Wow so its been almost a month since I last posted, slightly embarrassing but its been for good reason! Over the past 4 weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time with people in the Social media/technology fields and attending events to expand my overall knowledge, I’ll have an post coming up soon but I thought I’d lay down a summary of the events I’ve been to:

Podcamp Toronto : Ryerson needs to hold more of this type of event! I think the school really demonstrated what it was about and showed how they can excel above the rest. This ‘unconference’ while initially rooted in the realm of podcasting expanded into blogging, social media, and overall just business/interaction on the net. Some of the sessions I attended included :

-Building Relationships with Word of Mouth and PR Practitioners While Maintaining Credibility with Your Audience .Panel Discussion included :  Anita Clarke,David Jones, Eden Spodek andMatthew Stradiotto, moderated by Keith McArthur.
-I Got the Job because of Social Media by Daniel Patricio 
- Web Metrics Suck, (Or: How to Use Metrics to Get Sh*t Done) by Jeremy Wright of B5 Media 

PodCamp Toronto

PodCamp Toronto

Overall A+ conference! Really enjoyed it! I haven’t had time to check things out yet but as a bonus all sessions were posted to the web : http://podcamptoronto.pbwiki.com/MediaArchive2009

Facebook Camp at MaRs: Held only for a night, and quite a different set up but still was a very useful and informative event! Just to share some interesting Facebook insights did you know that 70% of toronto residents are on Facebook? Or on average that Canadians use this site 29.6 minutes a day and 2.7 times! Canada is a major Facebook nation.

Some key highlights from this event included:

Facebook Connect: Looking at the Facebook platform that allows companies to connect Facebook profiles and import that information directly to their website allowing users to bring their friends and login with them. Not only does this create an easier process for the user but through interconnectiveness at facebook it can encourage users to add more content and drive more traffic to a person’s website.

Whopper Sacrifice: I’ve personally experienced the site when it was up and running but it was great to see the marketing statistics and effectiveness of this campaign. Done by Refresh Partners ( located in Toronto!) this campaign was amazing! A user of the site was given the ability to sacrifice 10 friends for a free whopper, where the friend would be sent up in a flame and burned to ash digitally. This program achieved amazing results!

-233,906 friends sacrificed
-high virolocity: for every one user of the site, they sent 2 more.
-After 10 days the coupons ran out and Burger king happy with the results shut down the site!

Democamp19: Another great event, but again very different from the other 2 I attended. In comparison this event was about web entreprenuers demonstrating their latest projects to the net community. So many great projects to discuss, rather than blather on I’ll post all of the sites:

-Akoha
-Backtype
-Dex
-foodea
-Imagespark
-Kontaigent
-Hackerspaces.org
-N8R text : text your location to N8R text at 416-662-3408 and get a haiku of the location
-Communitie

Something I found interesting at this event was the idea of Ignites presentations which means 20 slides at an auto setting of 15 seconds per slide. It forces the presenter to be on task, well practiced and succinct I think I’d like to try doing it in the near future.

US Now

Us Now Movie Screening: This was at Bloor Cinema, the movie was about the idea of a colabortive world using web tools and how government and organizations can use this to bi-pass barriers and have a more involved organization. Most of the people I were with were there to see Don Tapscott ( which I was too, his book “Grown Up Digital” is a must read!) but I was really excited by the ideas presented in the movie. One interesting segment included a British football team owned and run by the fans. By collaboration they decided which players to purchase, the starting positions of the players and other tasks that a regular owner would do and I was amazed that such a system was sustainable. Unfortunately Don Tapscott didn’t have much time to speak, but he did share some insights in the end and overall yet another good learning experience.

Premier of "Toronto in 6 Words" Care of MSovie via Flickr

GenYto/Canlit at CSI: Not a direct learning experience but still an interesting event to attend.Involving many of the people I’ve been speaking with over the last while I thought it was really interesting to see how this group is made up ( from marketers/ photographers/ PR People/Webdesigners and the list goes on….) despite everyone coming from different backgrounds/experience levels everyone was still able to come together have a good time and share experiences. Following the theme of all of the events it was about collaborating , sharing and bettering each other as a group. While this was more of a winding down and having fun event its not something one would normally see  happening very often  in my opinion.

Closer to end of the night at Canlit.... I think we're all entitled to a few bad pictures :S Care of Rannie Turingan Photography

Whats on tap for the weeks to come, well in the near term its going to be “Passion” on March 23rd by Refresh Events and then FAILcamp coming up in July….. but I sense there will be many more in between as well. Stay tuned! 

Have any Questions/Comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message.

So I’ve been reading Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott ( amazing book!) and have just finished the chapter on “The Net Generation as Consumers”  where in one section he spoke about companies becoming essentially friends with their target consumers.  Reflecting back to companies I’ve dealt with the news aggregator site Reddit  comes to mind. I’m a big fan of this site and have often either forwarded links from this site or shared it with my friends and I do this not only because I enjoy the content on the site but because the site creators have essentially become my friend and have befriended the rest of the website members. Here are some of the simple yet significant ways that they manage to do this:

Interacting with members outside of the site: The creators of this site not only interact with members through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter ( ex: @ kn0thing)  they have offline meetups!  I’ve met with them personally last year during their Drankkit World Tour where they went to major centers and sat down and had drinks with members ( a few pics of me at that event included)  but they even do it randomly including having dinner with a Reddit member who just asked if anyone were interested in going out for dinner.

They personalize: The Reddit alien is a big part of the personality of the website, almost every day  a new drawing of it is posted up depending on current events or project of the site. From time to time as a result of already mentioned meet ups or requests of members the Reddit Alien is redrawn or the Reddit logo even contains relevant pictures. As well the website is in a constant state of change( much like Gmail its in constant Beta)  if there are enough user requests certain aspects of the site are changed.

Not only are they creators, but they are also users: They don’t passively watch the site or attempt to moderate it , they are fully involved members. They aren’t afraid to get in there and post a comment or link and create discussions with other users. They also start side projects that encourage further member collaboration. Sometimes it can be silly such as Mr.Splashypants  but even in more serious matters such as Reddits Feed A Need campaign where users are encouraged to lend their skills and time in helping out a not for profit organization.

Overall I have a major heart on for this site and its creators. As a consumer I have a choice between Digg and Reddit  as they are essentially the same site and many times have the same links but  as Reddit has worked harder to befriend me my loyalty is pretty cemented in place . I’ve included a few pictures from Drankkit Toronto 07 , some with me included. Enjoy!  

The 2 Reddit Creators , Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian with Jenna Landry from Wired Magazine

My attempt at a "C" for Canada.... it ended up pretty lame!

Have any Questions/Comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message.