Gus Digital

Last night was a fairly informal Third Tuesday, as it was held on a Wednesday night and we had no speaker, yet as always it managed to bring out a lot of people.  Since it was held at Steamworks in Gastown, we had a cap of 35 people.  I’m sure if we didn’t have a cap, more would have attended.

It was great to see the usual faces, Tanya, Monica, Colleen, Arieanna & Ianvi, Tris, John & his wife, David to name a few, a few faces were missing, Raul, Rebecca. I also got to meet some new people and chat with people face to face that I’ve only chatted with online.  I also got to meet Joesph Thornley who started Third Tuesday and was in town for the meet up.

I have to say the change of format was refreshing.  It allowed for more interaction and networking than the usual events.  Granted the set up of the tables prevented from seeing others in the group as I had my back to 2/3 of the group. All in all, hats off to Tanya on organizing a great event as usual.  I’m looking forward to more in the coming months and proud to be a part of such a great group of people!

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The other day I put my name in for the Social Media Club’s 42 interim board member, and you can now vote for me at their site.

I believe we need some more Canadian representation, with currently only one other Canadian - Megan Cole.

The Social Media Club helps to

bring together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaborators. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit. We are more than just USERS, we are the reason the tools exist - we are the people who communicate our thoughts and ideas near and far.

I look forward to seeing this club grow. We have some great people in the Social Media scene in Canada and I hope to bring them all together and grow as a community with your support.

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What a crazy week this will be for Social Media enthusiast or Tech junkies.

To start off tonight is Third Tuesday Vancouver which will host Darren Barefoot at the Century House Restaurant & Bar on Richards Street. Darren will discuss how to get top bloggers attention in this growing market place. I’ll hopefully be attending depending on how busy work gets here.

Tomorrow night will be Launch Party 4 Vancouver at Republic on Granville Street. This will showcase some new tech start up companies as well as having a Start Up Career Fair. I might venture out to this event as I have some pals that are techies and will be attending the event. Techvibes also has some other events on their blog.

Thursday will Cossette Communications - Covergence 2008 on Granville Island. I’m registered for this event for work, but I hope to learn a few “tricks of the trade” so to speak.

Other events this week include Vidfest which celebrates digital media in Vancouver.

Last but not least, Buzzbishop broke the news first this morning to the Vancouver crowd, the Apple Store will finally be open in Pacific Centre Mall on Saturday May 24th at 10am.

I hope I haven’t forgotten any events this week. Just let me know.

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Today I attended the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) Vancouver’s event on Social Media dumbed “Social Media – Speed Dating” (hey I didn’t name this one).

There was great turn out of PR professionals/communicators and I’m still amazed at the fear they all have about social media. They all seem to be afraid of having a blog, who will monitor it, who will write it, how much resources have to be used.

As human beings we are all afraid of change. I for one was skeptical at first when I entered the blogging world. I was afraid I wouldn’t have anything to say on a blog, would people listen to me, would I care. I started off slow. I created a personal blog that would allow my family back east in Toronto know what I was up to. Lately I started to follow more blogs and started commenting on more and more of them. I’ve created a great group of blogger pals, Raul, Rebecca, Tanya, and Tyler (to name a few). They have helped me greatly on this journey.

What I learned today was that people are open to social media, but just don’t know how to start. My suggestion (and for those that listened to me at the event) is to just start slowly. You don’t have to jump into it full force. As some of the round table speakers were saying, start off with an RSS feed on your website. This will allow visitors to your site access your information. Your RSS feed should be on your news release section to begin with. Then monitor it and see how that works out. You might then venture into having your own corporate blog, but limit it at first. If you want to get readers to your blog, start researching other blogs that write about the same topic as you do. Begin commenting on them and enjoy the discussions. Linking back on your blog to other blogs definitely helps and you will start to see results through time.

What I did learn, that I didn’t know before, was how to use digg or del.icio.us effectively. I was always worried about them, but as Natasha Davies from Moonraker Multimedia (sorry the website is under construction) said, create a del.icio.us page for background. Refer to this page on your news release, sorta like an on-line biography (I quoted that term and she liked it) allowing readers to know how you came up with your article/release and what you used as a reference. What I have learned in working for a newswire company is that reporters are lazy and they want all the information infront of them. I thought linking to a del.icio.us page with your research is definitely a great idea.

I was glad I was able to share my knowledge of Social Media to some of the attendees. I don’t consider myself an expert by any means, but I thank all the blogger pals and twitter pals out there for helping me along this journey of social media learning!

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This week I have a few events that I will be attending. Of course all are dealing with Social Media and it’s implications in the market place. I have to admit I’m having fun attending most of these events as they are usually not very structured and allows for more open dialogue (what social media truely is).

Tonight I’m attending HTCE: Seven Risks of Social Media Marketing hosted by Darren Barefoot (who some in the blogosphere call the godfather of blogs) . The event will take place at the YWCA on Beatty Street and should be a well attended event. I’ve learned alot from Darren and I hope to learn more in the future.

Tomorrow I will be attending the IABC - Social Media Strategic Interest Group at the Yaletown Brewery starting at 5:45pm. You can go over to IABC’s Event page and see more information on this event and upcoming events.

Granted I’m going there in work capacity, but I hope to run into some of the usual people and meet some new ones.

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Being in the Newswire business, every quarter we encounter a very busy time here. This is usually due to companies who are issuing earning releases or, as in our case in Vancouver, mining companies issuing drill result releases. Being the nice guy that I am, I usually stay and help our editorial team proof read these releases and make sure I’m here to answer questions that they might have.

This week has been one very long week for me.

Yesterday was one of those days where I had planned to attend Vancouver’s Wordpress Camp, but due to the work load in our office I stayed behind and worked. Of course the day was also complicated with Junior being ill at 5am that morning, getting a call from work at 7am, and listening to a webcast at 8am for a client. I’m just glad I was able to at least watch the live streaming of the event and it made me feel like I was almost there.

Today I was looking forward to attending IABC BC’s Spring Fling event, but since I’m pretty much exhausted and since I wasn’t registered I decided not to attend. I do plan on attending their next event on Social Media on Tuesday May 13th at the Yaletown Pub.

I’m just looking forward to the weekend where I can have some well deserved R&R.

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