Fun Free Gift

If 20 people participate and sign-up as per the instructions below, starting now and ending at 5pm MT today, then all 20 people qualify and will get a FREE (5) minute video produced by fusedlogicTV.

1.) Email info@fusedlogic.com and let us know you want your free (5) minute show, ask questions about the process in the email and we’ll be happy to answer them. 

2.) Schedule the show with us, and produce the show in our studio or via Skype

3.) Promote your show to the world online or just to your family.  

Small Print

The show is yours when it’s done, we’ll supply you with a digital file so you can upload it where you like.  We don’t do gambling or pornography focused shows or anything that promotes illegal acts or subject matter.  We reserve the right to refuse service. You agree to allow us to include our branding, logos and show production credits.  We will post your video to the internet if you would like.  

This means that through this special COSSD video service as provided by fusedlogicTV, customers can now generate a unique looking video right from their office and desk using Skype with excellent production value.  This service immediately increases the effectiveness of businesses in the Alberta energy sector once they realize, and understand how rapidly they can create high production value videos in order to increase brand awareness online.

Alberta energy sector businesses can use this service for direct and immediate communications with investors, sales and marketing, employee recruitment and labour relations, crisis communications and a lot more.

We’re excited at what this new MOU and business relationship with JuneWarren-Nickle’s Energy Group represents in terms of new services.  JWN customers are going to enjoy having access to cutting-edge digital video production, and how it will help them communicate to their global customer base in new ways.  

Have a look at a couple of COSSD focused examples of this new video production service now available to all COSSD customers.

The first video demonstrates the possibilities with an interview style, on-camera host and virtual set.

In this next video, Rob Pentney, Director of Sales for JWN demonstrates how a customer using Skype at their desk can host their very own video segment.

Contact the team at JuneWarren-Nickle’s COSSD to book your video production project.

I’ve been thinking about this today as I listen and watch Jeff Pulver’s 140 Conference in New York or #140confNYC.  However, “humanization” has been on my mind for a while now.  

Do people really want to peer behind the curtains here at fusedlogic?  I know our competitors do, but what about clients?  I know they do too.  How about our audience on fusedlogicTV?  Yes, people love to go behind the scenes…  

Does exposing our corporate culture and soul help our brand?  I think it does but what’s more important is do you?  Why is this important to consider?  Well, because we ARE human.  We do business with other humans, our team is human, our friends, fans, followers….well you get the point.  

I’ve also learned that so many brands resist this openness because of a fear of losing credibility but maybe more importantly their perceived control.  I’ve seen our brand grow in general awareness from our work online and offline, our largest gains are when we show our true selves.    

Who is fusedlogic?

fusedlogic, loves to give back to the community.  We love to innovate.  We work very hard for our clients.  We’re honourable, loyal and love to laugh.  Although sometimes, we need to spend more time socializing than staying in the studio.  That’s probably my fault.  I’m introverted by nature.  You might find that odd seeing as I love to speak publicly.  I’ve probably been more introverted these past few months than at any other time in my life.  Now because the fusedlogic brand is so in tune with who I am as the owner that has had an effect.  

How would you describe us?  What has been your experience with us online or else where?  

Community

What does a “humanized brand” mean to you?  To your company, your customers, your friends?  The social web experience is so much more rich when people are genuine.  Community managers who are good at what they do are just every day people who care, and know how get customers or audience members what they need.  They operate in both the social web, and also offline at networking events and they’re often the most human element to your brand online.   They study human behaviour so that they can anticipate needs and be ready to respond.  

To understand this concept better I recommend this valuable post from Charlene Li of Altimeter Group on Socialgraphics. 

Discuss

We have meetings at work about who we are, and who we want to be, not every day but we do.  This is important in a culture where we’re innovating every day, trying to learn something new and experimenting constantly.  Our last major shift was the launch of fusedlogicTV almost a year ago now.  

What about your team?  Do you truly understand internally what you’re all about?  How do you approach this process?  Is it discussed openly or behind closed doors?  

The more human and real you are, the more return on your social media investment.  That’s been our experience anyway. 

The name of the Twitter chat was called #leadfromwithin which was first started by its originator, motivational speaker Lolly Daskal.  I was fascinated and not sure what to expect from this particular chat.  I wasn’t disappointed.  If you’re looking for a philosophical, motivational, inspirational and emotional out pouring of thought, then #leadfromwithin is something you should search on Twitter often and conversation you should join.

My experience was disruptive – in a good way.  So often in business and in life you get caught in the “grind”. This was an hour of group reflection and streaming consciousness.  Seriously!  It was. You may be reading this and think that’s ridiculous and be moving on.  That’s perfectly fine but you’d then be missing the best part.

RoR – in this case I define, not as Return on Relationship as many might think.  In the context of this chat, I only really knew one person, still a great return for sure.  Having said that, my definition in this case is Return on Reflection.  There were so many great tweets that I simply couldn’t include them all in this post.  However, one “really” resonated beyond all the others.

“You are not your circumstances”  - Dr. Steven Eisenberg

It’s been no secret that the last several months have been very difficult for me personally, none of which I’ll highlight here again.  However, the circumstances I have been in have been pretty overwhelming.  This one statement freed me from a ton of personal feelings that I know was holding me back from being myself.  Changing my thought patterns in this instance brought on by this one tweet, and overall twitter chat experience has brought prosperity in the form of new deals this week.  My return on investment of that one hour on twitter will go far beyond these new deals this week.  Far beyond…  

How can you measure the change within a human spirit?  

Thank-goodness I was open to suggestion, none of this would have happened had I’d been closed minded.  Thank-you to all of the contributors of the #leadfromwithin twitter chat tribe.  

Also, a very special thanks to my friend Josepf Haslam for doing what you do.  

Finally, a special heartfelt thank-you to a woman in New York, whom I’ve never met in person, and only to date have had minimal but meaningful exchanges on Twitter with- Lolly Daskal.  A human being with a boundless spirit of inspiration – thank-you.

Simple, you can add live streaming content to your website which will provide a unique content advantage for you at no upfront cost.

Also, if you’d like to create your own content on fusedlogicTV, we can help you with that too.  Just contact us: info[at]fusedlogic.com or 780-640-9339

If you want to embed the live stream simply copy and paste the code below into the HTML for a page or post for your site:

The first question I have is, are you invested in this process or are you absent?  You must invest, and below is a series of ways you’ll need to expend effort, and in some cases budget in order to have any possibility of driving new sales for your business via social media.

For us at fusedlogic, it’s a different story than those really big household brands I mentioned.  We’re not about consumer goods or point of sale items.  The sale of our social media related services primarily happens based on relationships, referrals, awareness too and great customer service.  If we mailed you a flyer stating that fusedlogic is your answer for social media strategies, would we get any business from you?  Maybe, but doubtful since we’re not business to consumer.  Having said that, our client Terry Paranych has done a show on fusedlogicTV and spoke about his “flyer program which nets him huge business results.  Terry understands the need for an integrated unique approach to marketing to consumers.  He understands the value of building relationships in numerous ways, added to things like direct flyer marketing (not really about relationships) is the use of social media – all about relationships and communication.

Social media allows for you to reach out directly to the fusedlogic team, to our clients, and to potentially millions of people in a meaningful way.

Here’s how properly increasing your sphere of influence can increase your sales regardless of what industry you’re in.

1.) Search Engine Optimization – your content if properly positioned will be found by new prospective clients, giving you a shot to start a sales discussion.

2.) Reputation Management – we may have met at a business luncheon, or other networking event, social media allows us to maintain our discussion inbetween face-to-face meetings.  Keeping in touch allows for acquaintances to turn into friends and advocates.  Big difference.  When the time is right, this fact alone will lead to business opportunity.  Chris Brogan’s book Trust Agents speaks in many ways about being that trusted source.  Good book, you should download it.

3.) Realtime Customer Service – rather than wait for hours on a phone line, many companies can improve customer service through options like Twitter.  A great customer service experience here and it’s passed on to multiple networks, screw it up and the same result is true.

4.) Targeting Trends – things happen in a flash in social media, and if you blink you could miss real opportunity.  Being timely and relevant is often critical.  Many people parachute in to Twitter once a day for 2 minutes to push out a tweet and then leave and wonder why their phone isn’t ringing off the hook.

5.) Not a Silver Bullet – sales comes from credibility, value, trust, awareness, rapport, relevancy, convenience and time investment among other things.  Especially, if you’re relatively unknown.  If you’re Google, well that’s different.  Using social media can provide you an opportunity to do all of this work more efficiently, as long as, you commit to it and have a plan.  Be patient!

6.) Content Creation – you know why Terry Paranych will continue to dominate in Real Estate awareness online in his markets?  Even more so since he became our live streaming video client?  Increased content creation relevant to his target audiences.  He’s literally out-gunning his competition.  Add to that his commitment, hard work, listening to customer feedback, learning and of course a budget and you’ve got a recipe for a win.  The Real Estate market in Edmonton was unprepared for Terry to take this next step, he’s changed the game again!  There is no other agent, Re/Max or otherwise certainly in Alberta and possibly beyond with their own series of live weekly streamed shows.  When a consumer goes to do research on the Terry Paranych Team Re/Max Elite, they’ll quickly realize that his marketing plan is more advanced than the others for lots of reasons but especially his live shows.  Ultimately that will translate into new business.  What scares me in a good way is if Terry starts to promote his shows in other areas of his marketing efforts…

7.) Routine – this doesn’t mean “automation” so much as working a plan of what works.  I’m guilty as the next person for not always doing this, as life gets in the way sometimes.  That said, when I can correct my course and get back on track, we see results.  What do I mean by this?  Simple, there are lots of examples of suggested daily routines and Chris Brogan has put out some dandy examples.

Be human not a robot!  Engage and support one another.  Respect others, and for goodness sake, do what you say you’ll do.  That is so rare, people will respect you for that alone.  All of this is definitely hard work, but worth it in the end.

Despite the bad res on the above instagram and the expected long wait time to get the badge all went really smoothly.  Now this was in no small part due to meeting my new found Austin friends.  First up is @JoeyMcGirr, who I first shared a chat with on Twitter prior to heading south.  We agreed to touch base once I got on the ground and set-up a coffee meeting this morning before standing in line for our sxswi badges.  As there was no conference shuttle running today, I was on my own for transpo and Joey immediately volunteered to come pick me up.  Such a cool thing to do, so obviously I had to buy coffee at the very least.  The line-up was great I was able to meet @abbisiler from Arkansas and @laughlinjames from Austin.  Coincidently, James told me about his new start-up mycod.es which launched into public beta yesterday.  The company will allow QR code creators to “redirect” or repurpose existing codes instead of having to generate new ones all the time.

Just before leaving for the ATX Start-up Crawl

While sitting at the Chevy Volt power up centre, I introduced myself to Orian Marx, the head of a new start-up called Siftee out of NYC.  He asked me not to elaborate on what he was doing but did share a private beta experience with me and let me say, I love his Twitter related app.  After that fascinating chat it was time for some @srcasm or Jesse Middleton, another NYC native who’s a part of another supercool start-up called GetMinders.com. GetMinders will help everyone remember their meds and medical needs, this is really well positioned as our population grows older and more tech savvy.  He was actually down at sxswi as part of #hashable’s contingent.  I was quickly introduced to many hashable users including the CEO Mike Yavonditte.  This is what your profile looks like on hashable.  I would describe this as a person to person connection engine, and the top connector is the man in the hat speaking with Mike in the image above.  Josepf Haslam, a very friendly guy, who helped organize a group of us for the ATX Start-up Crawl.

First up was 3-D Porch and moodfish.com, stereowagon.com all working to carve their piece of the net up.

It was nice to also touch base with Michele Price, but you may know her as @prosperitygal on Twitter.  We had a nice chat but as I was checking out the first location on the crawl, she and some others stopped for a bite to eat, we’ve agreed to touch base again later this week.

While on the crawl shuttle, the girl to the left in the picture was taking a picture with her friend, and Amber Osborne (a.k.a. @missdestructo) photobombed these folks.  She’s also a game piece in a local meet-meme.com scanvenger hunt and the photobomb is listed as her superpower.  Indeed!  I’ve set a goal to try to photobomb her during the conference if the opportunity presents itself.  We’ll have to see, she’s a cagey veteran at this…

This is a very large bird’s nest meeting room at Smiley Media, an ad network in the Omni center here in Austin.  Great offices, notice all the smiley stress balls on the floor, they were everywhere.

I had a short stop at Mutual Mobile who are some custom app developers with Google, Audi and others as clients, and then it was off to Gowalla HQ.

I wasn’t able to speak with CEO Josh Williams about our missed chance to have him on my radio show as he was busy with other folks but it was fun to see the offices and meet some of the folks.

My thanks to all the companies who put on a great party during the ATX Start-up Crawl here at South by Southwest Interactive.  That was a terrific first day on the ground here in Austin.

The official day one of the conference and here’s my vantage point at the moment.

So far I’ve met 22 people on my quest to get as close to 200 as I can.  Sorry if I missed you in this post, but I’ll usually really good at following up after a conference.  So if you’re interested in having a conversation or meeting here at sxswi this is me – @fusedlogic. Reach out on twitter…have any great stories or blogs to share about your experience here, I’d love to seem them, leave a comment and a link…

fusedlogic would like to invite you to our Holiday Open House on: December 10th, 2010. We’d love for you to drop by to catch up with us and enjoy some awesome tasty Christmas drinks, coffee, and treats.

We are also proud to announce the launch of MICHAEL KRYTON LIVE, with host Michael Kryton, a new live show on fusedlogicTV debuting December 10, 2010. Come down between 3pm – 6pm to be a part of this livestreaming video experience on fusedlogicTV.

If you’re unable to make it out, we’d still love to have you tune in to MICHAEL KRYTON LIVE from our website at http://fusedlogic.tv

Please RSVP by leaving a comment and join us at #213, 65 Chippewa Road, Sherwood Park, for a little Christmas “social” cheer and good times between 12 noon and 7:00pm.

Please reply by end of day December 8, 2010 to – tracy [at] fusedlogic.com

We’re looking forward to see you!

Back in 2004, I was intrigued by the “blogosphere,” not a blogger myself at the time I wanted to learn more.  In 2005, I felt I had something to share via a blog, and thus, fusedlogic.blogspot.com was started.  Struggling with finding my blogging voice, and not being a natural writer, I stretched and pushed myself to get better.  Along the way I met other bloggers online, such as Hugh MacLeod, owner of the unique “gapingvoid” blog.  We’ve had exchanges in the past and he was the first to introduce me to Twitter in a manner of speaking.  That aside, Hugh is often rude and abrasive in his approach and that’s exactly how he and his audience like it.  He’s also quite ingenious in the way he’s built his business model – living on his own terms, and being true to who he is, regardless of criticism.  I find these types of stories fascinating, especially those that centre around how daily struggles of business passion turn into business success.  The blogosphere is filled with these stories…your stories have been my personal inspiration over the years to learn more, experiment more, and deploy within the social web on our behalf, and that of our clients. Your stories have formed the foundation for our stories.  We listen, learn and create our own solutions based on our interpretation and input from the outside world, in that way, I think we’re all connected.  It’s this connectedness that drives the social web in many ways, and it’s that connectedness that drives our company.  Everyday we’re striving to be better, everyday we look to perfect our sole purpose for being – social web engagement.

We stand for taking on challenges, we stand for “thinking digital first,” we stand for the best customer service we can possibly provide, we stand for exceeding expectations, we stand for high quality.  We stand for honor and fairness and respect.  We stand for educating ourselves and those around us, we stand for having a plan and for having flexibility in that plan, we stand for change.  We stand for being leaders in our own way.  We understand there’s risk in business, we stand for powering through that risk with knowledge, we stand for overcoming fear.  We stand for “fail forward fast, we stand for learning from our failures.  We stand for all night thinking on a client problem, we stand for “where there’s a will there’s a way.”  We stand for our community, we stand for giving back and for sacrifice, we stand for you and for our clients, we stand for success.

Often it’s clear that you’re not sharing your stories with us here on our blog, rather you’re simply observing us and that’s ok too.  I’d like to inspire you to share what you and your organization stand for, here, or on your blog, on Twitter, wherever it suits you.  Knowing why you do what you do, and what you stand for is important.  We’d really like to hear your story.

We do this work because it inspires us and yet we were passionate before we started.  We do this work because it’s focused in learning about people, communication, speed, collaboration and yes technology too.  We’re a part of a special and ever growing tribe.  A digital tribe, a social tribe, a business tribe, an inspirational and passionate tribe, and we love it.

Social Media is “too-risky”

During this snap-shot in time, I’ve been told more than once that social media was deemed to be “too-risky,” with a public servant stating over a great lunch – “I know you’re right but that’ll never happen where I work.”  Although the support for that stance is eroding as time passes and solid case-studies in government arise.  Or as one public servant stated to me, as the “old people with canes in control retire,” – not my words…

I’ve witnessed people from government agencies in one instance talk publicly about open government as a necessity, and in a shocking bit of irony, pullback right in front of my eyes from a positive opportunity to promote an already approved message, suggesting it would be “too-risky.”

I’ve listened to and witnessed an organization with multiple billions in assets be stretched so thin they couldn’t contemplate the identified large deficit in their digital communications and the impact it is having on their overall business success.

I was told a variation of an all too familiar story.  One elected official reciting work colleague comments that “they didn’t need to learn anything about social media because their staff handled that.”

The Art of Honesty

I’ve been in sessions and witnessed images hand-drawn by public servants that depict they’re present situation in terms of the use of social media was akin to being in hand-cuffs and in jail.  A further comparison was made between a “horse-drawn wagon” reality as opposed to the required “jet” depicting the level of sophistication in approach, and a top-heavy organization with a major barrier wall between leaders and staff just to name a few.

I’ve been present for exciting announcements of new Open Government projects.  Witnessed a provincial government look to take it’s first few steps towards convincing the internal powers that be social media is something to be embraced, while members within another state confidently they’re pretty much leading the way.  To which I shudder internally about, especially when I compare that statement to what I’ve learned from my time speaking with CTO’s and CIO’s from cities and jurisdictions in the US and other parts of Canada.

Zombies! Really?

I’ve been shown How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, which when translated was really a fun representation about how to manage or mitigate potentially negative outcomes related to citizen engagements.  Finally, who can forget my experiences with Microsoft this week? The level of oddity, frustration, arrogance, pure excitement for change, creativity, honesty and innovative ideas while sitting in sharing circles can be summed up as very rich opportunities to learn.  And will be added to fusedlogic’s now 10 year history as of yesterday.

Though someone may have deployed one or more social channels, it certainly doesn’t ensure engagement, even competence.  We’ve got people adding “social something” to their list of unrelated or fringe services.  This was highlighted during a moment of clarity when an employee from a very recognizable organization admitted that despite winning some sort of an award, the reality was she was really disappointed at this organization’s use and internal grasp of social media.  Stating, “we really don’t have a clue.”

The Blind Side

A repetitive point, was that the limiting factor and barrier to real progress within government often lies with the decision-makers.  Who are at risk.  Why?  Many are not directly participating within the social web and yet have approval powers over the use of social technologies within a company, government or department.  I’ve witnessed frustration and fear on the faces of public servants, as well as, on the faces of elected officials much more than joy in this respect.  That despite some spouting confidence.

Finally, in two separate instances over the last 14 or so days, I had the opportunity to talk with people from what we’ll call “two communications groups.” In both instances, there was definite over-confidence. Both of these groups, were in government.  The number one most important point that I can pass on from these conversations is the following.  I believe their confidence, indeed their over-confidence will definitely be their undoing.  Unfortunately, the next PR disaster is always just around the corner and can come from anywhere.  The scary part in this instance is not really the impending firestorm, but that these departments as represented by these few people seem to feel they’re ready.  The level of negative complacency emanating from one public servant related to her “I know it all” attitude caused a shift in energy in many others around her.  Apparently she felt justified because her government has deployed a spattering of social channels and it seemed to me that she was ready to stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier and claim victory.  Which in this case is an appropriate analogy.

After chatting and more importantly listening, major deficits were identified or confirmed.  I probed looking for knowledge of how to deal with certain issues, responses included examples that had little relevance or revealed issues within the hierarchy.  The trap?  That being generally aware social technologies exist seems to provide them comfort and a false sense of security in their ability to operate effectively in the space.  This is the same trend among those who are attempting to position themselves as a resource in the private sector.

What am I really attempting to say?

Over-confident communications personnel PLUS decision-makers (Deputy Ministers, Assistant Deputy Ministers for example) who lack deep understanding of social ecosystems, technologies and Open Government trends EQUALS future headlines of disaster for that government.  The very same can be said for the enterprise equivalent.

I am thankful for these experiences and for the last 10 years.  fusedlogic will continue to guard against over-confidence, while embracing every chance to learn and innovate on behalf of our terrific clients, I hope you will too.

Thanks to all the organizations who participated:

Service Canada
Alberta Agriculture & Rural Dev.
Alberta Environment
Alberta Energy/information Tech.
Town of High River, AB
Metrolinx Ulistic Inc.
Royal Alberta Museum
Alberta Education
Red Deer County, Alberta
City of Red Deer, Alberta
Alberta Geological Society
National Energy Board
Edmonton International Airport
APEGGA
Govt. of the Northwest Territories
Town of High River, AB
AB School Empl. Benefit Plan
Strathcona County, AB
Alberta Utilities Commission
Alberta Education
Government of Alberta Office of the Auditor General
City of Fort Saskatchewan
WMS Communications
City of Kelowna, BC

This Edmonton social media project is designed to generate awareness.

Awareness for Edmonton and our Fringe festival in other parts of the world.  We’re doing a number of things to accomplish this goal, one such activity is the live streaming video.  Tonight we finished broadcasting our 3rd Fringe related show.  First was the Edmonton Fringe VIP reception, second was last night’s live webcast of a show out of Seoul, South Korea – Choon-Hyang: True Love.  Tonight the excitement continued as we worked with actor Eric Davis from New York City who plays the entertaining and engaging Red Bastard, once again watch for these clips to be uploaded.

Broadcasting a live theatre act is a unique experience for all sorts of reasons.

You’re not really sure of the challenges associated with the venue until you get there and assess the situation, which in this case, has to be done in-between productions and with next to no time before going live.  Tonight we were really packed into Venue #3 or ACACIA Hall for example.  Heat was a problem and caused a brief shut down right at the beginning of our live broadcast, fortunately not much longer than a 5 minute outage was experienced as we switched computers.  Not something that’s ever happened to us before but once again going live on-location means anything can happen.  Thankfully we have an experienced crew.

Other things that we have to address on the fly are the nuances with the show itself, doing one off broadcasts means we rarely have any prep time.  So for example, we have little to no idea where to position the camera in anticipation of the next shot, that unpredictability can be troublesome, dark venues, no space, lighting apparatus in the way, you name it.  In order to do this well the fusedlogic team just needs to be really good at their craft.

With that in mind, I’m proud of our team, they’ve done a tremendous job of dealing with these little details and I believe with the exception of the one unexpected heat related shut-down which could have been far worse, everyone and everything has performed really well.  Certainly, this social media work has been great for Edmonton’s Fringe festival, giving it the recognition it deserves as a leader in many ways and no I’m not just saying that because they’re our client or because I live in the region.  If you like the fact that Edmonton is known for great festivals and you attend the Fringe, then this benefits you.  If you’ve participated directly in these social media efforts in some way then it has hopefully enriched your Fringe experience this year.  If not, I’d like to hear about it so that we can make it better.  Post a comment, send us an email or a DM, let the Fringe know directly if that’s better.  We are constantly looking to learn and gain experience, we never stop looking to innovate.

By the way, I simply cannot bear it any longer, I’ve got to let the cat peak its head out of the bag.  Just for fun and because we have absolutely nothing else to do (dripping with sarcasm), we’re going to be launching an iPhone application “very” soon, as well as, a Twitter app.  This will be under our custom application division fusedlogic Labs.  Just thought I’d throw that out there…

If our challenge helps one more person, child, family eat- it was WELL WORTH the effort.

Many may have thought that we forgot about this charitable social media project, the Facebook group and flickr groups have seemingly been ignored and it’s all over before it really got started…WRONG!  Our work has been to inspire and organize and then inspire and organize some more. Starting with keeping Edmonton’s Food Bank in the loop, which has led to a discussion at the provincial level with the Alberta Food Bank Network Association, we hope to involve the national and international organizations shortly.

Achieving a “happy mind.”

The fragmented photo group approach wasn’t going to work.  So we found some great and very giving people for the construction of a centralized website to house all the photos.  This is being donated by Victor Rubba and his Crazed Coders of Edmonton.  Victor assures us that the site which is to be located at www.happymind.ca will be fully operational on August 15th, 2009.  We chose “happymind” by the way because it represents two things:  One, the state of mind after donating.  Two, D-DAY or donation day for this challenge will be in support of and coordination with the central message from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who is scheduled to speak in Calgary, Alberta on October 1st, 2009.

We want to get his attention by scheduling this on September 30th, 2009.

SIDEBAR:  I was invited to meet with and speak to the University of Calgary steering committee on the topic of social media at one of their meetings this summer.  This great group of people responsible for inviting the Dalai Lama to speak inspired me to align this challenge with their efforts around actNOW and what we’re doing perfectly supports the message from the Dalai Lama of achieving a “happy mind.”

Trying to collect 1 million photographs representing 1 million donations from people around the world predominantly via social media is a daunting task and one I know we’re all up for.  There have been many social media initiatives for the purposes of charity that have done very well in the past.  Twestival comes to mind, I attended the Edmonton event and that model is brilliant and we’d love to inspire a similar effect in cities around the world.  The 12 for 12K gang continues to do great work each and every day as well.  The real challenge here is to get folks not only to donate food but then take a picture and upload it.  We hope you’ll agree, that in this day and age of uber connected citizens, donating a picture is not too much to ask in order to achieve a “happymind.”

Our plan remains simple.

Go out to the universe and ask for your help.  To support you, we’re working through Rotary International and still need to reach higher within that organization.  Anyone know John Kenny President of Rotary International?  By the way, Rotary has 1.2 million members and great communication channels within their organization, Rotarians are very special people and their help would be spectacular.  We’re also approaching other organizations with considerable size such as the Lutheran Church of Canada and Edmonton’s World Trade Centre organization.  We’ve had numerous discussions with Share Our Strength on their ability to help promote and support this initiative.  They have agreed to promote this to their 40 thousand newsletter subscribers and we are very grateful for that.  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if President Obama, Prime Minister Harper made a donation and posted a twitpic?  They both have twitter accounts, so does Premier Stelmach for that matter.  What about other world leaders?  How about the United Nations?  There are people out there with connections to get folks like this involved.  Please reach out and touch them…

Does anyone know somebody at Feeding America or having anything to do with the Pound for Pound Challenge?  Please contact me at walter[at]fusedlogic.com your help is greatly appreciated.

What about brands?  How can your corporation benefit?  Simple, own this event, put your brand behind it, your marketing message of inspiration.  We want to share this experience with you, it’s about feeding the hungry for us and we know we cannot do it alone.

How can you help?

1.) Donate, take a picture and upload it to www.happymind.ca once it goes live or the facebook, flickr groups already in place today.

2.) Inspire everyone in your personal network to donate food and a picture at work, home, friends and family and the world at large via all means possible on or before September 30th, 2009.

3.) Be creative, persistent and inspirational in your communications regarding this world changing challenge, we won’t stop after September 30th and we must surpass the 1 million photos.  Hold tweetup food drives in your city on September 30th and post the pictures.  Write a song, make a video to inspire others and post it on Youtube, (our channel).

4.) Be an Ambassador!  Get your local organizations like the food bank, Second Harvest, Rotary Club, chamber of commerce, church, mass media, politicians, schools etc involved.  Send them the link to this blog post or others that explain the goal and what to do.

5.) Use Social Media: On Twitter (@fusedlogic) please use the hashtag #happymind, on your blogs please consider posting a “happymind” badge.  Spread the word through Facebook, with well over 200 million people, we can do it folks, take minute to inspire others.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please tag your photo with “HAPPYMIND.”

The debate between closing and maintaining the Edmonton City Centre Airport (YXD) has heated up as of late.  With City Councilors set to make a decision on July 8, opinion is still widely divided between the two view points.

With that in mind, fusedlogic will be hosting the “Great Airport Debate” at our studio in Sherwood Park.  We currently have Mack Male (creator of notmyairport.ca) and Dave MacLean (creator of saveourairport.ca) lined up to continue a discussion they began last week, but were unable to continue due to time restraints.  Well, we don’t have any of those here.  As well, we may be adding a few more guests to sit on the discussion panel – we’ll update this post as soon as any are confirmed.

Tune in to fusedlogic.tv at 7:00 pm MST this Monday.  There will be a chat room set up to allow viewers to engage in their own discussion and be involved with the main show.

We look forward to seeing you there!

There was some online discussion about the city’s choice to release the information in .pdf form instead of the more accessible .csv format.  While .pdf is probably more than sufficient enough for most people, check out links to the .csv versions below.

The one thing that the .pdf versions lacked were any pretty graphs.  As an accountant, a pretty graph is about the only way I can express my deep-rooted love for spreadsheets, and as such, have included some for you to enjoy below.

First up, we have a breakdown of the percentage of population by age and by year.  Note that these numbers become significantly altered when we include those who did not report their age, as 2008 saw a disproportionate number of people choose to remain ageless.
That disclaimer aside, it’s interesting to see age groups shift through the demographic spectrum.

Next up is a breakdown of population by Ward.  As you can see, Ward 5 is the largest – tho not by much.

Here’s a look at the population in each Ward broken up by Gender.  As you can see, in all but two wards, the men outnumber the women! I wouldn’t have guessed.

Lastly, I thought it would be interesting to look at how each Ward is broken up between people who own their home and those who are renting.

Thanks for stopping by. And props to the great people at the City of Edmonton for putting this information together.  It’s amazing to see how our great city has grown.

.CSV files:

Ward1 Ward2 Ward3 Ward4 Ward5 Ward6

Map of the Wards in Edmonton

Regarding the redesign of fusedlogic.com, we’d love to hear your comments, suggestions and ideas to ensure we have a great site.

Think the logo should be relocated like was suggested by @ivansf   

@ivansf @eadnams grats. You should center the logo #fusedlogic 

Let us know.  That’s not a bad idea actually Ivan, thanks, have the entire logo centered would probably look better.  What about sections or content you think is missing?  Let us know.  This also includes the type of blog content that is important to you.  Essentially, we’d love to hear from you on all topics and please include your concerns as well.

Finally, you’ll notice that we’re working on changing how we describe ourselves too.  Soon gone will be the word “strategists” from our midst.  Why you ask? Simple, ultimately we’ve always been about “engagement” and we intend to continue to demonstrate that fact. We’re Alberta’s only 100% dedicated social media engagement firm.  Over the past 10 months of our 9 year total history, we’ve worked with the MacEwan School of Business, ATB Financial, Government of Alberta, Edmontonians Magazine and several small business owners to name a few. Further, we’re proud to announce Edmonton’s Fringe Theatre Adventures as a new client, more to follow on that announcement soon.   

Regardless, we’re excited about the short-term and very excited about the mid-term…Thank-you for your support and friendship, we look forward to the conversation including your comments ahead.

We also got to meet some interestesting people from Chrysalis – an Albertan society for citizens with disabilities – who let us join them at their table.  And finally, we were able to chat with one of my favourite local artists, Ben Sures, who is spending the week creating a brilliant piece of concept art.

We’ve included some pictures below, but if you get the chance, check out the festival for yourself!

Post by Paul Ney, Captions by Evan Adnams

We’re in the Grant MacEwan City Centre campus cafeteria right now and the place is busy! We’ve got our bloggers up and running now.

We’ve also got a blogging contest for everyone else on the net too. We’re promoting it on Twitter, and here. So, if you are interested, you can win cash for a blog post. You just need to do one post! Easy as pie, isn’t it? Think you’re good. Give it a shot. You blog, post the link on the page and we draw the winner randomly. Later on in the day we’ll decide if we really like one post and throw some prizes at that person too.

Mike & Lenny videos

We’ve got parts one and two of the Mike & Lenny series up and running. Check them out and let us know what you think.

Mike & Lenny video, part 1

Mike & Lenny video, part 2

mastermaq @fusedlogic Check it out, you were one of the top 10 referrers to Techvibes last month! http://bit.ly/153SH 28 minutes ago from web

Alain Saffel (@alainsaffel) has been doing such a great job keeping up with our content, so I can focus more on growing fusedlogic within our industry of social media, make sure to give him a shout out when you can.

By the way, I appreciate you supporting the change in fusedlogic voice on our blog, I will commit to blogging more, we’ve just been really busy negotiating on a new office space, (still pending) and many other deals that will grow our company considerably once they’re in place and of course we continue to work hard on current client projects, followed up by having a tea party with my wife, daughter and special guest “Barbie” and I’m actually exhausted at the end of a 12- 14 hr day.

Having said that, this cool bit of information has perked me right up this morning. Thanks Mack and thanks to all the cool guys at techvibes.com for posting that information, you guys do great work.

One final thought: besides a few direct emails and DM’s on twitter, we’d sure appreciate some feedback and comments on the Guy Kawasaki interview pieces. Even if you hate it, please let us know (especially if you hate it). We’re always working hard to be the best we can, in part, your feed back drives that innovation and polish. Thanks in advance for your time and effort on that.

By the way, the Seth Godin interviews are next…

Walter Schwabe

First of all, we would like to thank all fusedlogic’s clients for a great year. We appreciate your support and are looking forward to continuing our work with you in 2009.

2008 was a growth year for fusedlogic and we have a number of initiatives on the go for 2009. It might be doom and gloom out there in the economy, but we don’t seem to feel it in the social media strategy field.

I think that part of the reason for that is because people know this economic downturn, despite the non-stop negativity in the media, is just a blip on the radar. Smart companies know that they have to continue to keep on top of business trends and ground-shifts. Social media is not simply a trend and many organizations realize that they’re ill-equipped to deal with this new paradigm.

Some of the highlights of 2008 include launching the fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge. In support of Edmonton’s Food Bank we’re attempting to get one million photos of one million food bank donations in one year. Our deadline is the end of 2009 and we’re already off to a good start with many people adding photos to our Facebook food bank group and our Flickr food bank group.

If you haven’t added your photo yet, please get out there and make your donation. Food banks are in need of food year round, so let’s keep the spirit of giving throughout the year.

It was also a big year for Twitter in 2008, one of our favourite social media tools. It went from complete obscurity to prominence on networks like CNN. A quick search of Google News for “Twitter” reveals just how much it’s being talked about.

2009: an exciting year ahead

There are a number of new faces at fusedlogic and we will be adding more in 2009. Many of the team members at fusedlogic will be working out of our new office that we’re moving into in February. Stay tuned for a grand opening celebration soon to follow. Our office will be located in Sherwood Park, on the outskirts of Edmonton, Alberta.

In 2009 the fusedlogic team will continue to grow its social media intelligence capabilities. We’ve been working on a number of interesting projects that have helped expand our clients’ social media intelligence and knowledge, but have also helped our team’s knowledge base grow too.

FusedlogicTV will also make its appearance this year. At fusedlogic we’ve always had an affinity for video and we’re not slowing down. Expect to see more interviews, testimonials and fusedlogic social media presentations in the new year.

We’re positive about the new year and we hope that you are too. We’ll finish this post with a little wisdom that we hope will help guide you through the coming year.

“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

William James

In case you missed it here’s the press release.

Accepting a kind gift for speaking...

Walter is speaking about social media today the Edmonton Mayfield Rotary Club, and I’m (Mack) here to liveblog it! We’ve also got Krysta here recording some video that will be posted soon. Stay tuned to this post for updates!

What is social media? There’s a lot of buzz these days.

“This is not a fad, it’s quite serious.”

What’s the difference between today and a decade ago?

• Today we have a two-way broadcasting system, instead of a one-way.
• Individuals are just as powerful as organizations.

What are organizations doing today?

• They are stuck using old methodologies.
• Generally, they don’t work with the “creative class”, people who have been plugged for most of their lives.
• Most corporations want to control the message. It’s deep within their DNA.
• Companies need to learn to let go of some of that control. Not 100%, that would be reckless, but some change is required.
• Yes, once the company lets go of some control, some negativity will creep in. There’s fear. Companies are afraid they will put their brand at risk if they embrace social media – and that’s just not the case.

An example – Dell.

• Jeff Jarvis explained on his blog what a terrible customer experience he had with his Dell. He continued to blog about it over time, and called his situation “dell hell”.
• His message connected with others, who also blogged about it. Dell however, wasn’t listening.
• Eventually, Dell got the message and changed what they were doing.

Another example – Jeep treats social networking like another channel – example provided by Forrester Research.

• They woke up one morning and decided they had to be “cool”. So they started a Facebook group.
• The most popular Jeep group isn’t the official one, however, it’s a group created by a fan.
• Jeep missed an opportunity to built rapport with the existing community.

Where do you start with social media?

“Do you have the guts to encourage transparency within your organization? You need to be real, with customers and employees.”

Then you can get started.

1. Listen to the Internet, to find out what people are saying about your product or service. Don’t assume they aren’t talking about you.
2. Harness the collective intelligence of others out there on the web. Find out who the market leaders and influencers are.
3. Once identified, you can work with them on a word-of-mouth campaign.

Does this work? Just look at Barack Obama. By far the most successful campaign in the world.

What’s the trap?

• There’s a very low barrier to entry. A teenager in their basement has the same power to create something as good or better than you can!
• Don’t assume that large companies have the advantage!

Time for questions!

• Are non-profit organizations making use of social media? Absolutely. It’s becoming increasingly common, it can definitely work for them.
• Can social media be used for scams? Like anything else, there’s always the potential for negativity. Your guard always needs to be up, it’s not specific to social media.
• As a small business, it’s hard to find time to just be there listening. What can you do, can your firm help? Definitely, fusedlogic can help you, this is one of the main services offered. And it can be automated, so that you find out when someone mentions your product or service. The problem affects all sorts of organizations, not just small businesses.
• How do organizations decide which site to use? We have MySpace, Facebook, etc. Which should we use? The first question to answer is, what is your objective? For example, if you know which demographic to target, you can help decide which networks to focus on. And it’s important to know that there are networks out there for specific purposes, such as LinkedIn for business.
• Can you comment on Twitter and what we saw on TV with the presidential election? It’s a microblogging service. You get 140 characters to update. In the case of Obama, his campaign used Twitter to announce when they were at a rally or on the move. CNN used Twitter to highlight what people were talking about during the election. The news breaks on Twitter – a good example is the recent earthquake in Los Angeles. It’s a great tool to quickly ascertain the heart of the story.

And with that, we’re done. Great presentation Walter and lots of good questions from the audience.

In the spirit of sharing some business news during Small Business Week (and condensing posts because I’m so busy lately,) here’s some interesting new information for you.  Some of you may remember a video I shot earlier this year with Peter Urban of Smibs (featured below.)  At the time, SmibsNet (a collaboration and networking software for businesses) wasn’t ready for public beta.   That all changed last Tuesday with the launch of the public beta and Peter asked me while on Twitter the other day if I’d blog about it.  Peter provided me with a personal invite to sign-up for the beta and fusedlogic is now listed on the site.  This software is very cool and helps to solve the business development collaboration issue that many companies have.  I suggest that you consider signing up and trying it out.

Sidenote: Peter did agree to call me so I could asked him some specific questions as prep for a more in- depth blog post but if you know Peter, he’s hard working and a beta takes a lot of effort.  I’m sure he wasn’t going out of his way to ignore me.   Besides we bump into each other all the time at events and around the neighborhood.  Maybe he’ll bring his SmibsTV crew down the Web 2.0 meetup and present SmibsNet there on Nov 6th.   Below is the video interview with Peter some months ago on Whyte Ave in Edmonton.

Also, Peter if you’re reading this and I know you are, Smibs needs to be a Sherwood Park Chamber member right away…expect me to be relentless on this point.

I wanted my next effort to have a key interview or two, providing you the audience with a nice change from my usual self-indulgent approach.  After some thought (environmentalists will be happy to know that no smoke appeared during my thought process), I wanted to reach out to some serious blogging enthusiasts.  One of those picked was Chris Pirillo, the self-proclaimed “geek” behind Gnomedex – a blogging conference to see if he’d be willing to answer a few questions for my article.  Chris replied, “What questions?”  I emailed six questions to him, and they must have offended him as I’m still waiting for a response.  Most likely, though, he’s just very busy.

Having said that, I’m under a deadline, and Barb the editor would have had my guts for garters if I didn’t get a move on.  So as I usually do in these situations, I picked more than one interviewee to touch base with for just such a time-crunch occasion.  So who’s the lucky duck?  None other than Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt of Horsepigcow.com fame.  Given that she’s in Lisbon at the moment, we opted for an email exchange to save on the cell bill and Skype break-up.  Below is a short excerpt from our email chat.

W: Do you think micro-blogging, in this case, Twitter with it’s growing notoriety is reducing the overall relevancy of the personal blog?

TH: I don’t know if relevancy will be reduced, but, in my case anyway, frequency is reduced. I know a large number of bloggers who post less because they are able to share their ideas quickly and succinctly on Twitter. However, once I’ve had a rigorous conversation on Twitter and ideas come together more coherently, I put them into a blog post. I no longer meander around ideas on my blog. I meander around ideas on Twitter, then post more solid content to my blog. So, in the end, the relevancy is actually increased on my blog because every time I post, it’s been thought out more than it used to be.

W: What are you doing in Lisbon at the moment? Business, a conference?

TH: I’m speaking at SHiFT08: It’s awesome because now that I’ve been on the speaking circuit for 2.5 years, I know many of the other speakers. Brilliant folks. It’s amazing how our ideas start to flow together, too.

The rest of my interview with Miss Rogue will appear in next month’s Edmontonians Magazine edition. I’d like to thank Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt for her time and responding so promptly from the road during an international event where she’s presenting. A true pro.

Here’s a list of where you can find me in order of who asked first.

“The Art of Marketing without Marketing” – Propel Magazine, shipped today and hits the stands this month and I’ve been asked by David Cree (Publisher) to write for the next issue which is really great.

“Understanding Social Media” – Troy Media Corporation, a series that will deliver interviews with Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Chris Heuer, more here.

“Social Media 101” – Monthly column with the Edmontonians Magazine.

All of the above opportunities were a direct result of social media working in fusedlogic’s favor.  Whether it was the topic itself or through a series of events online that led back to myself and my company, social media came through and continues to do so everyday.  Another example of this is how Twitter has led to my being interviewed for a facebook centric article written by Tannette Johnson-Elie, (@telie on Twitter) a journalist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the articles…are they interesting?  I was asked to provide some high-level perspectives and will definitely delve deeper in upcoming articles.

This is a busy week coming up which is leading into a very busy couple of months.  October is looking like the busiest of 2008 thus far including a trip to Seattle Washington and Winnipeg Manitoba potentially, with November not that far behind.  The first week of Nov, I’m scheduled to speak four times in seven days on social media.  That said, I’m really looking forward being able to speak and engage the diverse audiences…this is really going to be fun.

New team members as mentioned in a previous post are on-board and capacity is increasing substantially which is good because we need it.  More of my articles are scheduled to be published shortly in October including one where I was interviewed for an upcoming article coming out of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Pardon me if I’ve already mentioned this, it’s the cough syrup.  Have a great start to the week.

Also, please feel to comment on our new fusedlogic site.  What do you think?  How could we improve?

Also, fusedlogic has signed an MOU with Mack D. Male of Paramagnus Development Inc.  Mack (@mastermaq on Twitter) has a deep knowledge of the Internet and social media in particular, Mack will be adding his expertise in a multitude of ways including application development,strategy development and in particular thoughts on blogging, podcasting and many other areas related to community management.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve added Doug Kyle of Lucid Avenue, (@dougkyle).  Doug’s background is in IT project management and so he’ll obviously be keeping all of us on the straight and narrow regarding projects specifics.  His toughest job ahead clearly is with corralling me.

fusedlogic also has videographers here in town, NAIT grad Krysta Martell takes care of a lot of that locally.

We also continue to have our writing team and project specific contractors in the US, brand monitoring team out east and in California, SEO guys in Edmonton, Romania and also elsewhere in India for project specific work.  Further, our Mobile application development team in China is always ready to help and we’re expanding our reach into Indonesia and Singapore as we speak.  Finally, I have two executive assistants in Winnipeg MB, Rhonda and Colleen that are doing some heavy lifting on some exciting things for the company as we look eastward a bit too…

Social media is a global opportunity as I see it for fusedlogic inc and so the plan is to continue to grow and sooner rather than later put a Chief Operating Officer in place for the company.  I intend to grow to no more than 15-20 people at our max, less even if possible.  So every new team member is key and every client continues to be very valuable.