We have a special Third Tuesday Toronto on Feb. 23. It’s special because we’re holding it in conjunction with Personal Brand Camp – a project being undertaken by Michael Cayley for the Humber College social media students.

During the afternoon, the Humber students will meet with volunteer mentors to discuss the importance of their online personnas, the issues involved and how they can develop an online brand that will be consistent with the people they are.

Then, in the evening, Mitch Joel will be our featured speaker at Third Tuesday. Mitch has built a remarkable personal brand. He is well known and widely respected as a marketing thought leader. This year, he published Six Pixels of Separation, a handbook to digital marketing and social media.  He’s often referred to as “Canada’s Seth Godin.” That’s no small feat.

Mitch will offer us his perspective on the concept of personal brand. Does he build his brand consciously? Are there rules, implicit or explicit, that he applies in doing this? Is personal brand building something that we all should be engaged in? What advice would he offer to anyone concerned about the image they project online and in the real world.

Interested? Register online to attend Third Tuesday Toronto with Mitch Joel.

As always, I want to thank our Third Tuesday sponsors – CNW Group, Molson Coors Canada, Rogers Communications, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Their support make it possible to bring great speakers like Mitch, and others including Katie Paine, Julien Smith and Shel Israel not just to Toronto but also to Third Tuesdays in Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. (Speaking of Vancouver, stay tuned for the announcement of a Third Tuesday Vancouver with Mitch Joel.)

Thank you to our sponsors – and thank you to our speakers.

When we participate in social media – whether posting or commenting – we are leaving digital footprints. And as people follow those footprints, they assemble a picture in their minds of the person who left those footprints – what we are interested in, our thoughts and opinions, the way we communicate and interact with other people. These factors and many more can be assembled to paint a portrait of each of us. In effect, they amount to our personal brand.

Michael Cayley, who teaches Social Media at Humber College, is organizing a Personal Brand Camp in Toronto on Feb. 23. Through a series of rotating round tables, attendees will have the opportunity to talk about the issues surrounding the care and feeding of their online personal brands with Mentors drawn from Toronto’s social media community.

Michael is looking for 20 Mentors who will lead roundtable discussions with the participants. The best Mentor is someone who is active online and has developed an online presence that is positive and well-regarded. You may be young. You may be old. But whichever, you’ve created a positive halo around yourself.

If you’d be interested in volunteering to be a Mentor at Personal Brand Camp, please contact @michaelcayley on Twitter.

Jay Moonah closed the Managing Social Media conference with a presentation focusing on how non-profits and government organizations can make effective use of social media.

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

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Parker Mason is a long time blogger and Twitterer. He’s also Product Support Manager at CNW Group. So, he’s well positioned to be able to comment on integrating social media with traditional media relations. And that’s the topic of his session at the one of the Managing Social Media conference with a session focusing on how Ford has used social media.

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

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The greatest hurdles I’ve encountered to the use of social media in the enterprise have been legal and security concerns.

Kevin Lo and Stewart Wolfe covered the IT security issues in their session at the Managing Social Media conference.

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

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I’ve long grown accustomed to the principles behind Creative Commons copyright. Sharing is encouraged within boundaries defined by the creator. However, traditional “rights restricted” copyright law still governs most of the world.

Pina D’Agostino, Director of the Intellectual Property Law and Technology Program at the Osgoode Law School, provided an overview at the Managing Social Media conferenceof the key copyright issues for social media applications and the need for guidelines and policies to ensure that intellectual property rights are respected.

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

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Privacy is one of the key issues facing everyone of us as we navigate social media.

I readily share great swathes of what I care about, think and do through my postings on ProPR.ca, Twitter and other social media channels. On the other hand, there are parts of my life relating to friends and family that I don’t share. I believe that they must find their own level of comfort with the open book that is social media and define their own boundaries on what they will share and what they won’t.

A panel of three corporate lawyers,  Martin Kratz, Ariane Siegel and Mark Hayes,talked about the privacy issues relating to the use of social media in and by organizations.

I’m capturing the highlights of the Twitter stream during this session at the Managing Social Media conference using the #CdnInst hashtag and posting them here using CoverItLive.

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It was easy to introduce social media into Thornley Fallis. After all, I’m not only a believer in the potential of social media to enhance information sharing and bring us closer to the communities that care about the company, I’m also the CEO. So, we had a well-placed social media champion from day one.

It’s not like that in most companies. And introducing social media into enterprises can be a complicated process requiring the active buy in of many players, including communications, marketing, legal, and human resources.

Nyree Embricos, Senior Counsel, TELUS Legal Services, and Peter Hartl, TELUS Manager Manager, Corporate Web Services, provided attendees at the Managing Social Media conference with insight into how social media had been introduced into TELUS.

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

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Maggie Fox closed out day one of the Managing Social Media conference with a session focusing on how Ford has used social media.

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

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David Jones and James Topham presented a case study of War Child Canada‘s “Help Child Soldiers” campaign at the Managing Social Media conference being staged by the Canadian Institute in Toronto today.

I’m 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.