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.
Socializing Brand You!
I’ve been invited to be the keynote speaker as part of a speaker series at Edmonton’s MacEwan School of Business on September 17th and I’m really looking forward to it. Here’s a point form outline of what I’ll be speaking about over 45 minutes.
Socializing Brand You!
- What is “brand you?”
- What is the value of engaging in social media?
- Required “brand you” skills.
- How Twitter is a “brand you” amplification machine.
- Understanding and leveraging “micro-tribes.”
- Integrating social media into business processes.
I look forward to meeting more MacEwan students and faculty at this event and will look to provide as much value in my presentation as I possibly can. I’m expecting some great questions from the audience and as always I’ll be referring to live Internet case studies and examples. Also, no seat is safe in the house, I’ll be inviting direct audience participation and could call on anyone at anytime…
See you all next week…
fusedlogic.com Redesigned!
As many of you know and some of you have seen, we opened up the new fusedlogic Lab in Sherwood Park, just outside of Edmonton, Alberta this past May. As with any new space there are little details to get right before we unveil everything so watch for an invitation to our open house once a firm date has been set. One thing is for sure, it’ll be a great time. Having said that, Evan Adnams, our Director of Production and Design thought we should get a new site up and running to reflect our new space and growing team. Since we’re never been a team to sit still for too long I agreed and so here we are.
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.
Wrapping up MacEwan BlogCamp: Success!
Friday April 3 was the culmination of a big project for fusedlogic: MacEwan BlogCamp. It was Edmonton’s and, as far as we know, Alberta’s first blog contest. It was a unique opportunity to combine business, social media and education in one cool package.
We’d like to congratulate the top three MacEwan bloggers:
1. Carla Putnam
2. Patrick Finegan
3. Peter Jaffray
The prize for first place was an Apple MacBook. In addition to the contest winners, we’d like to congratulate everyone who participated. Blogging for nine hours is not easy under the best of circumstances and blogging for nine hours in a busy cafeteria would be even tougher.
But, our bloggers persevered and we had a lot of interesting posts. We gave them a variety of topics to blog about and we were impressed with the results.
Judging
The winners of the blogging contest were chosen based on a number of factors. We had a voting system in place that ranked posts based on the cumulative net difference between a thumbs up and a thumbs down rating given by blog post viewers. In addition, we also judged the blog posts based on originality and quality of content.
Sponsors
Our sponsors came through for MacEwan BlogCamp in a big way. We can’t say enough about how happy we are that they sponsored our contest and made a huge contribution to the success of BlogCamp.
The team
We would also like to thank Jana Clarke, Sarah Parker, Laura England, Joseph DiFabio and the rest of the Grant MacEwan College team for giving us the opportunity to help put on this event. It was a lot of work but it was a blast! Grant MacEwan College really put on a good show for everyone involved.
And to the fusedlogic team, thank you as well: Walter did a great job hosting BlogCamp and all the other tasks he had; without Evan and Paul we wouldn’t have had the website or the video running virtually glitch-free; Genoa did a great job keeping everyone organized; Doug kept everyone on track with his project management skills; Krysta did a great job with her video as well.
Ultimately I think we succeeded in our goal of helping to raise the profile of the MacEwan School of Business and we’re confident that will result in more inquiries about the School of Business. MacEwan School of Business really is a good choice for a business degree in Edmonton, Alberta and beyond. We’re looking forward to the next BlogCamp!
MacEwan BlogCamp photos
If you’re interested in having a look at some great photos of MacEwan BlogCamp, have a look at Bruce Clarke’s Flickr photos. He has 166 photos there to look at. Bruce made my job tough to decide on the best photos to post here because they were all good.
Alain Saffel
MacEwan School of Business
I’m heading to the MacEwan School of Business today Grant MacEwan College here in Edmonton, Alberta to have an engaging chat about a class project. This class is participating in a Edmonton Police Service recruiting campaign competition. According to their project timeline, it’s now time to discuss web strategies, branding elements and messaging. I’ve been asked by Jana Clarke, Director of Marketing, to come down and provide the students with some specific insights into how they should proceed with social media. I’m very excited. My only concern is that I’ll only have 20 minutes to speak, so we’ll have to savor each minute carefully and deliberately. Having said that, there’s no doubt it will be fun and a great experience for me, and I hope for them as well. The goal with such little time will be to lay out a simple and easy to follow social media strategy framework that they can then take and expand as required.
