Web Search has transformed my life. Thanks to Google, I can find content about virtually anything. I search for topics, addresses, words, people, companies. Online search is my first reference for everything.

Still, Search continues to be a blunt instrument. All too often I find myself clicking through search results to find content that is meaningful to me. What’s relevant to the vast majority of people may not be what I’m looking for.

And that’s where social media comes in. Through social media – blogs, Twitter, Facebook – I find and follow people whose interests intersect with mine and whose perspective I find interesting.

I’m a communicator who cares about community, communication, business, PR and marketing. And I’m Canadian. So, over time I’ve assembled lists of RSS feeds, Twitter IDs and Facebook friends that speak to these interests and place. And very often, I find myself clicking on links and reading content recommended to me by the people I follow.

Does this mean that I live in a bubble of me-too thinkers? Not at all. I don’t subscribe to people because they agree with me. I subscribe to people because they say something that provokes me to think further about a topic or opens a new perspective on it. This leads me to new things as well as new perspectives on familiar issues.

What am I looking for? Search results that are relevant to me and reflect a higher quality of thought.

What I want is a tool that brings  all three together for me. And that will do the same for you. And for everyone. To do this, it will need to recognize each of us as an individual and take into account not just what we search for but also what we’ve linked to, what we’ve commented on and what we’ve said.

Is someone out there working on this now? When, I wonder, will I see a tool that will do this?

Yes, I’m participating again this year in Mustaches for Kids. During the month of November, I join other men in cities and communities across North America in a desperate plea for your attention. And once we have it, we ask you to make a contribution to a most worthwhile cause – the Make a Wish Foundation.

For years, Make a Wish has been bringing a smile to the face of seriously ill children. And I want to help them do this. And you can help too.

How can you help?

Simply go to the Mustaches for Kids site that I’m registered on and make a contribution.

Make your contribution count double

Here’s a bonus. If you indicate on the M4K Website that you’re making your contribution in support of me, I’ll match your contribution. I’m hoping that people will make a total of $1,000 in contributions associated with my ‘stache. I’ll match all the contributions up to that amount.

So, please open your heart and your wallets. Help make a sick child’s wish come true.

I’m be capturing the highlights of the session from the Twitter stream using the #CdnInst hashtag and posting them here using CoverItLive.

Click on the CoverItLive window below to see the Twitter discussion of this session.

I think that Tara is a role model for women in technology. And the Girl Geek Dinners are a good way to bring tech-oriented women together to talk about technology and to support one another in entering this once-male-dominated sector.

So, Thornley Fallis is sponsoring some students to attend the Girl Geek Dinner with Tara.

We initially sponsored five students. Those tickets were quickly grabbed up. Clearly, Tara is a hot draw and she will draw a capacity crowd.

Happily, Kelly Rusk, who organizes the Girl Geek Dinner in Ottawa, was able to add some seats to the dinner. So, we’re now able to open the dinner up to five more student attendees.

If you’re a student and you’re interested in attending next week’s Girl Geek Dinner, please click over to the Ottawa Girl Geek Dinner blog and leave a comment telling Kelly what you’re studying at school and why you’d like to attend the Girl Geek Dinner with Tara Hunt.

This promises to be a great event and I hope that every one of the student tickets is used.

The social-media savvy folks at the Canadian Embassy in Washington have prepared a special Canada Day Across America page that includes lots of social content – a Google Maps mashup showing where over 188 Canada Day parties will be taking place in the U.S., videos created and posted by people telling you how they are celebrating Canada Day, and a Twitter feed for the hashtag #CanadaDayUSA.

So, if you’re in the U.S.A., why not join your neighbour to the north in celebrating our national birthday. Happy birthday to us!

More About Connect2Canada:

Connect2Canada: A peek behind the curtain

Connect2Canada: Creating a community with Canadians in the United States

What is it?

Connect2Canada is a network of Canadians and Friends of Canada in the United States. Its goal is to reach out to these people and make them quasi-Ambassadors for Canada.

Conect2Canada was started as a Website on July 1, 2005. The Facebook page was added in late 2008. The Twitter stream, Flickr photos and YouTube videos were added at the time of the inauguration of President Obama (Canada’s Embassy has a primo location in Washington, a great place to take videos and pictures of the inaugural parade.)

What are they achieving?

Connect2Canada’s community is growing constantly in several dimensions:

New members are signing up for email newsletters on the Connect2Canada Website.

Today, members span the United States.

The Connect2Canada Facebook page continues to attract new fan.

Connect2Canada is attracting new followers every week.

Community and Engagement

Making the flow of information two-way is a high priority for Connect2Canada. They respond to Twitter comments and email. But they also work to enable conversations among members, linking to groups around the US and promoting real life events and other networks of Canadians in the U.S.

The Connect2Canada community is highly engaged with C2C. One indicator of this: An email to C2C members from Ambassador Wilson had an open rate in excess of 50%. That’s one out of every two people who received the email opened it. I think that’s a very high rate for a broadcast email.

Resources and Champions

Connect2Canada is run by one full time staffer in the Canadian Embassy in Washington supported by part-time contributions from a few others. They rely on the Canadian Consulates throughout the United States to provide local content.

Connect2Canada had senior level champions. The social media activities were approved and supported by both the Ambassador in Washington and the Assistant Deputy Minister (North America) in Ottawa.

The importance of relevant content

The biggest lesson learned by Connect2Canada? The importance of good content. Says Eric Portelance, the Advocacy Officer at the Canadian Embassy in Washington in charge of who works on Connect2Canada, “You can have the best ideals, but if the content isn’t interesting to your target audience, they won’t come back or they won’t come at all.”

Connect2Canada asks new members to indicate their interests when they register. The people behind Connect2Canada then use this information to tailor content to the interests of members, sending them only the streams of content that match those interests.

Source material

Eric Portelance recorded a video interview with me on May 12 when he spoke at the Advanced Learning Institute‘s Conference on Social Media for Government in Ottawa. I’ve also drawn on his presentation slides as well as my Twitter notes from the conference.

You can watch my video interview with Eric Portelance on YouTube or in the player embedded below.

Here’s an example of how to use social media effectively. The Canadian Embassy in Washington is using social media to reach out to and bring together the community of Canadians in the United States.

Under the banner of Connect2Canada, the Embassy has established a Website hub, a Twitter stream, a Facebook page, podcasts, a presence on YouTube, and, of course, a traditional mailing list. They also publish stories submitted by Canadians living in the United States. And they offer a comprehensive list of Canadian Expat groups and Canada-US groups along with a calendar of upcoming events relating to Canada in the United States.

Connect2Canada has drawn in more than 43,000 people who have registered, subscribed, followed or friended Connect2Canada in it’s various social media manifestations. The Website alone receives more than 7,000 unique visitors and in excess of 16,000 page views per month. That’s pretty good for an initiative that has never been advertised or promoted in mainstream media. Connect2Canada has been promoted primarily online and at face to face events.

And Connect2Canada doesn’t just broadcast information. The Embassy staff responds to comments and questions on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, the stats on unique visitors and page views were drawn from DM responses to questions I put to Connect2Canada on Twitter.

Connect2Canada. A good case study of the effective use of social media by government.

Mustaches for Kids Week 1

I’m one week into this year’s Mustaches for Kids campaign to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation. And as you can see from the head shot on this post, the people who live and work with me are having to put up with the dirty lip phase of moustache growing. As my daughter said, “Eeeewwww.”

So, there has to be a reason to subject myself to the laughter that people emit when they look at my stubbly lip. And there is. Helping to make an ill child’s wish come true.

Read about what a wish come true meant to Rachel or what it meant to Jesse, and I’m sure that you too will understand why I am doing this.

So, help me out. Please click on the donate button on the Mustaches for Kids home page to make a child’s wish come true. And remember, I’ll match every dollar up to $1,000 contributed by readers of my blog. So, when you make your contribution, please email me at joseph.thornley [at] gmail [dot] com to let me know that you’ve contributed.

John Wiseman, Dave Fleet, Parker Mason and Francis Wooby all made donations following last week’s post. Thank you John, Dave, Parker and Francis for helping to make a child’s wish come true.

If you’ve read this far in this post and you want to make a terminally ill child’s wish come true, please contribute.

Over the next five weeks, you’ll have a chance to see me grow (or attempt to) a radiant, bushy, geeky moustache. Yep, I’m going hirsute.

I’m growing my ‘stash as part of the Ottawa Mustaches for Kids campaign that some of the fine fellows in my community have organized.

Clean shaven - one last time

Between now and December 5, my fellow mustache-growers will go razorless (at least on our upper lips). And as we do this, we’ll raise money from family, friends and even strangers on the street for a most worthshile cause – the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Make-a-Wish grants wishes to create hope and happiness for children with life-threatening illnesses around the world. It has granted more than 210,000 wishes since it was founded.

Mustaches for Kids was first organized in 1999 in Los Angeles. Since then, it has spread to cities throughout North America. Participants have raised over $150,000 for worthwhile causes like Make-a-Wish through the annual mustache-growing campaign.

Last year, our local Mustaches for Kids campaign granted wishes for Victoria, Jakob and Michael. I don’t think I need to say more. This is worth doing.

Every dollar you contribute will turn into 2 dollars

This year, I will match every contribution that is pledged through me up to $1,000.

If you’d like to pledge a contribution of $25 or more, simply contribute directly on the Mustaches for Kids site and email me at joseph.thornley[a-t]gmail[d.o.t.]com. I’ll match your contribution.

So, please consider making a contribution to help a child’s wish come true. I know you’ll feel good that you did.

It’s not surprising how good Sixent is right out of the gate if you consider that Ramius has had extensive experience with online collaboration. Its Community Zero product has been in use by corporations and organizations for almost a decade. They’ve clearly applied the insight they gained through Community Zero in building a user friendly, intuitive, functional and fun social network platform.

Philippe Dame, Ramius’ C.O.O., sat down with me recently to talk about Sixent and what he believes makes it stand out.

In creating Sixent, the Ramius’ team’s objective was to “create a social network in which people could share their life the way they want to and connect with people in a meaningful way.” The key to their approach to this is to provide Sixent users with a “lot of control over how they connect with people,” explains Philippe. This translates into “how they disclose their own information and how they disclose content to people.”

“We’ve tried to emulate exactly how people want to present their own personas online. We all operate personal and professional sides. Now with social media and the Web, we’re becoming more familiar with having a public side – be it a Twitter feed or other kinds of services. We want to provide you with adequate ability to segment what you would say and show about yourself, and do so in a really easy to use way.” Philippe suggests that Sixent’s approach to enabling users to show different profiles to different people, “provides a degree of control that is unprecedented.”

“With our heritage in enterprise collaborative software, we are taking it to a corporate market in the fall,” Philippe says. “The idea of categorizing your contacts and having multiple profiles plays well in terms of people’s dual roles of interacting with their colleagues as well as dealing with partners and customers that go outside the firewall. People don’t want to join multiple social networks. So, if they can have a single dashboard and identity, and achieve these things in a controlled way, we think we’ve got a success on our hands.”

“This is an environment in which you are trying to provide a utility to your users so that different kinds of interactions can take place that weren’t previously possible. If they can connect that back to a growing public network, it can provide both great utility for the organization in terms of a deeper reach into the social graph of their own customers and partners. It can also work on the reverse, where users are now able to interact on a personal level in a kind of sister network and be getting more utility from it and therefore coming back on a regular basis, really solving the key adoption issue of getting people to be on your network and to be productive people there.”