Long overdue Podcamp Toronto 2009 debrief

Just so you know, it bugs me like crazy not be able to dump my thoughts on various time-sensitive issues that occur on a daily basis. It’s unfortunately that time of year again when my post frequency is hindered as a result of “March Madness” (year-end for government clients). I am working with about six clients at the moment in addition to regular speaking engagement travel gigs. This is more than enough to eat up all of my time.  My “blog about this” list has accumulated over 60 items since my last post, however the #1 item I want to write about first is my great experience at Podcamp Toronto 2009.

As I usually do with my conference “debrief” posts, the following are essentially key items derived from my handwritten notes for each session I attended. The quantity of bullets under each post is not a reflection of the session quality but rather “new” things that I learned and/or people that I met. Sometimes a single item and/or contact can be extremely valuable to me. There is little grammatical structure to these bullets since they are meant to be a brain dump. So without further ado here are the sessions I attended…

Building Relationships with Word of Mouth and PR Practitioners While Maintaining Credibility with Your Audience – Anita Clarke, David Jones, Eden Spodek and Matthew Stradiotto, moderated by Keith McArthur.

My Two Cents: Walked in late, however it is always refreshing to hear what “hobby” bloggers have to say. I often find myself forgetting that most bloggers have personal blogs unrelated to their day jobs.

• Sysomos is apparently emerging as a competitor to Radian6 (which I use religiously)
• Blog pitching firms expect bloggers to show them their private metrics in order to gauge performance
• Quantcast Analytics is a very useful, publicly accessible analytics site
• Many “hobbyist” bloggers don’t care about analytics, trends, marketing space, etc…

Stalking Your Audience for Fun & Profit – Monitoring Your Community & Competitors – Sean Power on the O’Reilly book \”Complete Web Monitoring\”

My Two Cents: I was absolutely amazed as to how many great free monitoring tools I had not previously heard of. Sean did an amazing job presenting a massive amount of content in a short amount of time.

• I was told to watch the video “Website is Down” to get an idea of what IT guys do during their work day
• There is absolutely no privacy online…NONE, ZIP, NADA!
• Most visitor behaviour assumptions can actually be measured
• Monitoring 101: What did they do? Could they do it?  How did they do it?
• Minefield of buzzwords out there
• Key items to ask:
  • How did users get there?
  • Places and tasks: What are they doing? Where are they going?
  • Where did they leave? Why?
• Install Clicky –>Spy software analytics
• People do this: Consume, Click, Give Data, Navigate
• Neat metric: Percent of people that scrolled to the bottom of the page (Visitor attention vs. absolute scrolling reach)
• Install Clicktale & Crazyegg–>Real-time monitoring software examples, both track scrolling & fold.
• Neat metric: Blank fields left by user (if you have forms)
• Install Bitcurrent –>Replays user paths
• Need to start using the amazing exit survey tool called 4Q
• Install Monitorus
• Start using Google Sets
• Use SpyFu to find out what competitors are paying for various keywords
• Start tracking my TinyURL’s in Google (great performance metric)
• Use MyBlogLog to establish your identity
• Various additional Social Media Monitoring Tools worth using:
  • Google Alerts
  • Whatchthatpage
  • Roll Yo (your own search engine)
  • Bigboards (checks forums)
  • Search IRC
  • Twemes
  • Facebook Lexicon
  • TweetDeck
  • SiteVolume (site seems to be down right now – March 1st, 09)
  • Buzzfeed
• Download the Facebook Socialistics app to analyze your social network
• Use BackType to track comments
• Those interested in being part of the analytics community should look at becoming moderators on the web analytics list
• Platforms worth looking into: StatZen and WikiMonitor (?) to measure wiki metrics (Sean or anybody, I need a link here! Can’t find it using Google…may have written it down wrong).
• Look into Trendrr
• Use Compete to look at competitor traffic

How social media can be used to demystify public service institutions to encourage civic engagement - Jairus Pryor (Bank of Canada) and Audra Williams (Parliament of Canada).

My Two Cents: Walked in late to this one as well so I didn’t catch everything. However, I was very happy to see someone else speaking on public sector social media usage, albeit more so the political side. I tend to have an issue with political examples here in Canada since I find that simply using the “tools” doesn’t mean squat if your belief system and political culture are not in tune with the basic principles of “web 2.0″ (collaboration, transparency, 2-way engagement, etc…). Those of you wondering what I’m talking about haven’t worked with the Prime Minister’s Office.

• Conservatives tend to use more social media “tools” than the Liberals
• The Bank of Canada has a wiki, a fake blog, a Flickr account (for press to get pics from) and a Twitter account.
• Advice: “Once you have managed to start using a tool and bypassed the red-tape successfully, figure out ways to use the tool in new ways”
• Great quote: “What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent”.

Government 2.0 – A discussion on the expanding role of social media and government/citizen interaction, right here in Canada - Mike Kujawski (That would be me!).”

My Two Cents: Great crowd, although I wish I had more time allotted than 30 minutes. I was just getting started! Here is the link to the video of the presentation. I have no notes for this one for obvious reasons.

Making Traditional Media a Little More Social - Using Twitter, wikis and live-blogging at the Globe and Mail - Mathew Ingram.

My Two Cents: Great to see the person behind the Globe & Mail’s social media initiatives.

• Globe & Mail has created a real-time live-blogging widget (based on Cover it Live) that also captures Twitter & blogosphere discussion that is tagged appropriately.
• Good quote in the newspaper world: ” The people formerly known as the audience”.

A Social Media State of the Union Discussion - Collin Douma.

My Two Cents: Always a great open great discussion when Collin is moderating.

• There is still widespread debate as to the meaning of the word “podcasts” now that mainstream media is using it quite loosely.
• It is important for us social media folk to look outside the fishbowl of our own community.

My Two Cents: Solid presentation on overcoming barriers.

• Important to not use buzzwords among clients…focus on the purpose/benefits of the tool instead (e.g. instead of wiki say “editable, shareable document”)
• Look into the Society for New Communications Research.
• Good books: “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion“, “Made to Stick” and anything by Maslow.

Taking Control of Success - John Meadows, Steve Saylor, Keith Burtis and Katherine Matthews.

My two cents: Good open discussion on the various perspectives on “success” in the social media community. I mentioned the importance of setting objectives, which many “hobbyist” community members tend to forget…hence why they have a difficulty in measuring performance and defining “success” , which in my opinion is completely relative and dependant on your own personal objectives.

• Great quote “If you’re interested, you’ll be interesting”
• I should try out Batchbook

Lunch & Learn on the latest in mobile social media marketing - Robin Browne.

Podcamp Toronto – An event you don’t want to miss!

Those of you new to the concept of “un-conferences” may want to stop by the Rogers Communication Centre (Ryerson U) this weekend in Toronto. What’s going on? Podcamp Toronto 2009 is! Just type in the invite key “canuck” to get into the website/wiki.

This is my 4th Podcamp (second one in Toronto), and certainly won’t be my last. Don’ t be fooled by the name, this is an event that brings together the “Who’s Who” of social media from every angle. You have the hobbyists, the philosophers, the techies, the strategists, the marketers/communicators, the authors, the employers, the executives, the programmers, the artists, the newbies and the veterans (to name a few). Put simply, this event is for ANYONE interested in new media. By the end of the weekend I usually feel like my brain went through a 24 hour spinning class followed by a marathon.

My own session is at 2:45PM on the Saturday in room 357. I titled it as follows: “Government 2.0. A discussion on the expanding role of social media and government/citizen interaction, right here in Canada.” Basically, I’ll quickly go over the evolving and increasingly strategic (although there’s still a long way to go) attempts by government  to reach out to Canadians using social media. I only have 30min so I think I’ll just open up the floor to a discussion as I navigate through the latest examples.

If you haven’t registered for Podcamp yet, get on it! Or better yet, pencil yourself in to present!

Podcamp Montreal 2008 – Debrief

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while now, know just how much of an avid supporter I am of the unconference movement. This week I was once again blown away by the quality of yet another PodCamp, this time in Montreal (Podcamp Montreal 2008). While I’m not a big fan of the name for numerous reasons (often alienates non-geeks among other things), I am inspired by the passion of speakers and quality of content each and every time I attend.

I’m going to attempt something a tad different with this post by not summarizing this year’s speeches. Instead I will provide you with a condensed list of my top takeaways, thoughts and/or notes from each presentation I attended over the last two days. Please note that more take-aways do not necessarily signify better content (and vice-versa). I benefited in one way or another from each and every presentation.

Please don’t suck! – Sylvain Grand’Maison

• Be a storyteller when you present. Even boring stories can be made exciting!
• The aggregate online persona of a person can often be richer than a face-to-face meeting.