The state of social media in the Canadian federal government

In the spirit of community and social media, I have decided to post up a revised version of my presentation from Podcamp Montreal on SlideShare. It is highly visual in nature and is not really meant to act as a stand alone document, however some of you may find it useful. The topic of this presentation was “Social Media & Canadian Government Usage Examples”. I focused mainly on the Canadian federal government due to limited presentation time and the sheer amount of content to cover. I have embedded it below. Feel free to skip through my intro or browse through it in the 17.6 seconds I always present it in.  Otherwise it looks like a ridiculous self-promotion, which it is not meant to be (it was a personal branding experiment). Enjoy!

PodCamp Ottawa is this weekend!

For those of you that live here in Ottawa, Canada and have been thinking of starting a Podcast or learning more about this medium, consider attending PodCamp Ottawa, which is an unconference scheduled for Sunday, November 25. The goal of PodCamp Ottawa will be more specific than typical PodCamps (which usually cover all social media). The focus will be podcast creation (technically and as a host/producer) and best practices in promoting them. It is being organized by Mark Blevis, Andrea Ross, Bob Goyetche, Maurizio Ortolani & Jeff Parks, the unconference is limited to 80 attendees.

Schedule:

• Date: Sunday, November 25, 2007
• Time: 10:00am – 4:00pm (welcome at 9:45am)
• Location: National Arts Centre, Panorama Room

More details are available at the Podcamp Ottawa site. The symbolical $10 attendance fee goes to charity.

A Vision of Students Today – A must see video for anyone targeting students in their campaigns

This is a great snapshot of the modern undergraduate classroom in college/university. Even though the video tries to blame technology to a certain degree, I think it’s ironic how its “technology” that to a large extent, has facilitated the distribution of this video via the web in order to better promote the core underlying message, which I understand as: Society has CHANGED, it’s time for TRADITIONAL beliefs and systems to adapt to this new DIGITAL society.

Implications for marketers in the public sector:

• Students are not reading your textbook pamphlets and brochures
• Students don’t have time to watch TV during regular hours
• Most “leisure time” at home is spent on the web
• If you think students are in the library, think again.
• Mobile is THE NEXT BIG THING in terms of getting your message across
• Online Social Networks are HUGE (just don’t abuse them using traditional push-advertising)
• Students are smarter than you think, don’t tell them what to do, join into their conversation instead.

What are your thoughts?