Social experience

I agree, the words “social media” are being over used!

Yesterday I read “Is Social the new dirty word?” by John Moore out of Boston.  Moore’s post highlighted what I’ve been feeling for nearly a year or more but especially in the last 6-8 months.

I’m concerned with the dramatic “watering down” of the burgeoning industry that my team and I work in full-time.  So I thought I’d reference a point in time and then tell a bit of our story.

For example, I was walking to my truck while at nextMEDIA in Banff, Alberta last summer.  The timing was such that I happened to bump into Kris Krug (@kk) who was outside taking photographs of the beautiful scenery,(here we are).  We had an interesting chat, not only then but later on camera, as the fusedlogic team streamed live interviews from nextMEDIA and Kris was kind enough to stop by.  Kris is a unique character, a non-conformist, and I’ve learned a staunch evangelist for his community, his craft (photography) and the non-use of labels.  I know Kris well enough now from our online exchanges and phone calls to know that he reluctantly refers to himself as a “web strategist” but really, he’s a guy who likes to be a part of the social experience through is crazy skills as a photographer.  He’s also committed to and an integral part of the cool happenings around his community of Vancouver which often includes considerable charity work with the Union Gospel Mission and others.

Here’s the dilemma, not all of us can develop the nomadic persona or lifestyle of a Kris Krug, our clients wouldn’t understand it and it wouldn’t be authentic.  That’s in part, what makes Kris a unique human being and business person, he has real-world experience having started Bryght in 2004 and successfully selling the company in 2007 to Raincity Studios.  That aside, he’s just being himself.  I respect Kris for what he’s accomplished and I suspect countless others do as well.

Having said that, I’ve never asked him directly, but to Kris during that chance meeting at the Banff Springs Hotel I must have appeared to be that outsider guy, that “what gives you the right to be a social media strategist guy?”

Interestingly, Kris said something I’ll never forget after our interview was over.  I thanked him for taking the time to speak on camera and told him I really enjoyed the experience of meeting him.  Kris said, “no problem, you know, it’s interesting we’re all here to talk about social media and you guys are in the room doing it….that’s cool man.”

Here are the “yummy chunks…”

November 2004

This is the night my Web 2.0 journey began. I watched CNN as they pulled commentary off of political blogs for the broadcast.  I found this amazing and started researching the blogosphere.

Many haven’t heard the fusedlogic story so I’m going to go over the last year or so rather than go over every blog post starting in September 2005 from my blogspot blog or since our incorporation in March of 2000.  (Secretly, I’ve been doing some thinking about where fusedlogic has come from and where we’re going, since this coming March will be our 10th anniversary).

Interestingly, I blogged about Twitter in April of 2007 but didn’t join until 2008.

In 2008 we continued to deliver social media work for several small businesses including Edmontonians Magazine, also notable was our project with the Public Affairs Bureau – Government of Alberta.

Crossing into 2009, we worked for ATB Financial, MacEwan School of Business, EEDC, Fringe Theatre Adventures – Industry Canada’s Marquee Tourism Program and we broke all sorts of ground on that project, multiple projects for NorQuest College which are still in play and again a number of small businesses mingled in.  Including our first Pay-Per-View live streaming sporting event with Aggression MMA. (our second PPV event will be tomorrow and it’ll be even bigger). We’re proud to say that our footage from the last event (as with our work tomorrow) will be broadcast on the FIGHT network, as well as, HDNet.

Also in 2009, we took on the digital marketing for Pik’s Revenge, an ambitious indie iPhone game developed by Edmonton’s Fluik Entertainment Ltd. Starting with zero Google search results for “Piks Revenge,” we now have nearly 1500 results and it will continue to grow as we’re expecting a big review from a major US property later this month.  The game was featured on the Apple app store which is not an every day occurrence.  Also, we’re doing something different with Pik as we build out the character a bit in real-life, expect more fun and dare I say “cheesy by design” things on that front soon.

Further, I started writing my book on Government 2.0 in 2009 entitled Escape Velocity, which is due out this spring provided I live up to the expectations of my editor.

In January 2010, we finally launched our iPhone transit application Route 411 and in less than 2 weeks we’ll be posting an update that will dramatically change the user-experience in Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto.  All I’m willing to say at this moment is that we’ve integrated York transit data with Toronto and we hope folks out there will appreciate that integration because it wasn’t easy to pull off that’s for sure.

Also, we’re celebrating a big week as we’ve closed a few new deals including a project with Health Canada and Alberta’s Centre for Child, Family and Community Research.  There’s much more to say about February and March but I’ll leave it there for now.

My point with all of this is simple, credibility in this game (as with all business and life) is paramount.  If Kris had asked for background in Banff I would have at least been able to provide names and brands as above where we have taken projects from concept to metrics. Granted, the brands are not global brands like Coke or Virgin, but to us and our clients, they are successful examples of digital planning and deployment experiences and it’s a story we’re very proud of and not even close to finishing.

Edmonton uses social media to express Fringe pride…

At fusedlogic we’re very fortunate (not to mention proud) of the opportunity to implement social media along side the wonderful folks at Fringe Theatre Adventures (FTA) here in Edmonton, Alberta.  This year’s Edmonton International Fringe Festival has a fantastic line-up of over 150 shows.  Our purpose on this project is to show the rest of the world what North America’s largest fringe festival has to offer and by extension what the Greater Edmonton Region has to offer as well.

We’ve taken a crowd-sourcing approach to this exciting social media project.  In part, we’re inviting fringe enthusiasts from around the world to blog about their particular fringe experience.  The thought is, together we can express our love for the theatre, arts, food and of course beer regardless of location around the world.  We’re encouraging everyone to blog about their story at ShowYouOurBlog.com and together we can increase awareness for our respective cities, festivals, acts, businesses and lives.

This isn’t about us, it’s about you.  We’re just working hard to support you by building out the social media assets in the hope that you take advantage and enjoy.  Expressing your civic and fringe pride is as easy as sharing a photo, video, blog post or tweet. Here’s my ShowYouOurBlog.com blog post about yesterday’s Edmonton International Fringe Festival VIP party where I also share many of the ways you can participate.

And here is a video clip of an interview with City of Edmonton Councilor Don Iveson…