online marketing

I just came from the first day of a two-day event by Acuity Forums in Calgary. I had an honor to present alongside with:

• Walter Schwabe, Founder / President / CEO, fusedlogic inc.
• Stephen D. Burns, Partner, Bennett Jones LLP
• Roger Kondrat, Director of Strategy, West17Media
• Jacob George, Manager Corporate Marketing & Communications, City of Calgary
• Rob Begg, Director Business Development, Radian6
• Doug Walker, Experienced Internet Strategist, pioneer in Canadian online marketing

Unfortunately I missed the first 3 speakers. I'm coming to the first half of the day tomorrow and will write an event in review post with more details.

My presentation on Social Business and internal social media tools was the last of the day. I also prepared a list of resources I used to prepare for this presentation - Social Business Resources. I hope you find it useful.

This week was definitely full of events, meetings and talks. I even missed a couple of interesting engagements. The "Google product innovation in Canada" event at Mount Royal University was one of the events I attended and it did stick with me.

The event took place at the Bissett School of Business on MRU's campus. It was a great good networking opportunity. The room was full at about 70 people capacity. As they say, "when Google talks, you listen". Yes, it was a promo event to get students excited about Google products and potentially interest them to seek careers at Google Waterloo. However, there were a few things that I found valuable in terms of organizational development and digital workplace.

• Google doesn't hire experts. It hires personalities. Be ambitious, creative and wanting to change the world... and you are pretty much in.
• Google Waterloo is a fun place of over 100 people. The office was originally opened up for mobile development purposes. Over time projects grew and now one of the key initiatives is Chrome OS.
• According to the two presenters (Alex Coman, Software Engineer and Steven Woods, Director at Waterloo) Google has no traditional hierarchy. The initiative is coming from bottom up, which makes it an engineer driven company.

The event was put together by Google, MRU and Alex Bruton, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MRU. Many big thanks to presenters and organizers. This was certainly a valuable event to attend.

This Tuesday Digital Alberta had one of its after-hours mixers. As always, Seven Restolounge was stylish, fresh snacks, networking and, of course, the discussion panel.

This time we talked about best practices in building successful teams in technology / digital start-up companies. A discussion panel (Jennifer Aubin of Techbent and Marc Wachmann of Grow Wireless) moderated by Kurtis Lesick of ACAD and a room of 20-25 people made for an intimate conversion about teams.

Here are some of my takeaways:

• It's more difficult to get a good team together than to motivate it, especially in Calgary.
• Very tricky to get senior developers on board as they are looking for life-work balance.
• It is possible to create committed remote teams of senior developers.
• Respect is crucial in keeping the talented individuals in a team.
• Team events (even just going for beers) really helps.
• How do you screen a great team member? 1) ask behavioral questions, 2) talk about things not related to work (hobbies, interests).
• Start-up teams are a certain breed. How to choose the right team members for a start-up? 1) make sure he / she is right as a person, ready to do many things, very adventurous
• Something that has circulated in discussions before the event was