Attend Third Tuesday with Jeff Jarvis & win admission to MeshMarketing

• • , , , , ,

Here’s something extra for Third Tuesday participants: Register for Jeff Jarvis‘ Canadian launch of Public Parts at either Third Tuesday Toronto (#3tYYZ) or Third Tuesday Ottawa (#3tYOW) and you could win a free registration to the meshmarketing (#mm11) conference in Toronto.

The organizers of meshmarketing have offered to make two registrations available to the Third Tuesday community. That means that two lucky Third Tuesday attendees will go to one of the best marketing conferences to take place this year – without having to pay the $589 registration fee.

How does it work?

Register to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa or attend Third Tuesday Toronto with Jeff Jarvis by noon on Friday. Then tweet one of the following messages:

If you’re attending Third Tuesday Ottawa, tweet: “I’m attending Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW and I want to attend mesh marketing #mm11 too.”

If you’re attending Third Tuesday Toronto, tweet: “I’m attending Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ and I want to attend mesh marketing #mm11 too.”

At noon on Friday, one Tweet containing the hash tag #3TYYZ and one Tweet containing the hash tag #3TYOW will be randomly selected and the author of each tweet will receive a free registration to meshmarketing. You can tweet as often as you’d like, but only people registered to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa or Third Tuesday Toronto will be eligible to win the free registration.

Winners will be notified via twitter shortly after noon on Friday.

So is that a great offer or what? Attend third Tuesday, receive a copy of Jeff Jarvis’s new book Public Parts, have it autographed by the author and also have a chance to win free admission to meshmarketing.

Thank you to the folks behind meshmarketing for making this offer to us.

UPDATE:

We had a great response to the contest and we’ve selected two winners – the people who tweeted the magic phrase closest to 19:39 on November 10. The winners: Tanya Bosman and Hardeep Gosal.

Congratulations to Tanya and Hardeep. You will have a chance to attend Toronto best digital marketing conference. And thank you to everyone who participated.

Where do PR agency leaders go to learn how to run their businesses?

• • , ,

If you run a PR agency, you know that it can be hard to find expert advice that relates directly to our business. There is no shortage of conferences and seminars dealing with practice issues – media relations, social media, research. But business skills that are tailored to the public relations industry. They are few and far between.

There is one conference that is unique in its focus and its attendees. The PRSA Counselors Academy Conference brings together owners and managers of public realtions agencies from across North America for two days of sessions focusing on the business of PR.

At the recent PRSA International Conference (a great conference for learning about communications best practices), my Inside PR co-hosts, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I caught up with Abbie Fink, the Chair of this past year’s Counselors Academy Conference. We talked with her about what makes Counselors Academy unique – and a must-attend for each of us.

At Counselors Academy, business leaders set aside their status as competitors in order to advance the collective whole, the public relations consulting industry. Abbie says the focus of the Counselors Academy Conference is “being a better owner, a better manager, discovering new ways to do business development and revenue streams … the management side of running a public relations practice.” How do they set billable hours? How do they determine when to bring on another employee? How do they deal with problematic clients? Under what circumstances would they fire a client?

Why do these PR business leaders share so freely with one another? According to Abbie, “If I can help another PR agency owner look at or do something in a different way and they become better at what they do, that’s good for our industry as a whole.”

You can hear our interview with Abbie and also Martin, Gini’s and my discussion of our own perceptions of Counselors Academy on Inside PR 275.

Inside PR 275 [ 10:26 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

——————————

If you are a PR agency principal and you go to only one conference this year…

The next Counselors Academy Conference will take place May 6 to 8, 2012 in New Orleans. And Inside PR’s Martin Waxman is co-chairing this year’s conference with Dana Hughens. You can be sure that I’ll be there along with the senior leaders of my company.

“If you are a PR business owner and you can only go to one professional development event,” says Abbie Fink, “then Counselors Academy is the one thing you should attend.”

If you’re interested in more information about this year’s conference, you can find it at the Counselors Academy Conference Website.

Has PostRank been integrated into the New Google Reader?

• • ,

When I opened Google Reader just now, I discovered that the PostRank scores are front and centre:

Is this just because I installed a PostRank extension eons ago? Or has Google now integrated PostRank (which they acquired earlier this year) as a core element of Google Reader? It would be wonderful if the latter turned out to be true and the ingenuity of Ilya Grigorik and his PostRank team lives on in Google Reader.

UPDATE: Ilya Grigorik reached out to me last night to let me know that, no, PostRank has not been integrated into the new Google Reader. It’s the PostRank browser plug-in that is displaying more prominently in the Google Reader’s new format.

That’s too bad. PostRank was a very useful tool and, for a few hours, I hoped that it was now baked into the standard Google Reader feature set. Well, I guess I can keep wishing for this…

Competition in eBooks arrives in Canada … and it's not Amazon

• • ,

The Google eBook store has launched in Canada. And that’s good news for Canadian readers.

Why I like it

Selection: From its launch, Google Books offers a selection in excess of 3 million titles. It appears that this includes all the best sellers that you’d expect as well as more niche oriented books. For example, Jeff Jarvis‘ new book, Public Parts, is available on Google Books in Canada. It’s not available on my current favourite bookstore Kobo. More selection is good.

Open platforms: Matched with the selection of titles is the ability to view the books I purchase on the platform of my choice. This is important to me.

Ease of use: It’s easy to use. Really easy. I found the Google Book store in the “more” tab on my Google homepage. A quick search turned up the book I wanted to purchase – Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts – and a few keystrokes allowed me to pay for it using Google Checkout. The very next screen presented an option to Read Now. And there it was, ready to read.I don’t purchase books on Amazon because of Amazon’s strategy to lock me into their closed system. I can only view books purchased on Amazon on a Kindle eReader or Kindle app. One way or the other, I’m locked into Amazon. Google shares Kobo’s commitment to making content available in an open format that can be viewed on any device of the reader’s choice.

As I write this I’m at the airport. So, I downloaded the Google Books app on my tablet and my purchase of Jeff Jarvis book appeared in my library. A quick download (I’m on WiFi) and the book opened to the precise page I’d been reading on my PC. Quick. Seamless across platforms. Nice! 

What could be improved?

Notations: When I read books, I like to highlight noteworthy passages and also write my own thoughts for later reference. Google Books doesn’t yet have the ability to highlight or annotate. They should add this if they are to be useful to serious readers.

Social tools: The other thing that’s missing are social tools. One of the things I really like about Kobo is the built-in tools that allow me to share highlighted passages from the books I’m reading along with my comments on Twitter or Facebook. I find this is a great way to offer interesting thoughts to the people who follow me and a great conversations starter. Given the effort Google is putting into Google+, I hope that the ability to post passages and comments from books to Google+ won’t be long in coming.

Choice is good – and an exploding market will support more than one eBook seller

One last thought. I’ve already stated that I want choice – choice in titles, choice in vendors, choice in platforms, choice in the hardware I use. So, the obvious concern is, now that Google, the 800 lb. gorilla, is entering eBook sales, won’t they crowd out other startup vendors? I don’t believe that will happen in the near future. eBook sales are exploding. And as we move our reading from physical books to eBooks, I think there will be room for many successful vendors – as long as they continue to innovate and evolve. So I think there will be a bright future for Kobo along with Amazon and Google.

More choice in an exploding market. That’s got to be good for everyone.

The New Google Reader: A Step Forward

• • ,

It happened. Finally. After several years of little change for my favourite RSS reader, Google Reader, it’s out with the old and in with the new this morning.

When I signed onto Google Reader today, I was greeted with this message:

 

With the new version of Reader, I’ll be able to share interesting content publicly via my Google+ ID. Or I can share them only with circles that I have selected as being interested in specific subjects. I also can add my own comment to highlight what I find most interesting or remarkable in the article.

This is all good news to me. I’ve been a consistent user of Google+ since it launched. And I’ve curated circles of people I follow by subject area. So, I’m getting great value from my time on Google+. Now, with the integration of Google Reader sharing features, it will be easier for me add content that I find worthwhile – and hopefully that will draw more people to follow me on Google+.

So, it’s goodbye to some of the old sharing features. And it’s hello to sharing and promoting content via Google+. I like it.

Jeff Jarvis brings his Public Parts to Third Tuesday

• • , , , , , ,

I’m really excited about this news: Jeff Jarvis is coming to Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ and Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW for the Canadian launch of his new book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live.

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.

————–
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.

I'm going to be working with Martin Waxman!

• • , ,

Big news today. After collaborating for years as podcasters, bloggers and just good friends, Martin Waxman and I are going to be working together. Martin is going to be a Senior Counselor to Thornley Fallis and our clients. And, of course, his focus will be social media.

It turns out we’re both in Orlando today at the PRSA International Conference where we’re recording Inside PR podcast episodes with Gini Dietrich. So, as we were waiting for our next guest to arrive, Martin and I had a chance to talk about what we’re doing. We recorded a video of it to upload to our blogs because that’s the way we’re announcing it. On social media.

Martin also has posted about this move on MartinWaxman.com.

Martin has his first client meeting with us this Friday. Making a good week a great week.

Third Tuesday is back for Movember

• • No Tags

Odd-looking, but for a good causeEvery year, men like me embarrass their wives, partners and friends during the month of November by failing to do something that they want us to do – shave. And why? Because simply by growing a moustache, we can remind people about a very important cause and raise money for it.

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.

Inside PR: Intranets and the new face of Facebook

• • , , , ,
Inside PR 2.70 [ 20:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about Intranets and the recent changes to Facebook.

At Thornley Fallis, our Intranet is built around a Wiki to host content, Present.ly to support publishing and linking to content and Windows Live Messenger to enable one to one video calls. We encourage people to use these three tools to divert content from emails (we all suffer from inbox glut) and to channel communications from broad publishing through to one to one communications via video. For us, video is the best communications channel. Unlike email and text, it enables us to read facial expressions, posture and all the physical clues that add nuance to communications.

Martin Waxman points out that we have so many “places to go,” so many channels of communication, that managing these different channels can become a challenge unto itself.

And then there’s Facebook. We received a comment from Liza Butcher, who suggested that, “With the changes made this past week, I believe facebook it is trying to be too many things in one space, and ostracizing generations of people that may not be as tech savvy as others. … Facebook was a place for everyone, and now it is becoming too technical for the masses.”

Gini and Martin talk about their impressions of the most recent Facebook changes. Gini points out that it will be important to decide what you want to include in your timeline. Sharing everything won’t be for everyone. And it’s important to be aware of what the timeline automatically shares so that you can filter out the info you wouldn’t want to see there. Martin suggests that we all should become familiar with the “view activity” panel that will enable us to remove content from our timeline. Other neat features: the cover photo we can add to our Facebook profile and the ability to add “milestones” to fill in our timeline.

As for me. I still can’t be enthused about Facebook’s effort to move us away from the open Internet toward the walled garden of Facebook. Bah. Humbug.

And one final reminder: Inside PR will be recording live from the PRSA International Conference in Orlando on October 16 and 17. We’ll also be interviewing speakers and participants. So, if you’re planning to be there, let us know and we will grab a sound bite with you.

—————

cross-posted from the Inside PR podcast blog

 

We're recruiting a new Senior Web Developer

• • ,

We’ve just had one of the best summers we’ve had in years, adding new clients every month through the summer. That’s not bragging. It’s just the background that explains why I’m writing this post. 76design is busy, busy, busy. And we are looking for a Senior Web Developer to join our team.

Here’s the job description from the 76design careers page.

SENIOR PHP WEB DEVELOPER

76design is looking for an experienced Web Developer to join our Team.

The winning candidate should be prepared to work in collaboration with other developers, graphic designers, marketers and public relations experts towards the development and implementation of industry leading solutions.

LEADERSHIP

  • Maintain visibility and respect in the online community
  • Contribute to the development of the Studio’s culture and quality standards

STRATEGIC AND ANALYTICAL THINKING

  • Understanding of fundamentals of new marketing and communications principles
  • A solid understanding of informational architecture practices
  • Gathering, reviewing and validating project requirements

SKILLS AND ASSETS

  • Demonstrated experience with the following: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP5
  • Experience with a modern MVC web framework like Zend Framework, Java Spring, etc.
  • Background in web API programming; do you prefer api.twitter to twitter.com? code.google to google.com?
  • Polylingual programming beyond PHP considered an asset (Java, .Net, Ruby, etc)
  • Comfortable with use and function of a variety of modern CMS: WordPress, Drupal;
  • Direct experience with social media tools and platforms, such as WordPress, Google+, Twitter, etc.
  • Work with tiered deployment environments.
  • Experience with a version control system like SVN.
  • Experience with automated deployment using tools like Phing, Ant considered an asset.
  • University degree in computer science or software engineering
  • Use of OO and design patterns
  • Working knowledge of web standards, SEO and accessibility
  • Front end development experience working with XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Ajax
  • Agency experience an asset
  • A relentless and visible passion for and participation social and community engagement
  • Experience and confidence presenting to clients

BONUS POINTS

  • Unix system maintenance, shell scripting
  • Apache web server configuration, virtual host management

SUPER BONUS POINTS

  • Experience with Microsoft SilverStripe CMS
  • Experience with modern ORM such as Doctrine
  • Knowledge of Apache Software Foundation Projects: Lucene / Mahout

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Go by foot, by bike, by skates, by bus or by car. Our centrally-located office spaces in downtown Toronto and Ottawa are easy to get to.

SOMETHING IS ALWAYS BREWING

You’ll never wonder how long that pot of coffee has been sitting there. Our Starbucks coffee machine grinds fresh beans for every cup, and it makes a tasty cup of cocoa.

TGIF

At TF & 76, TGIF starts first thing in the morning with breakfast treats, the team then caps off the week by kicking back with a few drinks in office. Frequently, this spills over into one of the many nearby watering holes.

INSPIRE US

We’re an agency of talented, passionate, creative individuals. We want to create amazing work and solve our client’s problems in the coolest ways possible. This means we’re looking for people who are also talented, creative and passionate about the things they do. We’re looking for people who inspire and make us better.

Is this you?

If so, please contact Laura [at] 76design.ca to let her know that you’re interested in joining us.