Social Media — 10 comments
11
Aug 10

SXSW 2011: Canadian Panels To Vote For

Its that time again! As last year’s post showing the many Toronto (and eventually Canadian) panels up for voting was such a success I decided to give the list another go this year with the goal again to try to get as many Canadian Panelists into SXSW 2011! (And to make peoples dreams come true ;) )

Find below an initial list of people who have submitted their panels up for review. This post is open to everybody, if you know of someone or have your own panel that you would like to submit feel free to @me on twitter or send me an email (kevin@kevrichard.com)

THE LIST:

And theres more! Came across this great listing of Vancouver SXSW sessions on Tech Vibes. Not to take away from the awesome work done in creating the profiles you can check them out and vote for them HERE.

I know there are many other panels out there so folks let me know if you want your session up! For those coming across this post please support these adventurous folk share what they have to say in Austin this spring at SXSW.

To Do — 1 comment
08
Aug 10

To Do: Be Part Of A Web Series

For the past few years I’ve been following the web series The Guild and went through the joy and pain of the sporadic rate the content has been posted. The web series follows the experiences of lead character Codex and her experiences with her World of War Craft guild, The Knights of Good.  In its 4th season this series gives you a look at the collision  the guild experiences between in game interactions and real life .  A mixture of video game culture and awkward humor, what can I say its a guilty pleasure! (Check out Episode 1 here)

Looking at the concept of the democratization of content web series are a growing divergence from normal media (television,movies) we are used to. As online video is allowed to get larger  this will further provide the general public with more choice. Essentially watch out big media companies you have competition! Looking at the success of The Guild (boasting more than 50 million views) this competition has the potential to get big!

I think everyone at some point in their life gets the dream that becoming an actor or working in film would be great. Hollywood I’m sure is full of aspiring actors and  sadly has been a place for many crushed dreams.With Web content, essentially anyone with a camera and an idea can do it! Which on one side makes things less glamourous but on the other opens up the film industry to essentially anyone who has talent.  For myself I don’t know if I have the skill for being in front of a camera (some say I have a face for radio!) but I think being involved in the process of content creation be it conceptualizing it, being part of the writing and even doing the filming would be something interesting to be involved in.

What about the Money?

So how does web episode content bring in money for its developers? Much like with regular television web content is supported primarily with advertisements but some also make money off of merchandise . The system varies on the video hosting site but with Youtube suitable content that gains enough views is eligible for a portion of advertising revenue that the site gains through banner advertisements.  Essentially its all about the hits and how much of an audience you can pick up.

Avoiding the one man show:

Unless you have a bunch of friends that are as gun-ho as you are about starting up a web show,  finding the  talent or becoming involved in a semi established group of creators can be difficult. One option in the search for your next web episode crew is a site called Spidvid a social network that brings together content creators to get stuff done! I can across this startup in its early stages late last year and as of right now has a fairly active community(check it out!). Otherwise like any sector of the public interested in one topic or hobby you’ll have to go out and find out where these similar minded people are/hang out and start meeting them and sharing your ideas. Nobody said starting something new was easy!

For myself I hope to keep this in mind as something I want to get involved in (even briefly) to have some fun with and to overall create cool content! With web video growing like it is I think its a great chance for people to be creative and test ideas. So…. if anybody wants to brainstorm a web show let me know!

In ending  feel free to reach me at @kevrichard or kevin@kevrichard.com

BONUS CONTENT!! Who said I only enjoyed one web show?! For another good laugh be sure to check out ” The Legend of Niel” (Warning: NSFW…. the comedy in this one is a bit more crude but fans of old school Zelda should get a kick out of it! )

Personal Thoughts / Uncategorized — No comments
02
Aug 10

Our Privacy Online

For a while I thought that internet privacy was over. The era of your mom telling you that  you shouldn’t talk to strangers and to keep your identity a secret was coming to an end.  I kept the mind set that the internet has become just another facet of a person’s identity and that information you post up is similar to being part of a phone book or walking down the street. Recently there have been a few things which made me reflect upon  how internet privacy and anonimity on the web still has some importance.

Blizzard Vs. The Hordes:

Earlier Blizzard Corp makers of World of WarCraft, Diablo and Star Craft announced the implementation of a RealID system which they planned to put into place for the upcoming Star Craft 2 title and later across their entire library of games. The idea behind real ID was that users could interact and be more connected to their friend lists within these games.  Blizzard had to later pull back on this initiative  because of the massive backlash from their communities and it is now  an optional feature rather than being  enforced system wide.

When everyone has a Facebook account why would gamers be concerned about revealing their personal information in game? Well for some its a sense of escape, it takes them away from their day to day lives as described in an editorial from Daniel Lipscombe  titled Why I play games: My Escapism . Gaming is a way to become separate from day to day activities. If you attach your real name to characters in game or within discussion of the game  is that separation still there? Also if  a character named “Princess Peach” decked out in pink  is suddenly attached to a user named Joe Blow can this person still act out the characteristics of that character? (Ok extreme example but you get the point!)  Despite all of this openness on social sites such as Facebook,  anonimity is still sought in the gaming world because once you form your character you can be a different person than yourself. When that character suddenly has your name it changes that aspect of the game.

The Anonymous Internet

With the ability to act (almost) completely anonymous online a certain mob mentality can often sink in within a group of like minded users sometimes with negative consequences.

Jessi Slaughter  AKA Kerligirl13 an 11 year old  from the U.S. enjoyed sharing her life and her interests on YouTube like many vloggers. As video views increased on her channel she began to see negative comments and she reacted much like any 11 year old girl would with a reactionary video. This video to haters  with the infamous line “I’ll pop a glock in your mouth and make a brain slushy” went viral and attracted the wrong type of attention. So much so that her and her family are now under police protection .

A large cause of this problem  is a site called 4chan. Now I won’t go into much details about the site or its users (because they scare the hell out of even me…) but as a group they have been known for creating false rumors about Steve Jobs having a heart attack (and causing Apple stock to take a tumble) and rigging the Time Magazine 2008 most influential person poll to be Christopher Poole aka Moot the founder of the site. Essentially this site with its large and anonymous user base is able to cause a lot of trouble when motivated to do so.

Upon seeing the video from Jessi ,4chan users decided to take it upon themselves to teach this girl a ‘lesson’ through harassing phone calls and  vandalism of social media profiles among other things. While what this little girl has said online is  absolutely inappropriate for a girl her age to be saying at all, harassing her and her family is even worse. With the growing ease of finding personal information online it is easy to announymously contact another person and do actions to them to the point of harassment. Kids especially not knowing the expansiveness of the internet and the consequences of being online are now increasingly at risk of receiving abuse online and without fully understanding could be sharing all sorts of personal information with perfect strangers on the web.

With younger age groups being at such risk online its very easy to say that they should be protected but the harder thing to answer is how?  No matter what restrictions are put in place there will be work arounds. Age restrictions on sites are easily lied to and  parental controls are almost easily turned off as well. When others can act anonymously and manipulate your own information how can be protect those who are just learning about the full expanse of the web?

Creating Online Persona’s

In the end I think managing your online self is becoming just as important as managing yourself offline. We all are visible online, its as easy as a quick google search so we need to ensure that only what we want people to see is visible. I think we also have to remember that our anonymous selves aren’t completely anonymous either. Comments or accounts that you think you made in private  can still be potentially tracked back to you.

Having these online persona’s bring on new problems like cyber bullying and identity theft and for good and for bad put us in front of a more global audience. For now I’ll remain more careful of what I place online and will continue to watch how things develop.

Do you have a question or comment ? Feel free to reach me at @kevrichard or kevin@kevrichard.com


Uncategorized — 2 comments
25
Jul 10

Announcement: Blog Redux

Yikes,its been since the end of April that  I wrote something on this blog… truthfully thats a little embarrassing! Its not that I dislike writing its just with my current format I don’t have anything to say… right now with so much content about social media going out  and not much in terms of change within the area theres not much content  that really gets my brain going.

So then what? Am I going to let this blog die?  Absolutely not, its just going to change format! What’s going on in the world of tech ( Interactive, Web and Consumer products) still really gets my gears going so I’m going to work and have that become the much more dominant content of this site. Thats not to say that I may slip in a post or two about Social media as from time to time I may come across or work on some really awesome stuff  but its no longer going to be a  focus ( just to worn the 5 or so people that are actually still reading this!).

In the next few weeks expect some changes to show up. If I can get things up and working I’m hoping to get some custom theme work in and probably a change in name and domain. In the end I think if I want to keep this blog up and running its got to come down to passion and having a bit of fun with this thing. Stay tuned!!

Social Media — No comments
29
Apr 10

A Framework for Social Marketing Analytics

Like with everything that is done in business, it has to be done for a reason or else it’s just wasted effort. Measuring simply anything from your social media initiative without a reason behind it is just that – a wasted effort. In reading “Social Marketing Analytics” by John Lovett and Jeremiah Owyang this point is further proven. In measuring social media what you measure needs to be attached to specific business goals, not measured just because the number is available.


The paper by Lovett and Owyang starts off with a good definition of what Social Marketing Analytics is (what can I say I like when things are plainly defined):

“Social Marketing Analytics is the discipline that helps companies measure, assess and explain the performance of social media initiatives in the context of specific business objectives.”

Pay particular attention to the last part – “…in the context of specific business objectives.” What did your social media initiatives achieve for your company? Social media measurement is not just looking at the numbers of fans go up or down (or whatever shiny number there is out there) but looking at the end result of what your work achieved for your organization. Very simple but great stuff.

Lovett and Owyang write about a three layered approach to Social Media Measurement, which I feel is effective in further demonstrating the need for measurement:

1. Strategy: The reason behind the initiative.

2. KPI (Key Performance Indicator): What the measure of success or failure is with this initiative.

3. Granular Metrics: The information or inputs that need to be gathered to allow you to formulate the KPI.

Social Marketing Analytics Framework

In keeping the paper accessible to general business practitioners Lovett and Owyang present four major strategies (although they mention that there are more) along with suggested corresponding KPIs. I’ll leave the KPIs for more in depth reading in the paper but I thought I’d present the strategies as these apply to many businesses:

1. Foster Dialog: Developing conversation around your company or brand. This is the development of content to create interest in what you’re trying to achieve.

2. Promote Advocacy: The development of ambassadors for your organization. Encouraging people to actively discuss and promote your brand online.

3. Facilitate Support: Provide a channel where customers are able to get their problems/concerns addressed in a timely manner ( Ex: @Rogershelps or @Toronto311).

4. Spur Innovation: The development of active discussion around your brand or initiatives focusing on the topic of improvement. Essentially putting like minds together online in developing ideas to make things better.

Overall in reading this paper it really puts it out there that:

A: Knowing what you want to achieve with social media is important and,

B: Measuring your progress (and not wasting your time) needs to be followed right after.

I really encourage you to check out the paper as it’s a great first step in developing a measurement program. I would also add that while it’s a helpful framework, it’s not a complete instruction guide. Measurement, like any other business initiative, needs to be scaled and customized to fit with the specific organization. Measurement and tools that apply for a large multinational corporation don’t have the same effectiveness for a smaller, local business.

Uncategorized — 1 comment
22
Mar 10

Are you learning anything from Social Media?

So I’ve been procrastinating with posting this for a bit , but now I think I have a good intro…. So at my new job at Syncapse, I do a lot of measuring and spending my day looking at client data.  I’m finding it  really exciting because essentially I get paid to do the learning for companies so they can consistently improve their Social Media strategy. Reflecting on the work I do though it seems for a good portion of the ‘social media world’ that metrics and measurement and the whole idea of ‘learning’ from what you’re doing doesn’t get talked about a whole lot. With that, I thought I’d put down a few of my thoughts of why Social Media measurement or the idea of ‘learning’ within Social Media strategy is so important.

You Get To See if Things Work: With Social Media measurement you get to gauge how effective online strategies really are.  Are there no conversations surrounding your content? Is  there conversation but not the kind you want to hear? Then there is obviously something that needs to be fixed. Perhaps you haven’t told your audience about your initiatives or maybe your content isn’t relevant to them. By implementing strategies and comparing them to what you’ve done in the past  you are able to see what you’re doing right or wrong and how to make things even better moving forward.

You get to see if customers love/hate you (and how to improve it!): As a part of online measurement you are able to look at  what people are saying about a company or organization online .  This is looking at what users are saying directly AT you or what they are talking indirectly ABOUT you with everyone else.  Are they having problems with a particular product of yours? Is there something that people want to see more or less of from you? The insights you get from conversations are way different than what you can get from a survey  or traditional market research. In a survey people have time to consider and alter their answers to give you just half truths. Within online communications you’re getting the raw knee jerk reactions regarding what they think about you and how they use your product in everyday life.  ( CAVEAT: Watch out for Trolls! No matter what you do there will be someone looking to stir things up…. all I can say is DONT FEED THE TROLLS )

You Find the Unexpected: Often times its important to stick your head outside of what you’re doing to get a different perspective of what is actually happening with your company. This is especially true with Social Media. By looking at what occurs outside of your organizations’ initiatives every once and a while you may  see surprising things happening with your customers that you haven’t heard of. Perhaps they are re-purposing your product in a way that you didn’t think was important (ex: Coke and Mentos blasters) or maybe some previously unreleased news about your company has become public and is gaining an unexpected amount of traction with your customers. By learning what your customers and the public is doing ‘out there’ you’re able to adapt to things as they come up rather than let events plow you over!

In closing while a lot of discussions regarding social media surround  customer engagement and use of the tools, I think measuring your success and learning from what you’re doing online is just as important. Without knowing what you’ve achieved and what is occurring out in the wilderness that is the ‘internet’ you’re only going to continue making the same mistakes and not improve upon yourself.  With my new position in  Measurement Science I hope to be able to share some  brief tidbits  about online measurement and why its a useful part of the campaign process. Stay tuned!

Social Media — No comments
13
Mar 10

Geurilla Analytics Simplified

I think now is a good time to bring up this follow up post to the recent Geurilla White Paper posting. I’m sure for some, looking at the paper was an immediate shock of words and numbers! I hope in this small version there’s a bit more understanding of what the paper tried to get across.

So whats this paper about? Social Media Measurement and the common use of machine sentiment engines as a way of measuring effectiveness….. or how un-effective this is based on the research we’re presenting. Getting right down to the point, language is COMPLEX! Thats to say that the words and messages we share with our friends are full of double meanings, slang and one of my personal frustrations lack full context. I’m sure most people have had online conversations where you’ve had to defend what you’ve said as it was read in the wrong way.

Knowing that online messaging is really complex, often times in measuring the success/failure of social media initiatives   firms use a sentiment engine to rate mentions of their brand on a scale of Negative, Neutral and Positive. With this in mind, we the Syncapse Measurement Science team looked to see if this was an a reliable measure.

What did we find? That again language is complex and no two people will perceive a set of  messages the same way.

This research was based on an earlier survey we released on twitter  where we asked  people to rate a set of 20 messages ( all taken from a twitter search for ‘books’).  The most significant finding of this survey is the lack of agreement on the survey as a whole. With such a simple answer set  we did not find  a single pair of respondents (out of 102) who could agree on the sentiment of these messages.

To put a further test in our survey we also put a wrench in the works with a trick question. We decided to repeat a question. While a majority of people rated sentiment of this question the same on each response,  19% didn’t!  So in a span of a few minutes a person’s feelings about a message can change [ meaning you have to be particularly careful in how you time your emails! ;) ]

What in the end do the findings of this paper mean? Well to quote directly  from the paper:

” If a group of 102 humans could not agree, how can a single machine output a single score that everybody would agree with?”

The current sentiment score system that’s in use isn’t netting  information that should be depended upon to make real business decisions. Language is just too complicated for a human programed machine to define the sentiment of social media messages.

But WAIT there’s more! If current  sentiment scores should not be used in decision making then what should be put in its place? Well I know a team that does some mighty fine work in social media measurement ;) …..  Ok,  so there’s ALOT to measure in regards to social media measurement and no one has yet created the gold standard. As an emerging industry, measurement is still playing catchup to everything else currently happening (which keeps things interesting). What we could agree on with things as they currently stand  is a more pragmatic approach, looking at the measures and feedback that is important to a  brand( or ‘Brand Health’). This means looking at the overall online communications about a  firm and determining what aspects of these activities are most important to have knowledge of.

Have any questions/comments ? Contact me at kevin@kevrichard.com or send me a twitter message .

PS: I know I’ve been on a massive blog hiatus, I’m looking to change this ASAP!

Social Media — No comments
08
Mar 10

Geurilla Analytics Sentiment Analysis

As tweeted a few weeks ago the Syncapse Measurement Science team put together an experiment on sentiment analysis. Here is the final result of this research:

Syncapse Sentiment Analysis White Paper

and the data set for those interested in looking at the data collected

Geurila Analytics Data Set

Feel free to leave a comment or give me a tweet @kevrichard .

Personal — 1 comment
02
Jan 10

Strategy 2010

This will be a bit of a work in progress so I plan to keep it open for the time being but here goes, the big strategy for 2010!

To Do Something Interesting: Inspired by a Zen Habits post called Do Interesting Things I want to do at least one thing that is noteworthy or interesting this year. Something where I can say “Yes I did that! “. I find I’m in constant contact with so many interesting people but when it comes to sharing my story I feel boring and ordinary. I want to find a hobby or even just a one time activity that can have a story about it.  ( If you have any ideas what this could be feel free to post in the comments or let me know!)

Live More the The Moment: Looking back on the past decade I unfortunately saw  a pattern that needs to stop. I found that instead of pursuing things that I wanted to do, I let barriers or challenges  get in the way and told myself as soon as these are out of the way I can do it. Problem with this frame of thought is that it then never happens because there is always something that will get in the way.

@mynameisguygal told me something recently that stuck with me  ”You can never find time, you can only make it.” and its very true. There will always be a barrier or situation in life that will prevent you from doing something. Instead you have to make the situation yourself that will make your plans work! The goal will be to create a habit out of this. Instead of postponing  and saying it has to happen later I need to just go ahead and do it!

Define the “kevrichard” brand: Not in a business or selling sense but in a life sense. Being in school and being part of a military family made things very structured and planned. This goal fits with my goal of  living more in the moment as with focusing on school and being prepared for the next move I put a lot of things off and didn’t take much time in developing myself as a person.

Being free of all of that,  its now  time to determine what makes me tick! Am I a foodie? Am I into extreme sports?  Or am I a culture explorer? Unlike the rest of my goals for this year this will be a longer term process. ‘Discovering yourself’ isn’t an overnight process  its going to be a  lot of trial and error but it will  also be  an exciting process!

AND the returning resolution…. Become more healthy!  : This didn’t happen as well as I would have liked last year. For the first half it just didn’t happen with early mornings and late nights of working hard  in school while also pursuing events that made this learning even more concrete. And then the second half  it just fell to the side in my attempts in settling my life post graduation.

So the goal this year is to get it done. Luckily (or unluckily) I’m being pushed on a diet for the time being and I’m going to try a more communal approach in being an active participant of the Reddit Health Project and Reddit Fitness (yes I’m a huge fanboy) . I’m hoping by doing this along with other that my motivation will keep up and I’ll feel guilty if I begin to fall behind.

As I stated in my last post my big goal is to get to get myself to 160 pounds of lean mass ( Update on this to come in the summer!)

Well there is my strategy for 2010! This year is going to be pretty big, especially as its a start to a new decade. I hope to you and your family ( and really everyone else!) this year is a great one!

Got to put in a LOL Cat for good measure!

Have any questions/comments ? Contact me at kevin@kevrichard.com or send me a twitter message .


Personal / Uncategorized — 2 comments
28
Dec 09

Reviewing My 2009 Strategy

So its been exactly a year to the date of my post 2009 Strategy. To me I think its important that I revisit it as its been quite a year since I wrote that (1 year blogaversary yay! ) and it should be something I keep in mind moving forward when I set my goals and plans for 2010 … or ’010 as I like to call it.

So  here we go…..

1. Becoming More Passionate: So I think I wrote this with a bit of an expectation that I would suddenly be hit on the head and determine that I would be completely passionate and happy go lucky about a certain job or aspect of my life. Well, it didn’t happen.If you do a quick search on the net you can find a lot of articles and postings on “Finding your Passion” but from what I’m realizing is that it isn’t a fast and immediate process. I made some progress but I would say that I’m still not close enough to choosing a passion and committing myself 100% to it.

Developing passion takes a bit of work- At Social Media Mastermind

That isn’t to say that I failed at my goal, I think as time went by I re purposed it and made it more realistic. Over the year I feel I discovered I really enjoy learning and exploring topics and that I couldn’t be passionate about something that stayed constantly the same.  I also think that as a whole it has to be people related but in a more analytical sense. Reflecting back on school my favorite topics often related to how people interacted (be it Consumer Behavior, Psychology, Communications or Market Research ). Right now in my current work I’m exploring net communications and social media which may or may not be the same in the next few years. Overall I think I’ve laid out a bit more of a path for myself but there is still more work to do going forward.

2. Spending time on the right people: I think this has been the area of biggest improvement for myself , but an area that I still need to consistently work on. I made in my opinion 2 huge achievements: Setting my own boundaries and Getting out and meeting with/interacting with new people.

On Setting Boundaries: Looking backwards on 2008, a big downfall for me was not setting my own boundaries. So this meant going along with the group and not looking  out for my goals and priorities. In 2009 while this was definitely a bumpy ride ( as some of my friends can attest to) I learned to protect my own interests and refocused on friendships that were really important to me. Overall it was a pretty significant personal endeavor.

Interacting with New People: I think this is what I’m most proud and surprised by. Over the past year I’ve met a ton of new people and really pushed myself to be more outgoing. I’ve met a lot of great people ( many of them are on this list here) and really got to learn* and explore a side of business that I sort of knew about for a while but didn’t completely understand till this year. I’ve met a few great people who’ve really pushed me to be better in getting out there and improving myself. You know who you are, I really appreciate it.

One of the rainier Patio Fridays with Katie Boland and Philip Moreria (C/O Lee Dale)

The Challenge: In the latter half of 2009 I lost momentum in this area ( job search/moving up north were to blame) I definitely don’t want to see the relationships I started with people wither .There are many people I respect and admire and having lost contact with many people in the past I don’t wish for that to happen again. So moving forward with w/e path I end up taking ,  being more deliberate with meeting people  and perhaps just booking more 1 on 1 time is going to be important.

3. Taking Care of my Health: We can’t always get things 100% right? Alright so this was a fail on my part. While in some regards I was active in that if I was able to I would walk rather than take transit or drive overall the idea of moving towards less of a 1 pack didn’t exactly pan out. Well no excuses in ’010,  at minimum mornings will be work out time and when I’m able to I’m also looking to snag a gym membership to be even more serious. To put it out there my goal is to bring myself up to 160 in lean mass (I’m right now at around 150). As a secondary benefit I think it would help me gain a much better mental focus.

All in all I think for what the year was, I ended it pretty strong. The external environment could have been better but then who’s to say everything I’ve experienced would have occurred if it had been different. I plan on making a 2010 strategy coming up  (its in the works). It will probably be posted closer to New Years.

*I’ve discussed some  great events on this blog but for anyone looking for future reference 2 great places to learn if you’re a business person learning about the web and entrepreneurship are at SproutUps and Refresh Events( a calendar of  events can be found here also) .

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