Michelle Kostya from Research in Motion speaks at Third Tuesday in December

• • , , , , , , ,

When it comes to social media, it’s a mobile world. It’s a long time since social media resided primarily in our browser or in applications on our desktop. Today, our social media connections are rarely farther away than the device we carry in the palm of our hands – our cell phones.

RIM – Research in Motion – is the Canadian standard bearer in the mobile device wars and Canada’s leading technology hope. As social media has evolved and as apps have moved onto mobile devices, RIM has been challenged to evolve its own approach. And we’re seeing it do this. Earlier this year, RIM introduced a new operating system with embedded social features along with the Torch, a new generation of BlackBerry that combines a large touchscreen display with a slide out keyboard. In the new year, we’ll see the Playbook, RIM’s tablet offering.

As RIM evolves its platform, it’s also using social media to reach out to its users and engage with them in online community and social media. Michelle Kostya is one of the people charting out RIM’s path in social media. And she’s our next speaker at Third Tuesday.

You can register online to join us December 6 at Third Tuesday Ottawa or December 7 at Third Tuesday Toronto to hear Michelle talk about how Research in Motion uses social media and how it views the future of social on its platform.

Thank you to our sponsors.

Once again, I’d like to thank our sponsors – CNW Group, Rogers Communications, Radian6, and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Your sponsorship makes it possible for us to bring great speakers to Third Tuesdays across the country, including Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. You make third Tuesday a truly Canadian affair.

Meet RichardAtDell at Third Tuesdays in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver

• • , , , , , ,

RichardAtDell is coming to Canada next month to speak at Third Tuesdays in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver. We’ll lead off with Third Tuesday Toronto #TTT on Monday, November 8, Third Tuesday Ottawa #TTO on Tuesday, November 9, Third Tuesday Calgary #CTT on Wednesday, November 10 and Third Tuesday Vancouver #TTV on Thursday, November 11.

Dell is one of the best known and longest standing case studies of the successful use of social media. It might well not have turned out this way. In fact, Dell was one of the early examples of a company on the receiving end of viral criticism and anger. Rather than go into a shell or attack its critics, Dell chose to enter the social media discussion, learn from it, win friends, and gradually turn things around. Today, Dell uses social media for many purposesw, including to connect with customers, build brand and as a retail channel.

RichardAtDell, aka Richard Binhammer, has been from the outset one of the constants in Dell’s social media presence. I first experienced Richard’s outreach as far back as 2006 when he commented on a post on my blog in which I’d written about a presentation by Robert Scoble in which Scoble had recounted the story of Jeff Jarvis’ upset with Dell. Richard reached out to me at a time when my blog had relatively few subscribers, acknowledging their problems but asking me whether I’d be prepared to acknowledge the efforts they were making to listen and act upon what they were being told. I was blown away just by the fact that a company at the other end of the continent would pay attention to me, let alone actually acknowledge me by coming into my place, my blog, to have a discussion. And yes, that made me a fan of RichardAtDell and Dell’s approach to social media.

Well, it’s not 2006 anymore. A lot has changed. And RichardAtDell has been there to experience the evolution of social media first hand. As the saying goes, he’s forgotten more than many of us ever will learn.

I hope that you’ll join us at Third Tuesday to hear from one of the leading corporate social media practitioners as he talks with us about the journey he’s been on, the path we’re following, and where he sees things going in the future.

Look for details and registration info in the next few days on each of the Third Tuesday Ottawa #TTO, Third Tuesday Toronto #TTT, Third Tuesday Calgary #CTT, and Third Tuesday Vancouver #TTV websites.

Thank you to our sponsors.

Once again, I’d like to thank our sponsors – CNW Group, Rogers Communications, Radian6, and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Your sponsorship makes it possible for us to bring great speakers not just to Toronto, but to Third Tuesdays across the country. You make third Tuesday a truly Canadian affair.

To whet your appetite

If you’re not familiar with the Dell story and RichardAtDell, you can get a taste of what we’ll be talking about at Third Tuesday by watching this video. Enjoy.

Third Tuesday Measurement Matters Agenda

• • , , , ,

The agenda for the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference has been published. Here’s the day’s schedule:

8:00 Registration opens

8:30 Opening Keynote
Katie Paine, KD Paine and Associates

9:00 – 10:15 Panel: Monitoring: How to set up and run your social media command centre
Martin Waxman, Chair

Sheldon Levine, Sysomos
Ryan Strynacta, Radian6
Pragya Dubey, MediaMiser

10:15 – 10:35 PostRank: Leading Edge Solutions to Social Media Measurement Challenges
Carol Leaman and Ilya Grigorik

10:35 – 10:55 Break

10:55 – 12:10 Panel: New metrics for new media – influence, engagement, resonance – and others?
Mark Evans, Chair

Darren Barefoot, Capulet
Brian Cugelman, AlterSpark
Ilya Grigorik, PostRank

12:10 – 12:30 Traackr: Leading Edge Solutions to Social Media Measurement Challenges
Pierre-Loic Assayag

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch

13:45 – 15:00 Panel: Analysis – more than skin deep – how to find real meaning

Terry Fallis, Chair

Claude Théoret, Nexalogy
Patrick Gladney, Social Currency
Rob Clark, Edelman

15:00 – 15:20 Radian6: Leading Edge Solutions to Social Media Measurement Challenges

David Alston

15:20 – 15:35 Break

15:35 – 16:50 Panel: Show us your ROI – Yes, we can demonstrate a return.

Donna Papacosta, Chair

Charles Funk, CNW/DNA13
Scott Lake, Swix
Christopher Berry, Syncapse

16:50 – 17:30 What’s next? What keeps the providers of Measurement and Metrics awake at night?
Katie Paine, Chair
Carol Leaman, PostRank
David Alston, Radian6
Pierre-Loic Assayag, Traackr

17:30 – 19:00: Reception and Cash Bar

Still some places open for participants

There are a small number of spots still open the conference. You can register online to attend Third Tuesday Measurement Matters.

We couldn’t do it without the support of our sponsors

Thank you to our sponsors: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, MolsonCoors Canada, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. You have stood by us. Your contributions make it possible for us to focus on organizing and programming without having to worry whether we’ll be on the hook for hard costs. Thank you. Third Tuesday wouldn’t happen without you.

Wanted: One more social media measurement provider to put in the spotlight

• • , , ,

The Third Tuesday Measurement Matters #TTMM conference will put three social media monitoring and analysis providers on the spot and in the spotlight.

Each will be asked to tell us about a social media measurement challenge they set out to solve and how they did it. And then, we’ll ask them to look ahead and tell us what challenges they think must be overcome in the next year(s).

We have confirmed the first two monitoring and measurement providers who will be put in the spotlight: Radian6 and PostRank.

Radian6 was on the leading edge of developing an algorithm and index to measure influence. PostRank linked its fortune to the concept of engagement. Both have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to research and constant improvement of their monitoring and measurement suites. Clearly, they belong in the spotlight.

We have room in the spotlight for one more company. And I’d welcome your views about who it should be.

Which social media measurement platform do you think is on the leading edge of social media measurement? Which do you think have tackled a tough challenge and come up with an approach that is worth sharing?

Leave a comment on this post and help shape the agenda of Third Tuesday Measurement Matters #TTMM.

After all, if you want to understand the state of the art, why not ask those who are investing their money to explore it?

Registration is open for the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference

• • ,

Registration is open for the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters #TTMM conference, to be held in Toronto on September 28.

A stellar roster of speakers

Attendees at Third Tuesday Measurement Matters will meet, hear from and participate in discussions with social media measurement experts, including Katie Paine, Carol Leaman, Ilya Grigorik, Charles Funk, Marcel LeBrun and David Alston (tentative), Sheldon Levine, Josh Hallett, Claude Théoret, Pragya Dubey, Scott Lake, Leona Hobbs, Darren Barefoot, Rob Clark, Brian Cugelman, Christopher Berry,  and Patrick Gladney.

A stellar lineup of speakers. And there are more who we anticipate will confirm their attendance during the next week.

A word about cost

The registration fee will be $125 per person. That’s more than we charge for most Third Tuesday events. However, we have a full day’s rental on the hall, audio visual system, lights plus a lunch and two breaks to provide food and beverage.

Our aim is to break even on the cost of staging the actual conference. And we’ll do that with a combination of sponsorships and registrations.

We couldn’t do it without the support of our sponsors

I hope you agree that this is one heck of a lot of conference for a fee that is far lower than you are used to paying. That’s the value of being community-oriented – and of having sponsors. They cushion the risk of mounting an event like this.

And we couldn’t do it without our sponsors. For the past year, we’ve been lucky to have some outstanding sponsors who have helped us to make this happen: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, MolsonCoors Canada, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. You have stood by us. Your contributions make it possible for us to focus on organizing and programming without having to worry whether we’ll be on the hook for hard costs. Thank you. Third Tuesday wouldn’t happen without you.

Still to come: Free admission for a lucky group of students

Social media measurement should be an essential part of every communication, marketing and business curriculum. Students stand to benefit greatly by attending Third Tuesday Measurement Matters. But not all of them will be able to afford it.

So we’ll be announcing a special zero admission fee for a lucky group of students. We’re in the final stages of finalizing a sponsor for the “$0 student fee” and we’ll make a separate announcement as soon as the details are worked out.

If you care about social media measurement

… this will be the conference of the year. So, I do hope that you’ll consider attending.

Which do you consider to be the "Best of Breed" Social Media Measurement Tools?

• • ,

Help select the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters speakers

Today, I’m asking for your help in deciding which developers of social media measurement tools we should invite to speak at the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference.

If you could hear from the people behind the leading social media measurement tools talk about their approach to measurement, who would you most like to hear from?

Insight from the people who design measurement tools

We’ll provide an opportunity for the key architects of three of the leading social media measurement tools to speak at Third Tuesday Measurement Matters.

This won’t be a standard product sales pitch. Instead, we’ll ask the speakers to talk about the key social media measurement problems they set out to solve and the solution they’ve developed. We want to get insight into the leading edge of measurement. And we’ll also ask them to look ahead and give us some insight into the biggest social media measurement challenges they believe we must solve in the coming year.

Who would you like to hear from?

Which measurement providers do you consider to be the very best? What do they do especially well? What do you think we can learn from them?

Please give us your suggestions and opinions as a comment below.

Inside PR – Weddings, Tech laggards and Twitter

• • No Tags

In this week’s episode of Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about Mark Breslin’s wedding in Los Angeles (listen and you’ll see why it’s relevant to Inside PR.) We also discuss the still uneven embrace of social media by communications pros. And how could we get away without discussing Twitter’s ongoing status of the social media tool for … not everybody.

And a comment from Bob LeDrew re our discussion of Prince’s statement that the Internet is over.

You can listen to the podcast here:

Inside PR 2.12 [ 24:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Third Tuesday Ottawa: Call for Organizers

• •

Third Tuesday Ottawa

Are you interested in helping to organize Third Tuesday Ottawa? If so, then please attend this special “organizers only” meetup.

We’re looking for people to help us with

  • Managing logistics (arranging for the meeting location, sound system, lighting)
  • On-site registration (yes, we need people to greet and register people at the events)
  • Finding and booking speakers (Because we don’t pay appearance fees to speakers, we rely on the networks of our organizers to be able to reach out to top notch people they know and persuade them to appear at Third Tuesday.
  • Soliciting sponsors (to cover the cost of speaker travel, sound and lighting, hall rental)
  • Promoting awareness of Third Tuesday (a Wikipedia entry anyone?)

If you have the time and are prepared to help us with these tasks and the other work that goes into organizing Third Tuesday, then please register to attend this special Organizers Only gathering.

Would you like to help organize Third Tuesday Toronto?

• •

Are you interested in helping to organize Third Tuesday Toronto?

We’re looking for people to help us with:

  • Managing logistics (arranging for the meeting location, sound system, lighting)
  • On-site registration (yes, we need people to greet and register people at the events)
  • Finding and booking speakers (Because we don’t pay appearance fees to speakers, we rely on the networks of our organizers to be able to reach out to top notch people they know and persuade them to appear at Third Tuesday.
  • Soliciting sponsors (to cover the cost of speaker travel, sound and lighting, hall rental)

If you have the time and are prepared to help us with these tasks and the other work that goes into organizing Third Tuesday, then please register to attend our upcoming Organizers Only gathering.

Dave Fleet and the Social Media Ecosystem at Third Tuesday Ottawa

• • No Tags

Dave Fleet has earned a loyal following for his thoughtful and provocative posts on public relations and social media.

Recently, he wrote a couple of remarkable posts, the 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem and  Strategies in the 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem. Taken together, they present an up to the minute view of the range of communications channels that communicators must be aware of and integrate into our marketing programs.

Dave will be coming to Ottawa next week to speak at a day long conference. But we’ve grabbed him for a Third Tuesday the night before (yes, it’s Third Tuesday on a Thursday.)

If you’d like to meet Dave Fleet and hear his thoughts on the Social Media Marketing Ecosystem, register online to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa.

Thank you to our sponsors

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 Katie Paine, Julien Smith and Shel Israel to Third Tuesdays in Ottawa.