Posted on

Time to stop pointing fingers at Facebook and take some responsibility ourselves.

As a consultant involved in the digital space for quite some time now, I have carefully observed the evolution of Facebook since its first year of operation. Since that time Mark Zuckerberg has taken the heat on numerous occasions for a variety of privacy-related issues. Remember Facebook Beacon and Facebook Lexicon? What usually follows is a hopeless attempt by some people to start a “delete Facebook” movement instead of taking some time to do a little introspection. 

The news surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica over the past few months has caused quite an uproar. So much so that Zuckerberg himself was summoned to two US congressional hearings and just yesterday, to the much better prepared European Parliament lawmakers to explain what exactly had happened along with the steps Facebook was taking to prevent it from happening again.

Here are some of my general thoughts in no particular order. Continue reading “Time to stop pointing fingers at Facebook and take some responsibility ourselves.”

Posted on

Global internet statistics for 2018

Global Internet User Distribution

It’s that time of year again when digital stats aggregators update their numbers and various annual summary reports come out based on research conducted in the previous calendar year. Here are a few general highlights I put together recently after going through various reports.  If you’re interested in the data sources, I covered my favourites in this blog post last year.  Most have now come out with 2018 versions of their reports. Continue reading “Global internet statistics for 2018”

Posted on

One week, two excellent events: #CbocSocial and #FWD50

This post features my key takeaways and notes from two events I attended earlier this month here in Ottawa.

1- Public Sector Social Media (#cbocsocial) –“Where Canada’s social media leaders gather to discuss the most effective strategies for the most powerful media.”

2- Forward 50 (#fwd50) – “A three-day conversation on digital transformation held in Canada’s capital city, bringing together citizens, the public service, elected officials, technologists, and innovative thinkers from around the world.”

Both events were geared at the public sector, albeit very different audiences were present for each. The first event (#cbocsocial) attracted many comms folks along with those responsible for running their organization’s social media channels. The second event (#fwd50) had many senior government leaders, program and policy folks, as well those interested in the general advancement of government  through modern disruptive tech. Ideally, I would love to one day see these audiences overlap a bit more at each others events to build up cross-functional learning and reduce existing silos. I do realize however that with limited training/conference budgets it’s wishful thinking on my part. Nonetheless I found both events very valuable. Here are some of my high-level key takeaways from each along with general notes from specific sessions. Continue reading “One week, two excellent events: #CbocSocial and #FWD50”