Social Media in Canada, Real Experts and I get to learn

In light of one of my recent posts about the differences between Canada and the United States, if you think this is where I plan to discuss that more, it is not :-). But there are some fun links along the way if you keep an eye open.





Canadian Institute Social Media Conference, Toronto December 4-5, 2007

I thought this conference (in the classicly Canadian polite and pragmatic ways) looked like a bit of a divergence from so many others you read about or go to. First, leaving me out of the equation for a minute, what a great group of speakers/panelists.

Speakers and Real World Experience
Conference attendees will hear from social media experts from: Microsoft Canada, Yahoo! Canada, Scotiabank, Art Gallery of Ontario, BMW Group Canada, IBM Canada, National Research Council Canada, BMO Financial Group, Iotum Corporation, Tucows, Cognos, Thornley Fallis, Fasken Martineau LLP, reInvent! Communications, ClickInsight Corporation and much, much more!

Looks to me like a chance to hear about real world work and challenges and I might even want to skip my own session and go to learn more from others. Seriously, I am sticking around for the full 2 days to soak it all in...(or do whatever else Joe Thornley has me doing). .

Toronto's Third Tuesday on a first Tuesday
...While writing this post I see Joe has me doing Third Tuesday in Toronto. That will be fun to do in between the conference days. Think Im likely to be more free flowing there and just take it as we go...no big presentation, just conversation. Will be fun...if anyone attending wants to highlight things for discussion let me know here

My Social Media Conference Topic, Crisis
I am going to talk about Social Media and Crisis Communications. Im still working on the presentation (should be doing it now, actually), so not finished with what I might say. I asked a question on Facebook for any words of wisdom, so feel to drop by with suggestions or leave a comment here. The Conference has a Facebook group where I have asked for input for the presentation, so let me know what you want to hear about.

Sounds to me like a great group of people to learn from and expect all of us will come away with ideas about how social media is being effectively (and not so effectively) used to engage with customers, clients, employees, potential employees and other key business stakeholders. And, of course, there will be some good ole sessions about ROI.

Canada Notes
YouTube launched its Canada version this month. Did you know that Canada continues to lead the G7 group of industrialized countries in broadband penetration? And in the last year Canada was singled out by Deloitte as having "some of the fastest-growing technology companies on the continent. Deloitte’s 2006 Technology Fast 500 ranking of North American tech companies reveals that Canadians are leading the charge with sustainable growth and technological innovation. While Silicon Valley remains a hotbed of activity, Canada is a close second, with several tech hubs across the country.

Timely Agenda Topics
With that as some background, it should be a great conference and expect some good learnings and insights. I noticed that even though the agenda was planned months ago, Canadian insight has us right in keeping with the times, with a robust session on pitching bloggers -- all under the auspices of Conference Chair Joe Thornley

Thornley to Chair Toronto Conference
The title of this blog says "Around the Web with RichardatDELL" but my getting around pales in comparison to Joe Thornley. He is everywhere.

Joe is one of Canada's real thought leaders and treasures in the field of social media. He keeps pace with Shel Israel on Flickr, you can find him on Facebook and Ning, pownce and twitter, vlogging Scoble, hosting folks like Shel in cross country tours of Canada and then showing up at BlogOrlando or the latest tech conference in Silicon Valley...and he is familiar with Canada's burgeoning tech breakthroughs, including possibly the best damn blog search engine you ever saw, and knows Canadian government and business -- online and off. I think I saw him twitter last week he was in Quebec City and Montreal, talking with accountants, about social media I am sure :-)

Starting my Canada visit in Ottawa, where Joe lives. Canadians refer to Ottawa as Silicon Valley North. There are some great tech businesses there. The city, Ottawa, is Canada's capital where I spent a good deal of the first part of my career. I worked in the city as a political staffer to a cabinet minister and worked closely with two Prime Ministers, and too many elections along the way. Also along the way, I opened and built a national lobbying (read government relations) business for a good friend who had a strong Provincial GR Business.

Im looking forward to spending time with some very close friends and maybe even coming home to Texas with some new Canadian art, for my little collection -- although see its available in DC this month.

Ottawa Leg of Trip
Not sure of all the Ottawa details, but dropping by our Dell operations in Ottawa and I know the team there well, as I sort of oversaw some of its opening. Be good to see them. Will also have an opportunity to meet and speak with folks in the social media field. Joe will have me everywhere, just as he is, I am sure.

Joking and itineraries aside, Joe deserves a call out here. I think he is a"treasure" to Canada, his business and for social media. Joe is not only an expert in traditional communications, he has been a leader in Canada on social media for business and government (the latter being one of those Canadian differences, government matters, but I digress). He has great insight and understanding of Canada's global tech leadership in certain areas, and he is a great evangelizer and educator.

A Thanks to Joe
But beyond his expertise, Joe is generous. He cares, for real. Read his blog. It won't take you long before you find him giving "shout outs" and links and credits to all sorts of people...employees, departing interns, competitors, media, not in BS ways either. He is so giving...although he does dust it up every once in a while too.

If you read his blog for a bit, eventually you stumble on the piece where he talks about not spending genuine time with his teams of employees in his various offices. He admits that he has only been seeing them in meetings and client work and that he started to lose touch with them, as professionals and people. Wow, thats got the elements of social media leadership all over it. He practices and preaches.

I didn't know Joe personally when I lived and worked in Canada. However,when I first started some of the blog outreach for Dell I had reason to comment to Joe and several others on the same topic. One of the other people beat me up bad, verbally, right there in the blogs. I was new at it. I was a little shaken but intellectually understood. I was learning. OK. I took it.

As for Joe...he didn't beat me up. Maybe he felt he should, I don't know. He has never told me if my comment was stupid or not. Joe welcomed Dell to the blogs, indicated he had been following Direct2Dell, asked about my role, responded on the issue that we were discussing, pointed me to "sharing" book marks on deli.cio.us and along the way passed along other little tips and tricks in every good social media playbook.

Earlier this year, Direct2Dell's Lionel had a chance to speak in Toronto at MESH. Lionel came back to Austin and I could not get him to shut up about how wonderful Joe and his team were. The interview of Lionel in a Canadian magazine that publishes with the Globe and Mail, released this week I think, was Joe's doing.

He has been a friend and mentor over all these miles. I cannot wait to meet him in person, finally.

Thrilled to be making a trip to my other country and home, the "great white north" and to have a chance to ride on Joe Thornley's coat tails....I will be taking lots of notes.



as an aside, RichardatDELL on Flickr
on an unrelated topic, several people asked about the Binhammer photos that sometimes appear in a post here and can be found at the bottom of the page. As a result, I have opened a Flickr account for those interested. New work soon, but it is still in the digital darkroom after some new experiments with having a dslr altered to only shoot digital infrared. More soon.