webcom Montreal

The of the highlight for me this coming week is webcom Montreal (May 26), where I’ll be speaking on Death and Digtial Legacy. Just look at the incredible line-up of speakers at this semi-annual event:

• Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)
• Tara Hunt (Whuffie Factor)
• Julien Smith (Trust Agents)
• Jeff Pulver (Vivox)
• Seam Power (Complete Web Monitoring)
• Clara Shih (The Facebook Era)
• Chris Heuer (Social Media Club)
• Kristie Wells (Social Media Club)
• Connie Benson (Alterian)
• Shonali Burke (Shonali Burke Consulting)
• Sylvain Carle (Praized Media)
• Kim Vallée (At Home With Kim Vallée)

And a whole lot more…

Concurrent to webcom in the same venue, are two other conferences on May 26:

• WebTweet – inspired by 140 Conference
• WebCamp – unconference for web developers

The night before webcom:

• YulBiz meetup – May 25 – webcom special edition

Open Source Week

This is  also Montreal Open Source Week, a.k.a. MonDev. In addition to WebCamp, there are events happening throughout the week:

• Demo Camp – May 25 – Ignite!-style
• WebCamp – May 26 – concurrent with webcom
• Startup Drinks – May 26
• Make Web Not War – May 27 – Cross-platform conference

I can’t wait! See you there!

Just a few days short of its 4th birthday, Twitter marked a milestone of 10 billion tweets at approximately 16:54:11 Pacific Time on Thursday, March 4, 2010.

That makes approximately 6,925,208 tweets for each of the 1,444 days since Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006. Though, we know that most of those tweets have been in the last year.  In fact, was only 5 months ago that Twitter celebrated the 5 billionth tweet. Just last month Twitter reported that it was processing 50 million tweets a day. That represents 1.2 billion tweets per month and TechCrunch reported that January 2010 saw 75 million unique visitors to Twitter.

But who made the landmark 10 billionth tweet? I asked my friend @Kosso to check the Twitter API for me to find out. However, the tweet was made from a private account.

“One instance where I can say we should ignore our privacy policy: when big round numbers are involved,” proclaimed Twitter employee Doug Williams (@dougw) after the event.

And although we don’t know who made number 10 billion, congratulations will go to Brazilian Rafaela Marques (@lelamarques) on having number 9,999,999,999.

The Twitter team were excitedly watching the numbers tick over and tweeting up a storm to see if one of their own might be the one to score the 10 billionth. (Number 5 billion was made by @robinsloan, who now works at Twitter, as shown below.)

And then, when the moment came,

they celebrated (with a flurry of Macbooks).

The milestone was anticipated earlier today when TechCrunch ran a story highlighting the event and explained that GigaTweet‘s measurement was not entirely accurate. Even Twitter employee Ryan King (@rk) used tweet number 9,995,692,516 to remark:

But since the start, for those of us who’ve been around Twitter for a while, and those who’ve built businesses on and around the simplicity of 140 characters, it’s a time to cheer on the evolution and success of a service that has changed the way we communicate, changed lives and brought so many of us together.

[Companies must integrate customers behavior on social networks to their corporate website
to increase relevancy, word of mouth, and trust]

Jeremiah then lays out eight functions, from sharing to cross-publishing and social context, that Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter each have that can bring life back to your corporate website. The idea is that by engaging social networks you can connect with both your customers and prospects.

I completely agree that static websites offer little in the way of interaction and by integrating social networks into your site, either by pulling in or pushing out, you have more opportunities to connect to people. Social sharing and other components of the matrix that Jeremiah presented are key to connecting existing customers to prospects and influencing new business.

“While many have used community platforms to allow customers to connect to each other on branded domains, this strategy works for loyal customers and often may not reach prospects. “

This is where I see tremendous opportunity for companies with the right company culture and excellent customer service and I’ve asked Jeremiah to expand his matrix to include those community platforms.

Imagine that you have an active forum of involved brand champions, or a Ning, Google or Yahoo Group of customers who feel a sense of pride and ownership in your brand. And perhaps you use a customer service and feedback platform like Get Satisfaction to quickly resolve questions and requests. How could you leverage that positive customer relationship to reach prospects? By integrating them into your site in an open way and connecting them to social networks. In the comments of Jeremiah’s post, I said:

“Using these platforms to strengthen existing customer relations with an open window to a great company culture that supports its clientele, and the confidence to show it off, would be a persuasive way to win new prospects – no matter how they came to the corporate web site.”

According to Jeremiah, the goal of integrating social networks into corporate web sites is to “increase relevancy, word of mouth, and trust.” What better way to do that than to make it easy for your happy customers to tell their friends how great you are? Bringing together community platforms with social networks and incorporating them into your site could provide a very powerful way to spread the good word about your company and products.

But, for this to work, you’d better have excellent customer service. Because any less, and this exercise will backfire. This takes a company culture that supports the customer from the C-level right down the food chain to the people who have first line of contact, be it face-to-face, on the telephone or on the web.

Take, for example, the recent experience of Jim Long (@newmediajim), NBC network cameraman, Twitter early adopter and social media enthusiast. Jim has a substantial reach in his social networks, so when he encountered  problems with Sears customer service with the repair of his dryer, in frustration (like many) he turned to Twitter.

As is the case with many brands, Sears has a listening post on Twitter (@MySears) and a Social Engagement Manager (@scottfmurphy) who was helpful in trying to resolve the issue. However, it was the on-the-ground service component of this story that repeatedly failed to deliver on customer satisfaction.

In Jim’s post, he sums up his frustration with this culture split by saying,

“Once a customer service complaint has reached the Twitters, your customer service team has likely failed.  It’s the online equivalent of  ‘I will not leave this store and I will stand here shouting at the cash register until I speak to the manager!’”

He’s got a good point.

So, before you use social media for customer service, before you link social media to your corporate web site, and before you integrate your community platforms into an open window to your customers, take a long, hard look at the importance of customer service quality throughout your ranks. And then ask yourself, is your company culture nurturing or poisoning  your customers’ ability to sing your praises, not only on social networks, but in the world at large?

This morning, news spread of the murder of Montreal blogger Renée Wathelet (@endirectdesiles). A fixture in the community, Renée fell in love with Mexico’s Isla Mujeres and moved there last year March. Although, we spoke on Twitter a few times, I only met her once, when she was in town for a visit last February and* came to Twestival.

So many people here loved Renée and were close to her. Many of those same people may be attending PodCamp Montreal. And so, I questioned whether I should cancel my session out of respect to her grieving friends. But, after consideration, I’m going ahead with the session in honour of all that Renée has created and her own digital legacy.

So, if you are interested in the topic of Death and Digital Legacy, I encourage you to attend my session. It will be a round table discussion and participation is encouraged. I will not be making a formal presentation, but instead will share stories that illustrate different discussion points. Some of these may include:

• how do communities mourn online?
• what are the policies of online social sites for families to access loved ones’ accounts?
• do you need a digital trustee named in your will?
• what are some of the new services that have started to manage digital legacy?
• what are the hazards of dormant accounts, whether the user is deceased or not?

I hope to see you there.

Saturday, September 19, 2009
2:30 PM
DE3225
UQAM Design Centre
1440 rue Sanguinet
Montreal

*UPDATE 9/21/09: For more about Renée Wathelet, her friend and YulBiz founder Philippe Martin was interviewed about her on Montreal radio (in French) on 9/21. Listen here.

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Technically Women comprises a group of women from all walks of business. This blog presents our unique views on how technology is shifting our world. The women are business owners, marketers, evangelists and leaders. The idea for Technically Women stemmed from a “women and leadership” piece penned by Dennis Howlett, which brought several of these women together to share their unique views on the current state of business. We decided to keep the conversation going and bring in some additional voices.

The participating women are amazing and accomplished, and I’m humbled to be in their company:

Cathy Brooks (@CathyBrooks)
Laura Fitton (@Pistachio)
Maggie Fox (@MaggieFox)
Rachel Happe (@rhappe)
Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter)
Francine McKenna (@retheauditors)
Anne Kathrine Petterøe (@yojibee)
Marilyn Pratt (@MarilynPratt)
Susan Scrupski (@ITSinsider)

Here’s an excerpt from in my inaugural post entitled The Gender Card, which looks at my how I came to my approach toward the topic of  women in technology and business.

Let me state right from the start, I do not like playing the gender card. Sweeping generalizations about how men and women “are” make me bristle. I do not consciously frame myself in this world as a woman first. I am a person. I am unique. I happen to be female in gender. And in part, because of that, I often resist believing that there are any barriers to entry in positions or fields.

I encourage  you to explore the diverse viewpoints in Technically Women, offer up your feedback and, if you feel so inclined, follow @Tech_Women on Twitter to keep up to date.

Thanks.

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Twestival Montreal – With only a few weeks to  plan the event, I worked with a great volunteer team to raise more than $5,100 for  charity: water. Our target was $4,000; enough to build one well in Africa. Knowing that we’ve given people the gift of clean water, saving lives in the process and helping a community thrive, was worth all of the stress, my brief illness and serious lack of sleep.

The event wrap up has the full list of sponsors, volunteers and links to photos and video coverage. Thanks to everyone who  supported the event. You should be very proud of what you accomplished.

Collaboration – I’m a solo consultant, so I’m always looking for opportunities to collaborate with others on projects where I can put my skills to good use. I was fortunate to meet Mark Goren of Planting Seeds last year at a dinner in Montreal that I helped to arrange for Valeria Maltoni. Mark and I hit it off and have been collaborating on a few projects. I’m thrilled that we are working on a several new things to offer together in the coming year. Here’s one for team work!

2nd Social Media Marketing conference – I was invited to speak in Toronto about how brands can use Twitter. It was a small but lively group, where many were relatively new to Twitter and very few were tweeting on behalf of a brand.  I love speaking about Twitter and had fun presenting. I guess it showed.

(Thanks Colin!)

PodCamp Toronto – For my second time participating at PodCamp Toronto, I presented with Tracy Apps (@tapps) on video microblogging and communities. It was a blast! Tracy and I talked about the evolution of online communities and the different ways to participate in video.  Despite our faltering Internet connection, we managed to showcase a several services including Seesmic, Phreadz and 12seconds.tv, while giving mentions to Utterli, Tokbox and YouTube. We had great interaction and questions from the participants. You can download the Quicktime file of the stream or view Laurent Lasalle’s Qik of the session.

Congratulations to Sylvain Grand’Maison (who did TWO English presentations), Kim Valee, and the rest of the francophone contingent from Montreal who overcame language to make their mark on PodCamp Toronto. You did far more than most could do!

PodCamps are great for meeting friends that you don’t get to see very often or are meeting in the flesh for the first time. One of the highlights of the weekend for me was having dinner on Friday with Chris Brogan, Amber Nasland, Dave Fleet, Jeremy Wright, Dave Delaney, Merlene Paynter, Randy Matheson and Angela Misri. What a great mix of interesting and fun people that I can count as friends, new and old.

Skating Nut – Nothing could have capped off such a stellar month better than a visit by Laura Fitton (@Pistachio). Laura was on a mission to skate the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, and stayed at my home in Montreal on her way from Boston. We were up far too late catching up, but still managed to be happy and excited about our road trip the next morning.

Laura’s plans to skate the Rideau that day fell through when the Canal was closed due to poor ice conditions. Considering she’d driven 7.5 hours to be there and had the goal to skate the Canal for at least 5 years, did she fret about the timing? No way! Instead, she gamely accompanied my family to the Children’s Museum and called an impromptu Ottawa Tweet-up. Fortunately, the weather gods produced some very cold temperatures and the next day, Laura finally got her skate.

Seizing Opportunties – In retrospect, this action-packed February was about seizing opportunities and making the absolute best of things, despite obstacles. It was about taking a chance to get involved, making a difference, trying something new, working hard, sharing knowledge, meeting people face-to-face, collaborating and fostering friendship.

It was a blur.

It was wonderful.

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• 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s 1 in 6 of us.
• Dirty water causes 80% of all sickness and disease in the world and kills more people than ALL forms of violence, including war.
• 30% of all freshwater people use comes from underground lakes and aquifers. To access this water, people need wells. This costs money
• $20 donation = 20 years of clean, safe drinking water to a person in Africa (among other places)
• 100% of all money raised by charity:water towards building wells, providing access to safe, clean drinking water.

charity: water for Twestival from charity: water on Vimeo.

Using Twitter as the primary means of spreading the word, the movement has picked up tremendous support with over 175 cities around the world signing up to host a fundraising event. From Christchurch, NZ to Hololulu, HI, the event hits almost every time zone on the planet. Want to follow the action around the world? Watch the video stream. Want to drink in the excitement from the Twitterstream? Then check out Twistori. They’ve generously surrendered their entire site to Twestival.

Closer to home, Twestival Montreal is going to be a blast! DJ Luv and DJ Maus will be sharing music duties, radio personality Winston McQuade is our MC, and we’ll have a photobooth set up for you to take home a souveninr of a great night. We also have a raffle with the grand prize of a trip to Vancouver courtesy of Air Canada and Opus Hotels.

I’d like to personally thank our sponsors for helping us put on a great event with special thanks to Aquabrass, Opus Hotels, Air Canada, Molson and Aquaovo. And my sincerest thanks to the volunteer team who have worked so hard and with such passion to make Twestival Montreal a success. It’s been a pleasure working alongside you.

If you’ve got a Twestival happening in your city tonight, I encourage you to go. If you are in Montreal, we’d love to see you:

Location: Suco Lounge in the Opus Hotel
(2108 boul. Saint-Laurent, enter through the hotel on Sherbrooke)
Time: 18:00 to 23:00
Tickets: $10 in advance (until 4 pm today) or $15 at the door

Working from inspiration for a shared tech holiday party in Montreal, the Toronto technology, marketing and PR community used Twitter to build momentum for their landmark HoHoTO event.

From the first tweets on November 27th to the event on December 15th, Twitter was used to build consensus, assemble an organizing team, find sponsors, sell tickets, solicit donations and build buzz that helped the event exceed all expectations.

At the first meeting held on December 2nd, a small group agreed on a name (early name suggestions:  EggNogCamp, MistletoeCamp and SantaCamp, JingleCamp didn’t stand a chance against HoHoTO – T.O. being the abbreviation for Toronto, Ontario),  a non-profit group to support (The Daily Bread Food Bank was selected due to recent news about a 13% increase in demand), and a fundraising goal ($10,000). They had 13 days to make it happen.

The results were astounding:

More than 600 tickets were sold – a sell out in only 9 days. Using an incentive system, tickets started at $10, and as of December 9th, the price rose by $5 per day, pushing the event to sell out quickly. By December 10th, their news release announced that $12,000 had been raised.

Funds were also raised from a raffle, direct cash donations, p#hohotobooth, a CafePress store and the event venue The Mod Club agreed to sell drinks at cost, donating the mark-up to the food bank.

In the end, $25,000 was collected and over two tons of canned goods were brought to the event. There was so much food, the army was called in to pick it up the next day.

More than 60 corporate sponsors pitched in and over 100 prizes were donated.

An event for “geeks, phreaks, webheads, twitterfiends, techies, media, marketing, and PR types” wouldn’t be complete without a strong interactive component. So, giant screens displayed the Twitter stream of #hohoto tweets and party goers could make a DJ song request by tweeting #hohotodj.

On the big screen, video greetings were submitted from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone , Cluetrain Manifesto authors Dave Weinberger and Rick Levine, Boing Boing co-founder and Toronto native Cory Doctorow, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Whuffie Factor author Tara Hunt, Toronto Mayor David Miller and others. In fact, anyone could add their video beforehand to the HoHoTO YouTube Group and possibly see it show up on the big screen during the event.

And of course, there was a Flickr Group and the event was streamed live on Justin.tv.

Mark McKay gives us a great snap shot of the party and how Twitter played a central role:

Co-organizers Rob Hyndman gives a wrap-up of the event and Michael O’Connor Clarke sums his post-event afterglow.

If ever there was an example of how Twitter can work very quickly on a local level to raise funds, build community and have fun, this is it. Congratulations to the organizers and everyone who supported HoHoTO. Through your efforts you helped a lot people this season and that is the essence of community.

One thing I love about the Community Divas podcast is that they keep things brief. So have a listen to this podcast, which runs under twenty minutes. Thanks Eden and Connie for inviting me on the show!

After introducing the first viral video, Numa Numa, Dr. Wesch commented on the more than 58,000 copycat videos that have been uploaded to YouTube by saying:

I like to think of it as more than just a dance. It’s a celebration. It’s a celebration of new forms of empowerment, anybody with a web cam now has a stronger voice and presence. It’s a celebration of new forms of community and types of community that we’ve never really seen before; global connections transcending space and time. It’s a celebration of new and unimaginable possibility.

If you missed seeing an anthropological introduction to YouTube back at the end of June when Dr. Wesch addressed the Library of Congress, I urge you to watch it. And if you’ve seen it, watch it again – there is so much to absorb packed into this 55 minute presenation, it merits a second view. Plan to eat lunch at your desk, put your feet up, get comfy.

This should be required viewing for anyone with a web cam, community managers and those working in fields that are using social media to reach an audience. (Check out Dr. Wesch’s video from a year ago, The Machine is Us/ing Us, which examines web 2.0 in under 5 minutes.)

An anthropological introduction to YouTube is a tremendously well put together piece that questions the fundamental issues of self, identity and community when staring straight into a web cam.