, I missed the exact stat) believe that immigrants don’t adopt Canadian values fast enough.
• Only 15% of Canadians reported being white, Anglo-Saxon, protestants (WASPs) in the last census.

So marketers: know thy audience…and be happy that, in Canada, thy audience hath good heads on their shoulders.

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The lineup of the upcoming Government Communicators’ Conference suggests that the Canadian government is finally beginning to embrace social media. Social media/personal branding guru, Mitch Joel, is giving the keynote and workshops include:

1. Playing in the Social Media Sandbox
2. Citizen Journalism: The Beginning of the End of the Communications Profession or the End of the Beginning?
3. Innovative Conversation: Our Community Ventures into the Social Media World
4. Branding (a two-hour session with Mitch Joel)

However, if my experience at the department I worked for is any indication, most government communicators won’t get to learn all this great stuff because they can’t afford the $1000 to go. The department I was with would buy two passes for 60-plus communicators to share. The government should go all the way and embrace the “free” part of the unconference model like podcamp Toronto and others. That way all communicators get to go and the knowledge they all gain will easily pay for itself in my opinion.

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Spent the day at Podcamp Toronto at the Ryerson’s Roger’s Communications Centre and now it’s real late so I will post tomorrow on the bus ride home. However, I did want to just say it was cool to see folks taking notes during sessions right on their blogs thus turning their notes to posts. I will try that tomorrow.

Lots more cool stuff learned which I’ll get to tomorrow.

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