If 2009 was about creating awareness of social media communities, then 2010 should be about exploring how to meaningfully engage. At a minimum, all marketers should be monitoring how their brands live online. Do you have a solid grasp of the social media landscape where your product or service is being discussed? If you don’t, then you are missing out on a golden opportunity to listen in and learn from your customers.
Whether you are new to social media or an early adopter, spend two days with leading social media thinkers, speakers and practitioners and learn how to seamlessly add the power of social media to your traditional media efforts.
On February 24th and 25th the Third Annual Social Media Marketing event will be taking place at the Old Mill Inn & Spa in beautiful Toronto.
For more information on this event, including registration details, please visit the Social Media Marketing website.
The Mark, a Toronto-based online daily news magazine, announced today that it has closed its first round of funding, led by Innovation Grade Capital. Thunder Road Capital and Venture Communications CEO Arlene Dickinson also participated in the round.
The total sum raised was not disclosed. The Mark plans to use the funding to add hundreds of new contributors, expand their multimedia offering, launch a French site, and sign revenue and content distribution partnerships.
Launched in May 2009, The Mark has assembled more than 600 Canadian contributors across politics, business, science, technology, sports and the arts.
The Mark is Canada's daily online forum for news, commentary, and debate. The Mark is founded on the idea that thousands of credible Canadians have... [more]
The folks at Vancouver's Elastic Path have been kind enough to share their friends and family discount with Techvibes readers.
So here you go:
Get outfitted for the Games! Use promo code EPFRIENDS2010 for 15% off at www.vancouver2010.com/store.
15% off any purchase, no minimum, expires February 14, 2010.
Please use EPFRIENDS2010US in you are shipping to the US.
Exclusions: Red Mittens, Petro Canada glasses, video games.
Elastic Path Software provides a flexible ecommerce platform that gives enterprises the capabilities and control to deliver innovation in a complex... [more]
If there’s one thing people in Portland love to do, it’s muck with technology. Sometimes, that mucking results in something interesting. Sometimes, that something interesting has enough potential that it could become a full-fledged company. But then there’s difficult transitional period. How do you find co-founders? How do you get the idea off the ground? What is going to force you to actually make something happen?
All good questions. And you might find the answers to them at Startup Weekend Portland.
That’s right. After a little hiatus from Portland, last year - and a stop in Corvallis near the end of last year - everyone’s favorite startup starting sprint is headed back to Portland. The event will be held March 5-7 at NedSpace Old Town. Tickets are $75 each.
Hold the phone. What’s Startup Weekend, you ask?
Startup Weekend is a 54-hour startup event that provides networking, resources, and incentives for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch. Get connected with local developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Build community. Start companies. No talk. All action.
In other words, it’s an intensive bootcamp for helping you bring your startup idea to fruition with other like-minded folks.
What kinds of companies come out of startup weekend? Well, the most impressive alumnus of Startup Weekend Portland has to be Portland-based Mugasha, the best way to listen to electronica online. And there were a number of other Portland projects started that still may become going concerns one day.
But arguably, launching companies may be secondary to gaining the experience and making connections with peers whom you might not otherwise meet. So if you’ve got an idea, definitely show up. And if you don’t have an idea yet? Definitely show up.
Still looking for more details? Stay tuned to Startup Weekend Portland, join the Startup Weekend community, or follow Startup Weekend on Twitter. I’ll keep you up-to-date as more details emerge.
The following is a guest post by Vancouver's Michael Fergusson, CEO of Ayogo Games. Ayogo creates innovative gaming experiences enjoyed on social networks and mobile platforms. This post is part of an ongoing series that discusses the business side of casual social games. Make sure to check out Ayogo's blog and join the conversation.
What’s a game and why are games important? I tried to address this question in the talk I gave to the International Internet Marketing Association.
One good definition of a game is “an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." (Serious Games, Clark C. Abt, 1970) As you may have noted to yourself already, this can describe all of manner of human endeavor from finance (sometimes not in a good way) to education to medicine. Airline pilots are required to practice in simulators that look a lot like big console games, and many of our sports such as biathlon, javelin, archery, are based directly or indirectly on survival skills our ancestors developed from necessity. Today, we use those skills for the fun of it. Why is that?
Games and play are a basic survival adaptation. Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (basic human needs are represented in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest and lowest levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top): at all levels of the pyramid we work within a framework of rules, collaborating with others to reach our goals. Our brain has evolved to encourage our success by rewarding us when we're successful, beyond the inherent rewards of survival.
Here's an observation that I hope you will find interesting: When you call something "a game", there is generally an implication that you're talking about something that isn't (for lack of a better word) important. And in many cases that's true: the game is not important. But the interesting thing is that our brain doesn't necessarily know that. Our brain will give the same sort of dopamine reward for a solving a meaningless puzzle game as it does for learning how to properly tie a life saving knot (shout out to all the cub scouts out there).
This is valuable from an evolutionary perspective because most of our games, like hockey for example, are analogs to things in the real world. That’s why they work as games and that’s why we play them. Hockey teaches us about timing and teamwork, and helps us develop useful fine motor skills. These are the same skills and abilities, generally speaking, that we use to navigate our world, so we can survive. Even though we don’t truly require all these skills for survival purposes any longer, these same instincts remain, crying out to be satisfied in other ways. This is why we get a dopamine rush when we do well at a complex pattern-matching game, despite the fact that we'll likely never use those skills to learn which mushrooms make good soup, and which ones are poisonous.
Implications for design
When you're designing a game (or even a customer response form for the corporate website), understanding this mechanism of reward lets you recognize the patterns and use them to your advantage. As Eisenhower said: motivation is getting somebody do something because they want to do it. In coming posts, we'll talk about how that's done, by looking at examples from a variety of different games.
Ayogo is a Vancouver-based lab that creates innovative gaming experiences enjoyed on social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.), and mobile... [more]
To help Vancouver businesses and their employees maximize productivity and avoid gridlock during the upcoming 2010 Olympic Winter Games, CounterPath Corporation is making its voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) softphones available for free to all businesses, academic institutions and government agencies in the Lower Mainland.
CounterPath’s VoIP platform gives CIOs and IT managers a fast, convenient option for supporting telecommuting, which 70 percent of British Columbia enterprises plan to expand or begin offering in time for the 2010 Games, according to a BC Human Resources Management Association survey. Although the 2010 Games span a little over two weeks – Feb. 12-28 – the survey found that the impact on employee commutes will last six to 10 weeks.
CounterPath’s Bria softphone goes beyond basic telecommuting services, such as voice calls and e-mail, to support a variety of other applications, including video calls, presence, file transfers and messaging, all from a single user interface and tied into the enterprise’s existing infrastructure. CounterPath’s solution also gives B,C. enterprises the flexibility to enable those applications for all employees or for specific groups, such as call center staff.
CounterPath will distribute softphones through February 28th and validate accounts for 60 days upon activation. B.C. enterprises and other organizations can take advantage of this offer by visiting www.counterpath.com/bria-games.
CounterPath Corporation is a leading provider of innovative desktop and mobile VoIP software products and solutions. The Company's product suite... [more]
At January's Vancouver Enterprise Forum, Jacob Malthouse participated in the Lightning Pitch panel and had 100 seconds to explain that his team was planning to become the registry for the .eco domain name. Malthouse's presentation was slick but that won't come as a surprise if you check out his company's WHO, WHAT, and HOW videos online.
Within the next year to 18 months ICANN - the US non-profit that regulates domain names globally - will open an application process that will allow hundreds of new domain suffixes (like .com or .ca) to be created. These new domains will be run by registries, who sell domain names for an annual fee.
Malthouse and Big Room Inc. will be applying to run the “.eco” (dot eco) registry. Big Room was founded in in 2007 with the goal of creating Dot Eco and over the last couple years they have assembled an international team of investors, advisors and partners to help design a model that would be socially, environmentally and financially sustainable.
Thanks to ICANN's ‘community-priority’ track which allow community focused domains to avoid being sent to auction if they can demonstrate community support, Big Room was a great shot at landing this green domain extension.
Big Room is backed by environmentally and socially aware angel and venture capital investors including Working Enterprises and Vancouver's Renewal Partners who fully support their efforts to run Dot Eco as a social venture.
Look out for an interview with Big Room over the next couple weeks where we'll look at their plans to establish community driven governance around the Dot Eco domain to ensure that it becomes a eco-marketing and transparent solution for millions of individuals and businesses who want to demonstrate their green commitment.
Big Room Inc. is a Canadian company based in Vancouver, British Columbia with an office in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 2007 with the... [more]
This morning Vancouver startup Parking Mobility officially announced the launch of its car reporting application for the iPhone in the City of Vancouver. Parking Mobility allows citizens to report when they see a car parked in a disabled parking spot without a disability placard and share that data with the city. If all goes as planned as is the case with a City of Vancouver trial, cities will take this information and send a ticket to the owner of the car.
"This is a very powerful application for improving accessibility," added Jane Dyson, Executive Director of the British Columbia Coalition of People with Disabilities. "Parking Mobility allows us to take meaningful action when cars are parked in disabled parking spots without a disability placard."
Users can report cars parked in disabled parking by downloading Parking Mobility for free to their iPhone from the Apple AppStore. When they see a car parked illegally, they capture four photos of the car and submit it instantly from their phone. The application also enables citizens to identify locations of disabled parking, information which is shared with other users on their phone and the web.
If Parking Mobility takes off it will both help to improve disabled parking accessibility and help cities to provide more effective parking enforcement and generate additional revenue without the deployment of additional resources.
Parking Mobility was born from the need to ensure accessible parking for people with disabilities. While there are many disabled parking spots... [more]
Toronto's Polar Mobile announced this morning that their Toronto Maple Leafs Mobile App has hit 100,000 users and nearly three million page views per month.
Like Dion Phaneuf and J.S. Giguere over the past week, the Leafnation has embraced Maple Leafs Mobile which has proven to be the most successful NHL team App since its launch one year ago. Powered by Polar Mobile’s SMART Platform, the App delivers real-time content to fans including up-to-date stats, video highlights, interviews and news.
“We felt it was important for the Maple Leafs to be one of the first teams in the NHL to have their own mobile application and we're excited about the increasing popularity of our App since it launched a year ago," said Chris Hebb, senior vice-president of broadcast and content for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. "Maple Leafs Mobi is an all access App that lets Leafs fans consume the latest information about their favourite team, including blockbuster trades, where they want and when they want. The interactive capability of Maple Leafs Mobi including the video on demand takes the access to the Maple Leafs to a whole new level."
Maple Leafs Mobile is available as a downloadable application for iPhone, iPod Touch and BlackBerry smartphones and is an extension of the Toronto Maple Leafs digital and interactive content brand. Maple Leafs fans are surpisingly evenly distributed when it comes to their mobile device of choice when it comes to accessing Maple Leafs Mobile with 35% iPhone users, 35 % BlackBerry smartphone users and 30 % iPod Touch users.
Other interesting usage stats include: BlackBerry smartphone users open the App on average 17 times/month, whereas iPhone/iPod Touch users open the App on average 9 times/month. 17 per cent of BlackBerry smartphone subscribers also shared Maple Leafs Mobi with a friend via email.
Leafs fans can download the free application by visiting www.mapleleafs.mobi, for BlackBerry smartphones on BlackBerry App World or for iPhone or iPod Touch users at the Apple App Store.
Just image what the usage numbers will be like if the Leafs can make the playoffs.
Polar Mobile has rapidly established itself as a leader in providing end-to-end mobile solutions in North America. Polar Mobile's key expertise... [more]
Techvibes: Hello Heather, thank you for sitting down with us today.
Heather Leson: Thank you for having me.
Techvibes: So tell us about CrisisCampTO. What happened there?
Heather: On Saturday, January 30th, 2010, 30 mostly strangers volunteered over 8 hours of their time to help the helpers. CrisisCommons and the network of CrisisCamp (Haiti) are united in a cause to use knowledge and will to communicate and build via technology. CrisisCampTo worked on 4 to 5 different projects while collaborating with people for many other CrisisCamp cities and virtual volunteers. The main projects were the UN RSS Feed Aggregator, Sugar CRM development, Machine Translation testing (Python), Haitian Voices and local community outreach, and beginning preliminary testing on an Iphone app for the People Finder project.
Techvibes: For those of use that didn't hear about it, what was CrisisCamp?
Heather: CrisisCamp (Haiti) is the first time that CrisisCommons has reacted to large emergency. We are growing by city and volunteers every day. The concept is that developers, emergency planners, social media savvy, project managers and other technical knowledge workers volunteer their unique skill and tool-sets to help others. At the moment, we are all focused mainly on projects requested by NGOs and on some CrisisCommons infrastructure projects to help us volunteer better. As with any new volunteer organization, we are building as we are working on our core goals. It is ever-changing. Every day people in various cities could be working virtually on an existing project or a new project submitted by an NGO could begin. All the while we are trying to establish best practices.
Techvibes: And what is your role in all of this?
Heather: As a City coordinator, it is my job to work with our city project leads and the CrisisCamp project leads to determine which projects might best fit the skills of the folks who have rsvp'ed to volunteer. We did research in advance of our CrisisCamp to help with our selection. Because projects are ever-changing and because volunteers can vary, our job is to pick a number of projects in advance and then make final decisions on the day of the event.There are two big streams of volunteering: Social media and translation (wiki, blogs, and social networks) and software development (programming, usability, quality assurance and analysis.)
Techvibes: Tell us about some of the highlights of the day. Did anything happen on January 30th that stuck out in your mind?
Heather: Absolutely. Some of the highlights were:
- BC Holmes of the Toronto Haitian Action Committee joined us to talk about Haiti and the spirit of the people.
- The fact that everyone told me that they learned something new at the event was a big win for me.
- Our two Haitian-born University of Toronto students worked on a number of projects helping translate and test language. This included Haitian Voices, a Bing application test and a Google app test.
- Our Sugar CRM team really excelled testing modules. It was a sheer delight to have the University of Toronto engineer students later blog about the fast pace of crowdsourced open source software development.
Techvibes: Sounds amazing! Any final thought you wanted to add?
Heather: Yes! We are all extremely proud of the volunteer's effort and are looking forward to building on this with the next CrisisCamp (Haiti) - Toronto. CrisisCommons is very committed to building the VTC (Volunteer Technology Community) and we all look forward to the possibility of open source communications and technology providing the ability to reach out and help.
Techvibes: Fantastic! We're looking forward to it, and we'll make sure to cover the next one as well.
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Did you attend CrisisCampTO? What was your favorite moment of the day? Let us know by way of a comment!
