Blogger at Buzz Machine. Author of  What Would Google Do? Associate professor and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Graduate School of Journalism. Co-host of This Week in Google with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani and Leo’s TWiT netcast network. And now author of a new book, Public Parts.

Jeff will be coming to third Tuesday Toronto on a special day, Thursday, November 17, and to third Tuesday Ottawa on Friday, November 18. Yes, that’s third Tuesday on a Thursday and Friday.

This should be a great event and we’ve booked a larger hall so that we can accommodate as many people as possible. Still, if past experience is any guide, we’ll sell out. So if you’re planning to be in Toronto on November 17 or Ottawa on November 18, click over to the Third Tuesday Toronto or Third Tuesday Ottawa sites and sign up to meet and hear Jeff Jarvis.

And if you’re worried about getting a copy of the book, all attendees who sign up will receive a copy of public parts when they arrive at the event. So you’ll have your copy their to have autographed by the author.

Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW and Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ with Jeff Jarvis. I hope to see you there.

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As you know, Third Tuesday is a community-oriented, volunteer-driven event. And we wouldn’t be able to bring great speakers like Jeff Jarvis to Third Tuesdays across the country without the support of some like-minded sponsors. We’ve been lucky to have some great companies step up over the past several years to help us make Third Tuesday happen. Big thanks are due to CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Cision Canada for making the 2011/12 Third Tuesday season possible.

That’s the basic concept of Movember. Raising awareness and raising funds to fight prostate cancer.

Since it was founded in Australia five years ago, Movember has become a global movement. And Canadian men have been enthusiastic in embracing the opportunity to participate. The results are impressive. Movember Canada membership grew from 35,000 to nearly 199,000, and donations increased by 280%, to $23 million, good for #2 in the world.

It’s truly a case study of building an online community to do public good, across borders, across time zones, across oceans.

So, I’m really pleased that our October Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto will feature leaders from the Movember movement. Peter Bombaci, the National Director of Movember Canada, , will speak to at Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW on October 18 and Adam Garone, the CEO and co-founder of Movember, will speak at Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ on October 19. They will talk about how Movember grew from its founding on the other side of the world in Australia to become a Canadian success story. How they used social media to spread the word and then to form an online community of mustachioed men who are prepared to look odd for a good cause.

As most people know, I lived through prostrate cancer myself – ten years and counting. So, I know from personal experience that this disease is not a death sentence. And more can be done to improve the prospects of men afflicted with this disease.

I hope that you’ll join us for this evening. It’s for a great cause. And to make it even more so, we will donate 100% of the admission proceeds to Movember. So come out to Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto to hear about the Movember story. By attending you’ll be a contributor

Thank you to our sponsors

We’ve been fortunate to have great sponsors who have enabled us to bring top speakers not just to Toronto, but also to Third Tuesdays is Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. Thanks to them, we’re back for our sixth season. Yes, that’s six years of smart discussion with thought leaders.

I want to thank the sponsors of Third Tuesday: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Thanks to these sponsors, we are able to program great speakers in cities across Canada, including Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa.

And a special thanks to our newest sponsor, Cision Canada. They not only helped to underwrite our costs, but they also lined up our speakers for this month.

Please join me in welcoming Cision as a sponsor to Third Tuesday. You’ll have a chance to do this in person, because Cision Canada’s new President, Terry Foster, will be attending both the Ottawa and Toronto events.

Ontario Ombudsman André Marin

In my experience, a very few Canadian government officials have really succeeded in using digital media to increase public engagement. André Marin, the Ontario Ombudsman is at the top of that short list. Not only is he personally active on Twitter and Facebook, but he has integrated social media into his offices research and reporting.

The best example of this was his investigation into the conduct of the police during last year’s G 20 meeting in Toronto. When announcing that investigation, the Ombudsman invited Ontarians to submit evidence that had been gathered using social media. During the investigation, he provided updates on his progress via Twitter. In fact, his tweet that he had concluded the research stage was broadly reported by traditional media as if he had granted interviews or issued a news release. And when he released the final report, his press conference was posted on YouTube in a shareable format.

So I’m very pleased that Andre Marin has agreed to be the guest speaker at Third Tuesday Toronto on June 21. That’s the day he’s releasing his annual report, in which he will be announcing his newest focus – promoting open government.

I know the Third Tuesday community is savvy to the potential – and the challenges – of open government. So, I’m looking forward to an evening of  intelligent, probing discussion of this initiative.

Register to attend Third Tuesday with André Marin

You can register online at the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup site to attend this event. A great chance to explore the important topic of open government in Ontario.

Acknowledging Third Tuesday’s sponsors

As always, I want to thank the sponsors of Third Tuesday: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Thanks to these sponsors, we are able to program great speakers in cities across Canada, including Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa.

Now you can hear about what really mattered at SXSW from three social media leaders who were there. Keith McArthur, Dave Fleet, and Karen Geier have just returned from SXSW. And they’ve come back with stories to tell. What were the most promising and intriguing ideas they heard? What were the biggest fails? Where is social media going? What are the top trends we we should be looking for over the next year? What’s hot? What’s not?

Keith, Dave and Karen will share what they heard and learned at SXSW at the next Third Tuesday Toronto on March 29.

Register online to attend

If you’re interested in participating, click over to the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup site and register online to attend.

Acknowledging Third Tuesday’s sponsors

As always, I want to thank the sponsors of Third Tuesday: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Thanks to these sponsors, we are able to program great speakers in cities across Canada, including Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa.

But will it stay that way? If there is one constant on the Internet, it is the inevitability of change. And that’s not just change in technology. That’s change in how we use it, how we relate to one another, how we see institutions and our expectations of them. What we find useful today we might not find useful tomorrow.

Our next speaker at Third Tuesday Ottawa will be Jacob Glick, Senior Policy Counsel at Google. This role at Google gives him a unique perspective on many of the most important issues that will shape the continuing evolution of the Internet and how Google itself is evolving to maintain its relevance and to live up to its slogan, “Don’t be evil.”

I’m very much looking forward to the discussion that I know Jacob will prompt. It should be a good one.

Register online to attend

If you’re interested in participating, click over to the Third Tuesday Ottawa meetup site and register online to attend.

Acknowledging Third Tuesday’s sponsors

As always, I want to thank the sponsors of Third Tuesday: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Thanks to these sponsors, we are able to program great speakers in cities across Canada, including Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa.

For the past two years, people interested in exploring the potential of social media have gathered at Third Tuesday meetups in Toronto and Ottawa. Last autumn, Third Tuesday Vancouver and Third Tuesday New Brunswick groups joined the discussion.

Tonight, 3e Mardi / Third Tuesday Montréal launches.

The discussion at tonight’s inaugural 3e Mardi / Third Tuesday Montréal will be led by two of Montréal’s social media pioneers, Mitch Joel and Mylene Forget. The topic: “Why you need to care about the new media channels.” A good starting place for a discussion of social media.

Montréal is a bilingual city, bringing together both French and English speaking communities. So, 3e Mardi / Third Tuesday Montréal will be a bilingual event, providing a perfect opportunity to enrich the discussion with insights about how social media is being adopted and used in different languages.

Three years later 3e Mardi | Third Tuesday Montreal has indeed developed into something unique. I’ve attended several of these events over the past three years and I can say that they are a unique reflection of Quebec’s culture and bilingualism.

Congratulations Michelle Sullivan, who launched 3e Mardi | Third Tuesday Montreal and has kept it going and growing. I’ll leave it to Michelle to write a post about the people who keep 3e Mardi | Third Tuesday Montreal alive and well. (Michelle, please leave a comment pointing to your post and I’ll place a link in the text of my main post.)

Happy birthday 3e Mardi | Third Tuesday Montreal. Together with Third Tuesday Toronto, Third Tuesday Ottawa, Third Tuesday Calgary and Third Tuesday Vancouver, you provide a cross-country forum for Canadians interested in social media, online communications, and their impact on our relationships with one another and institutions.

Every month in cities across Canada, including Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Calgary, Third Tuesdays offer participants a chance to meet and hear from thought leaders about the evolution of social media, online community and their impact on our relationships with one another and societal institutions.

Third Tuesday is unique both in its longevity – five years and counting – and the fact that it brings these speakers not just to one city, but to cities across the country. In effect, it has become digital Canada’s national meet up.

But still, after five years, people often ask me why Third Tuesday rarely occurs on a third Tuesday. Well there’s a simple answer.

When we first organized Third Tuesday, we selected the name not because the meetings were intended to be on a third Tuesday (in fact, the first meeting was held on a Monday in Ottawa), but because the term Third Tuesday carried no meaning or association. We didn’t want to be limited to a discussion of any one technology or development. A name like Third Tuesday gave us an opportunity to allow the focus of Third Tuesdays to evolve over time.

We are not partial to any particular technology or line of thought. We follow the evolution of online communications, with an emphasis on how people use them for communication, collaboration, and community building. If anything, our perspective is a combination of anthropology and sociology with technology. It’s not about the latest shiny new object. It’s about what people want to do and how technology is removing the barriers that prevented them from doing it.

So, if you see a Third Tuesday organized in your city and it’s on the second Tuesday or the first Monday for the fourth Wednesday, don’t be surprised. But do consider joining the discussion. No previous knowledge required. Just bring your curiosity and an open mind.

Thanks to Doug Lacombe, the organizer of Third Tuesday Calgary for his retake on the #3TYYC logo that I’ve used in this post.

“In the beginning, business and commerce were social exchanges – if you sold poor products, people would bad-mouth you and shun your operation, forcing you out of business or pushing you to improve your offering,” writes Gossieaux. While we lost that element of personal contact and accountability through the era of mass media and mass marketing, it is being returned to us in the era of social media. Gossieaux argues persuasively that businesses must themselves become hyper-social in order to survive and thrive in this new era.

Together with his co-author, Ed Moran, Gossieaux has conducted annual Tribalization of Business surveys, examining the impact of social media on organizations and how they are adapting to it. The Hyper-Social Organization draws on this data to map a course that business can follow in the era of social media.

I’ve seen Francois present the Tribalization of Business Study data at Society for New Communications Research symposiums and I can tell you that he’s a smart, articulate presenter who gives everyone in his audience something to think about and act upon.

Best Marketing and Advertising Book 2010

Yes, it’s an award winner. The Hyper-Social Organization received the National “Best Book 2010” Award from USA Book News in the category Business: Marketing and Advertising.

It’s also received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Here’s a sample:

Tribes Rule the Hyper-Social Organization

Hyper-Social Organizations

The Hyper-Social Organization in a Book

Want to attend Third Tuesday with Francois Gossieaux?

You can register online to attend Third Tuesday in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.

Thanks to our sponsors

Third Tuesday brings great speakers to major cities across Canada. This month, Francois Gossieaux will speak at third Tuesdays in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver. This would not be possible without the support of our sponsors, who underwrite the cost of visiting each of those cities. Thank you to CNW Group, Rogers Communications, Radian6, and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. You help to make Third Tuesday Digital Canada’s national meet up.

C.C. Chapman has how done three of his four Third Tuesday Content Rules events – in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary. One more to come tonight in Vancouver.

In the taxi on our way to the Calgary Airport for our flight to Vancouver, C.C. talked with me about his impressions of Canada and the people he’s been meeting.

Nice words about Canada by one heck of a nice guy.