This past weekend I was honored to speak at Wordcamp Vancouver. The conference focuses on many different aspects of Word Press. From the latest version to the most useful plug-ins, this a place for learning and asking questions. There was an amazing presence of different skill levels and of course wonderful people.

I was lucky to start off the event with a talk on how to socialize your blog. Instead of creating a  traditional power point presentation, I decided to make a Word Press website! Just fits the situation too perfectly, also after seeing some great presentations at Social Media 201 , that were shown as websites, I thought this was the wave of the future. I have never been a slide-show kind of person anyway.

SocialUrBlog.com is the domain I decided to start building my showcase of tools for others to conveniently access at anytime.

If you need help or have questions- feel free to ask on Twitter – @DigitalkVan

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Empire Avenue is a revolutionary online influence stock exchange combined with an advertising platform that allows individuals and organizations to convert their online influence and reach into revenue.

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Soooo… Apple decided to leave one of their new iPhone toys at a bar. While others laugh and point at this event, I simply see it as a marketing tactic.
I believe the next day, Apple reached an annual high with their stock. Anyway, I am more than excited to get my hands on one of these devices. I have for the past three phones, stood in line with other Apple fans, waiting hours to get my hands on the newest version of the phone.

Just last week I was on MSN with some of my Grad school friends. We were talking about how we drove over to the States from Vancouver, BC. Ran into the closest AT&T store and dropped $800 dollars on the first iPhone. Of course then we had to drive back to Canada, open a Rogers account and then try and Jail Break the phones.

One by one we slowly jail broke each phone. It was done, we were all in love.

Now with the 4th generation iPhone coming out. It’s overwhelming to see the amazing improvements with this device.

One of the greatest features in my opinion is the new Gyroscope, which was presented at WWDC by Sir Steve Jobs.

He stated that the iPhone 4G will feature a 3-axis (not 2-axis) gyroscope that will boast a pitch/roll/yaw.

Below you can see a sample game that was developed at Apple to showcase this new feature.

Of course there is also the amazing video calling feature. Apple showcased that even though the device needs wi-fi in order to function, that there was still very valuable and exciting use cases. The video below really outlines the potential :

And just incase you haven’t seen the official promo video – here it is:

What are your thoughts on the phone?? Are you going to get one???

For the past 7 years I have been lucky enough to have Kendra Whynot & Jon Kalkman in my life. I met them in my first year of University. Jon lived in Shirley Baker and I was in Hugh Stevens. Ken and Jon were both in their second year, and had been dating for just under a year. Jon decided to do one more year in residence. Our groups formed and friends were made. We became very close friends and Kendra and I formed an amazing connection. Throughout the next 4 years we would hang out, party and go on awesome adventures together.

The time soon came fro Jon & Ken to leave Victoria, they were a year ahead of me and were off to discover the real world. One day I got a call from Kendra while she and Jon were in Calgary. She was really upset because the only school she had gotten into for her Masters was in Toronto. Jon had been accepted into UBC for education.

The two of them had to split ways for an entire year. The good thing though was that I was off to Vancouver as well.

Jon and I became very close that year while in Vancouver. Spending almost every weekend together and many weekdays. Playing tennis, discovering music and much more. Then once again it was time for Jon to leave. He joined Kendra in Toronto for her final year in her Masters program.

Almost one year later I get a call from a screaming Kendra. Jon had just proposed to her and she was able to reach me in excitement. I was honored to be one of the first people she told. Jon and Kendra go golfing quite a bit, and he had proposed to her by writing on a golf ball the words ‘Marry Me’.

Their wedding is in June and I am honored to be the MC for the wedding. Stay Tuned for some ridiculous photos and memories!

Yesterday (April 15 2010)  was Social Media 201 held at Microsoft in Redmond. This conference was for businesses who already  have a presence in Social Media, but want to amp it up to the next level of engagement and profitability. I was asked by @MikeWhitmore to be on the Monetizing with Social MediaPanel. This was quite an exciting experience as at this time there are very few Social Media conferences held at Microsoft. I was able to share with others valuable tools for most businesses. Such as…

1- Ning.com

I shared the value of Ning to those who may not have the resources and have larger funds to start their very own online communities. Ning usually cost under $50 US a month. Rather than 10-50k for a website built on Drupal. The function of Ning is so far unmatched by any other company for the price and function. You can allow users to have their own membership profile pages, upload videos, upload photos, create their own blogs and much more. This community building software is really valuable for those who can build there own community around their brand or product.

Some great Ning networks :

1. PeopleVancouver.com (My own Ning)
2. http://community.ellentv.com (Ellen DeGeneres)
3. http://www.thisis50.com/ (50 cent)

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2- Wibiya.com

The second tool I talked about was Wibiya. This product is a social toolbar that anyone can add to any website. This bar connects users to different social networks right on a webpage. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and there is more functionality such as translation, how many users are on your website at that time.  You can see this fully customizable social bar implemented on one of my sites : www.VancouverAccess2010.com (placed on the bottom)

3- Tweet Adder

The third tool I talked about was Tweet Adder. This is a very useful tool to find people who you want to engage with. You can search recent tweets, location, profile data and more. This comes in really useful when you are looking for people. For instance I can search for users who have the word Microsoft in their profile data, then add in Redmond in the location field. Tweet Adder will then give me a list of all the user that meet that criteria. Now I can follow these people to my Twitter automatically and engage.

Here are some photos of the panel:

The next topic I touched on was Social Media Contest. I stressed that it’s very hard to conduct a successful video campaign.

Why?

1. People are Lazy
2. Not everyone has the skill to edit videos
3. People don’t want to spend time creating videos on something they are not assured

People also think about their ROI on the work they put in. It’s much easier for someone to RT a tweet then spend hours creating a video.
The amount of work is much less for someone to tweet than to create a video – and this is more the evident with current contest you can look at.

This is the case for many many video contest that are put on. You can see yourself on Youtube and other video contest sites that there are very few people who enter these contest. Thus companies are paying way to much money for user-generated content.

This money can be spent elsewhere for many other purposes. Like a Twitter contest.

Making sure that your contest aligns with your goals is very important. You want to align your contest method with you goals.

For instance an RT Twitter contest.

This sort of contest can really help grow your Twitter community. This is a great goal to have – if spreading awareness about your business or product is part of your overall goals. This is a fun and easy way for users to engage with your brand/product. Not only that …it’s easy! All the user has to do is follow you and RT a tweet. Simple… takes a few seconds. Your community can grow quite quickly with this method. On top of that now you have a larger amount of people that hear your voice.

If conducted properly these sorts of contest can be fun and worthwhile.

That was mostly what I covered during the panel.

After we all headed over to Bellevue for the after conference Tweetup:

It was great to meet the keynote speakers and panel members. Along with the very excited and motivated audience. We mingled over some extremely tasty food and drinks.

The hash tag that we used was #sm201 – go ahead and search on Twitter for some great tweets around the event

It’s always great to work with wonderful people. Here is a small collection of photos from the past few months. I must say I have a wonderful team to work with. This is how we break the silence when things are getting a little to serious…

Microsoft Tag lets you seamlessly connect almost anything in the real world to interactive experiences from your mobile phone. Consumers scan Tags to engage at the maximum point of impact by using the device that is central to their daily lives: the mobile phone.Cross-Media: Print, online, TV, billboards, point-of-sale—the range of places where businesses can use a Tag is almost infinite. With Tag it is easy to integrate your offline and online campaigns across web, mobile and print mediaEngage: Simple, intuitive, and interactive Tag enables immediate response and deeper engagement from your customers, providing a unique vehicle to influence in-the-moment behavior, drive deeper engagement with your brand, and turn interest into action.Report & Measure: With built-in tracking, metrics and analysis tools, Tag gives companies access to data that can help them make effective decisions about their marketing expenditures.Agile: Tag’s dynamic technology lets businesses change campaigns at any time, enabling companies to react and evolve in real-time and deliver the most powerful outcomes.

I am the Community Manager for Tag,  this is a little video on how Tag can be used in many different scenarios.

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These are some of my favorite photos I have taken over the past 5 years.

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In Washington there is the festival of Tulips that takes place every year. Unfotuenlty I had just missed the acres of tulips by only one week.
I still had the opportunity to take some wonderful photos of the gardens created for this festival.

These photos are all HDR photos taken with my Nikon D80

Hope you like them!