Being Buff: Marketing the social economy

Today’s Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 10 featured David Crow, Microsoft Canada’s User Experience Evangelist and founder of DemoCamp and Founder & Funders.

SMB Ottawa co-organiser, Ryan Anderson, introduced David saying they chose him because they wanted a social media presentation focused on people, not technology. However, social media being both “social” and “media” it’s hard to focus exclusively on one or the other. The topics are wonderfully intertwined and so it was in David’s presentation.

Speaking to yet another sold out crowd of the social media converted, David laid out Microsoft’s philosophy for operating on the social web. His key messages were:

1) It doesn’t matter how many people read, listen or watch your content. What matters is how many people your content can get talking about thing they care about.

2) You must aspire to be the best in the world – not just the best in Canada.

3) Aspiring to such greatness means convincing lots of people to work with you.

For more – enjoy the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:42 — 33.6MB)

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I participated in my first live podcast yesterday on BlogTalkRadio and now I get it. What do I get? Well let me give some background first.

I’ve been listening to the great communications podcast, For Immediate Release (FIR), on my iPod (and now iPhone) for a couple of years now. About a year ago (please correct me on the timing if I’m wrong), hosts Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson starting doing live FIR episodes on BlogTalk Radio. I’ve never listened to a live episode – when it was actually live. I just download them after because that way I can listen when I want instead of when the show is aired.

However, yesterday’s experience changed my view because I participated – and I didn’t just listen. I asked questions in the online chat room that the host almost immediately asked the guest speaker. Considering the guest speaker was internationally recognized social media guy, Geoff Livingston, that was pretty cool -  and very empowering. There are few other forums in which I would have direct access to someone like Geoff.

I think the real power for organisations is thinking about adding a real-time, live experience to your marketing/communications mix (if it fits with your strategy/objectives). Try a webinar, or a live podcast on BlogTalkRadio and experiment with the power of letting people give you instant feedback. It really made me feel my input was immediately valued and provided the show hosts with immediate, relevant content. Sure, there are risks with doing things live but that’s what social media is about: taking risks with giving up control.

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Tonight I listened to Jowi Taylor’s keynote speech to the 2009 Podcasters Across Borders conference in Kingston. As a result, this episode is about passion and inspiration. It’s about one man’s belief in a project, the Six String Nation Guitar, his unwavering pursuit to complete it – and how it inspired unity in a divided nation.

The story is amazing on many levels that you will hear when you listen to it. The one thing I wanted to highlight was how the project, building a guitar made from pieces of Canadian heritage and culture from across Canada, was a unifying force. From a piece of a tree sacred to the Haida Nation in Britich Columbia to a piece of the house of Canada’s first black cowboy (that almost none of us knew about), the guitar is made of pieces of things from some of Canada’s greatest stories. Some of the stories are well known, most aren’t. Each comes from one of Canada’s diverse peoples and together make an instrument that members of each group have used to play their unique stories. Many contributed to making it. Many have touched and played it. Everyone owns it.

Enjoy, and share, the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:27 — 50.8MB)

Tags: pab09
Posted in Inspiration, Podcast | 2 Comments »

Yesterday I joined about 100 others attending ChangeCamp Ottawa ‘09 – an unconference focused on re-imagining government and citizenship in the age of participation. Unconferences give participants the opportunity to wield much more power than regular conferences by allowing them to decide what will be discussed. So, after opening remarks by one of the organizers, we were invited to the podium to “pitch” our session idea to the circle of participants – including picking which time slot during the day it should be. (Luckily there were fewer suggested sessions than time slots so there was no need for the group to decide which ideas were more worthy.)

The ideas were then posted on a wall on “the grid” for all to see and choose from – and they were posted immediately to the online grid on the ChangeCamp wiki. As ChangeCamp founder, Mark Kuznicki, said in his talk at Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 9, this live creation of content is the main objective of ChangeCamp – and ChangeCamp Ottawa got behind that objective 100%. Online discussions happened before, during and after the event using email, Twitter, blogs, the ChangeCamp wiki and a Pathable social network site. At the event, there were people live blogging and Tweeting (using Twitter), and using laptops to upload content live to the ChangeCamp wiki and their personal sites all over the web. There were people capturing the event on Flip video cameras and audio recorders – their own and some supplied by the organizers. There was an eventbot video station, much like CityTV’s Speaker’s Corner video booth, where people were encouraged to go and talk about the sessions they had pitched and attended.

This live capturing encouraged all of us to get stuff up right away, or as soon as possible, and addressed the common problem of everyone leaving with good intentions to upload their content later – and then never doing so.

I sat down with two very happy and tired co-organizers Ian Capstick and Mark Faul after the successful event to chat about their online effort.

Enjoy the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:15 — 11.2MB)

Tags: #cco09 ChangeCampOttawa unconference
Posted in Podcast, Unconference | 2 Comments »

I attended Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 9 this morning featuring Mark Kuznicki. Founder of TransitCamp and ChangeCamp Toronto, Mark “engages creative communities in co-creative solution building through face-to-face events” that empower people to become “citizen superheroes”.  TransitCamp and ChangeCamp brought Torontonians together to talk about solutions to community challenges. TransitCamp was about how to make Toronto transit work better for citizens. ChangeCamp Toronto was about re-imagining government and citizenship in the age of participation.  Mark said a key goal of such events is to create content (i.e. the conversations) and use social media to spread it. Mark talked about his own journey to the work he does and then took questions.

Enjoy the conversation.

p.s. ChangeCamp Ottawa is happening Saturday, May 16th so attend in person or via the web!

For the presentation click the Play button below. For the Q&A session click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:34 — 38.1MB)

Posted in Community building, Podcast | 1 Comment »

I attended another excellent Social Media Breakfast Ottawa today with about 60 others. This one featured Chris Greenfield of clever communications and former CEO of Ottawa-based, branded entertainment company, Fuel Industries. Greenfield gave a talk called Social Media Hype: Getting past the BS and making it really work in which he laid out the do’s and don’ts for us “social media vendors”. And I’m happy to say that he reinforced what I’ve been saying here for years now: strategy, strategy, strategy.

He said three of the most common mistakes social media vendors make are:

1) applying the same strategy to different clients

2) doing one-offs (i.e. the $10,000 Facebook page and nothing else)

3) creating strategies that piss customers off (i.e. with annoyingly placed surprise ads)

His message was clear:

• understand who your target audience is and what they want
• understand your client’s objectives
• develop a multifaceted approach – involving, real, long-term engagement – to meet those objectives

Enjoy the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:05 — 44.0MB)

Tags: #smbottawa
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Attended another great Third Tuesday Ottawa event tonight with Globe and Mail reporter Mathew Ingram talking about what the Globe is doing with social media. Here’s the blurb from the Third Tuesday site:

The Globe recently appointed Mathew as their “communities manager.” He is well qualified for this position, having established himself as one of Canada’s most respected and widely followed technology bloggers and reporters.

Since he took over as community manager, the Globe has engaged in high profile social media experiments – most notably using CoverItLive for live coverage of a subway shooting in Toronto, the Canadian budget and the visit to Ottawa of President Obama; the establishment of a public policy Wiki; and encouraging other Globe reporters to make it personal by using Twitter.

Some highlights:

• 85% of the Globe’s revenue is still from the print version
• the Globe online got 10,000 comments/day during election
• the Globe is changing its business while still doing it and the challenge is how to change the business without destroying what got you where you are
• the fact that the Globe’s policy wiki is so serious/boring has kept vandals away from it out of lack of interest

Mathew Ingram – Social Media at the Globe and Mail

Presentation (click the player below)

Q&A (click here)

Enjoy the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:13 — 27.7MB)

Posted in Mainstream media, Newspapers, Podcast | 3 Comments »

I write a lot about rabble.ca because they are trailblazers when it comes to social media and non-profits in Canada. One of the main reasons for this is that change is rabble’s mandate – and they walk the talk. For example, they recently switched their website over to the open source Drupal platform that allows them to easily mashup issue pages.

Yesterday, I got a Tweet (a short message via the super popular microblogging app, Twitter) from rabble publisher Kim Elliott  about a new podcast they just launched on the Rabble Podcast Network (RPN) called Who are you? An Exploration of Identity at the Edge of Tech (full disclosure: Kim is a friend of mine). The podcast is the work of the 2008 online journalism class at the University of Western Ontario and looks at how technology changes our identity and our idea of identity. Rabble.ca super tech guru, Wayne MacPhail, taught the class and presented about it at Podcamp Toronto in February.

Now, rabble isn’t perfect – and that’s what exploring is all about – getting out there and trying new thing that sometimes fail or don’t work perfectly. As an example, I just tried to subscribe to the new podcast using iTunes and can’t find it. Nothing comes up when I search and I couldn’t find an iTunes link on rabble.

Kim Elliott, Wayne MacPhail – I know you’re listening. What’s up? (Oh, and keep up the great work!) 

Posted in Citizen journalism, Journalism, Podcamp, Podcast | No Comments »

I attended a Third Tuesday Ottawa event last night that featured a great conversation on social media and non-profits in Canada with the following panelists:

Philip Todd  – Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada

Joe Boughner – Association of Canadian Financial Officers

Kim Elliott – Publisher of rabble.ca

Local social media guru dude, Ian Ketcheson, moderated. Great talk. Enjoy.

Thanks to Ian, Joe Thornley, Brendan Hodgson for keeping Third Tuesday vibrant.

Posted in Non-profits, Podcast, Social media | No Comments »

Being Buff, Episode #31 Mobile Social Media at Podcamp Toronto 2009

(Note: To play the audio: after you click the link above, click the POD button on the page that pops up, as shown below.)

Every podcamp I attend just makes me, well, love podcamps more and more and the 2009 edition of Podcamp Toronto was no exception.

I attended Podcamp T.O. (Twitter: #pcto09) 2009 this past weekend at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto and again had an amazing networking/learning experience – for free. Some of the highlights were meeting Sarah Prevette who had organized TwestivalTO that raised $10,000 to help build wells in developing countries. Sarah is also behind RedWire – a start up (and up start) social network for entrepreneurs, currently in beta release. I met people exploring faith and social media and journalism education and social media. From rabble’s Wayne MacPhail, I learned about the amazing  Flip video camera pictured below that makes putting video on the web as easy as pushing a big red button.

Bill Deys taught me about CastRoller, perhaps the YouTube of audio, and the Eye-Fi card that makes your digital camera wireless and lets you upload photos directly to the web. John Piercy taught me about the iPhone application, TwitterFon, that seamlessly lets you glide between Tweeting, browsing and Flickring…

And, in classic podcamp fashion, I organized a session on mobile social media because there wasn’t one. And I did an experiment that went off beautifully. I used my Zoom H2 hand held digital recorder as a talking stick and had folks pass it around to those wanting to speak. Most people respected the talking stick principle and the resulting audio quality is great. Enjoy the conversation and thanks to all the organizers below for another great podcamp!

Connie Crosby

Dave Fleet

Eden Spodek

Jay Moonah

Rob Lee

Sean McGaughey

Tommy Vallier

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:08 — 27.6MB)

Posted in #pcto09, Podcamp, Podcast | 7 Comments »