Creative Traction » General

Event: HST 101 for Business

Duane Brown — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:00:04 +0000

ING Direct Canada is hosting a seminar for business on HST, which is coming into affect July 1st, 2010.

Ready or not, the HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) is coming and we want to help you get your business prepared for it.

Come and join our HST 101 for Business seminar to learn how the HST will affect your business and your clients. Find out how to collect and report it and hear how you can save more money.

It should be a good event and one I’m looking forward to attending.

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ChangeCampTO: Tomorrow

Duane Brown — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:41:20 +0000

So tomorrow is the big day for ChangeChampTo:

Design a toolkit for a self-organizing civic movement
In a fun-but-focused 3 hours, registered attendees will contribute to the creation of a toolkit for a self-organizing, people-driven, nonpartisan movement for positive change in Toronto and beyond.

We see the municipal elections in 2010 as an excuse to gather people together to have real dialogues about the future of our communities. We believe that open source approaches can enable those conversations across the City of Toronto and beyond through community-based leadership.

We are tentatively calling this open toolkit “ChangeCamp-in-a-Box”. This idea was born in a ChangeLab session at last year’s ChangeCamp, and this year we plan to make it real.

Date: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 from 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM (ET)

Location:
Toronto Reference Library
Bram & Bluma Appel Salon
789 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario M4W 2G8
Canada

Hope to see everyone there. I’m going to be the A/V guy on duty and shall love the night.

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Event: Social Media Week – Toronto

Duane Brown — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:00:08 +0000

One week today is the launch of Social Media Week, which is not just happening in Toronto but also Berlin, London, San Francisco, New York and Sao Paulo. This is the second year of the annual conference that will explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large.

The week-long, international Social Media Week conference is designed as a series of localized events, which city partners are responsible for organizing. Over the course of the week and in each city, programs will span a variety of formats, ranging from talks, presentations and panel discussions, to interactive workshops, seminars, networking events and drinks receptions.

Each event, including the live stream and back channel conversations will be hosted on the Social Media Week website, allowing for participants from around the world and across multiple cities to take part in the conference.

I won’t be going to every event next week but I know I’ve signed up for Social Media Trends in 2010 and Beyond, which is on Wednesday next week at 6:30pm. Check out the full schedule and say hi if we see each other around city. It’s going to be a crazy week it seems.

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Event: PodCamp Toronto 2010

Duane Brown — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:25:26 +0000

PodCamp Toronto is back for this year and is about one month away.

PodCamp Toronto 2010 is a FREE “unconference” bringing together professionals and hobbyists from Toronto and the surrounding area to explore the cutting edge of new and social media. If you are an online content creator – hobbiest and professionals – who are building communities online in a variety of ways, then PodCamp Toronto 2010 is for you. Share ideas, discuss theories and learn lessons from an audience of experts. Network, network, network. All are welcome.

I’ve been to a few of the PodCamps over the years and its always a great networking event. There are over 500 people registered to come this year and it should be a great way to spend the weekend indoors. Register if you’ve not already.

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Helping Arion Focus Grow Their Community

Duane Brown — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:00:46 +0000

Client: Arion Focus

Website: www.Breeders.Net & www.Doggies.com

Services: Market Research, Competitive Analysis, Strategic Planning & Brainstorming and Google Analytics

Company Description
Arion Focus runs two websites: Breeders.Net is a site geared towards helping people find a dog breeder(s) in a city close to their home across North America. They also fun Doggies.com, which is for dog owners to get together and share in the love of their pet.

Work
September – November 2009

I was refereed to Arion Focus by one of my friends in the industry. They were looking to get into social media but weren’t sure what to do or what opportunities to go after. They are competing with websites like Dogster and with a small staff could only tap into a few opportunities to start. I started out by researching where their competitors were using social media both actively and passively and or places they had abandoned accounts. I like to start with using KnowEm and then Social Mention to help give me a better lay of the land with a client and their competitors.

After doing a lot of the research and looking at the competition and what they were doing. I was able to start to put together a 6 month social media plan for the client. The plan looked at getting the client to post more useful content to their blog by harnessing the power of the data and information in their Google Analytics. I also looked at them using a service like uStream to launch a video series early next year. The end goal of these two initiatives was to get the community more involved by answering questions they have about buying and raising a dog. Also, the video series was going to be a video about different community members and promote that person for the week. I also looked at getting the client into Twitter and how a websites like twitpets.com can help them connect better with a passionate community.

Outcome
It’s to early in the process to start seeing and true metrics for Arion Focus. I’m keeping in constant contact with the team and making sure that they have my full support and help with anything that they need. We’ll be doing a big debrief next month to learn how the first part of their social media efforts are going. This will give us a better idea of how to help plan for the rest of 2010 and beyond.

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NXNEi Panel: Marketing your next video game is about visibility

Duane Brown — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:00:47 +0000

Monday night I submitted my idea for NXNE’s new interactive section. My panel idea is called: Marketing your next video game is about visibility. It’s not a sexy topic as it doesn’t just cover social media. I’m hoping to look at marketing as a whole and how you go about planning a strategy to market your next video game. Still waiting for details on deadline dates and approval process but I hope my panel makes the cut. A little from my panel idea…

Learn what it takes to market your next video game and why IGN, GameSpot and GameTrailers TV are great but shouldn’t be where you focus your time.

Please vote for my panel and would love to connet with you if you stop by my presentation…if I make it in. Be sure to let me know if you submitte an idea as I’d love to check it out as well.

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Review: The Truth about Trust in Business by Vanessa Hall

Duane Brown — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:00:12 +0000

The Truth about Trust in Business by Vanessa Hall was a book I got this past summer and only got around to reading it this past month. It has been a busy period. It took me a couple chapters to get into the book but once I did I didn’t turn back. I’ve been applying a lot of information from the book and the overarching them of the book.

The book talks about wants, expectations and promises and how we rarely make sure we are fulfilling the promises, wants and expectations of poeple we’ve a relationship with. The biggest factor being the breakdown in communitication between people. If you don’t know what someone promises, needs or has as expectations for…. then there is no way you can fulfill it. The book looks at both explicit and implicit promises that we make all the time.

I won’t go into the whole book but I think it’s something you should read if you’re in the trust business. And lets be honest… we are all in the trust business.

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Events: Nathan Shedroff: Design is the Problem

Duane Brown — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:00:33 +0000

The team over at Torch Partnerships are back with another great Unfinished Business Lecture Series. Tomorrow night they are going to have Nathan Shedroff speak.

Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the ground-breaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. This program melds the unique principles that design offers business strategy with a vision of the future of business as sustainable, meaningful, and truly innovative—as well as profitable.

Nathan’s talk is titled DESIGN IS THE PROBLEM: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable. I’ve always found the Unfinished Business Lecture Series events to be top notch. It’ll be great to hear how Nathan thinks design can be used to make our future better.

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Events: Toronto Open Data Lab

Duane Brown — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:16:13 +0000

Tomorrow afternoon my friend Mark Kuznicki will doing an event Toronto Open Data Lab, part of the Toronto Innovations Showcase.

The Open Data Lab is an opportunity to explore the innovation possibilities of open civic data in Toronto. Join City subject matter and technology experts, community stakeholders and talented members of Toronto’s vibrant technology and design communities in an interactive and collaborative afternoon imagining commercial, social and civic applications of the City’s newly launched open data program.

Hope to see some of you there. I can’t wait to explore the first datasets that the city is going to rrelease and see how we can help make the city a better place with the information.

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Events: LOKU30, Ignite! Toronto and Startup Drinks

Duane Brown — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:51:55 +0000

Its going to be a busy week with three cool events going on tonight, Tuesday and then Thursday. C

League of Kickass Event Aug. 24 “From Digital to Reality”@The Social – Toronto

Lisa Rodwell, energy spark and global head of marketing for Moo.com – you know those incorrigably, abstract-sized business cards or stickers, she’s now based in UK but a former canuck, will be talking about her digital Purple Cow and Moo’s special sauce

Adrian Salamunovic, co-founder of DNA11 and CanvasPop, will be joining us from Ottawa – sharing us his story about making art and money from your very own DNA and showing off a beta of his company’s newest project, I’ve seen it, it’s great

Darius Bashar – president and co-founder of DailyChallenge.org – Daily Challenge is an innovative social networking site that encourages its users to participate in daily activities, or ‘challenges,’ users can take up in the real world that will positively impact themselves and their communities – Darius is former CEO of Apollo Media

Ignite! Toronto

Toronto is proud to be the latest host of O’Reilly’s renowned Ignite! series, organized by Peter Horvath and Michele Perras. Ignite! captures the best of geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations on topics ranging from The Best Way to Buy a Car to Hacking Chocolate. Imagine that you’re on stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, doing a five-minute presentation using a slide deck that auto-forwards every 15 seconds, whether you’re ready or not. What would you do? What would you say? Could you stand the pressure? We’re ready to see what Toronto has to say!

Startup Drinks

It’s a simple concept: a grassroots effort to make sure startup folks get in touch and stay in touch. The kickoff Toronto Startup Drinks followed hot on the heels of DemoCamp and was met instant enthusiasm. We are keeping the startup community alive, one pint at a time on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at local fave C’est What!

If you are around, don’t be afraid to say hi. The events afre shaping up to be a fun week of meeting new people and relaxing.

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