By Alexandra Reid
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
This powerful idea comes from Alvin Toffler, an American writer and futurist best known for his works discussing digital, corporate and communication revolutions and technological singularity. It’s a thoughtful quote that sums up the core theme of the TEDx Ottawa event nicely. Its theme, “creative actions,” explored the creative effort that goes into reversing, reworking and reinventing previously held ideas and the profound results that come from taking this kind of action.
What is TED?
Read More
This is the second article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of CommentAir Technologies, a startup based in Ottawa, Canada. CommentAir is developing a wireless technology fans can use at sports venues to receive the same real-time commentary as fans watching from their televisions, a wireless technology that also creates a platform for targeted consumer interaction. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
For a pre-revenue startup that is bootstrapping its way to market, incurring the cost to travel to another city to attend an industry trade conference with an admission price of $1,000 may appear to be an expensive endeavour. For Katie and Luke Hrycak, sibling co-founders of CommentAir Technologies, it’s the kind of opportunity they can’t afford to let slip by.
The 2011 Sports Management Conference and Trade Show, taking place in Toronto on Nov. 14 and 15, features dozens of speakers from the senior ranks of professional sports from across North America, from team owners and league commissioners, to broadcasters and professional services which cater to the industry. It is the very sort of high-profile event they need to draw attention to CommentAir’s programmable earpiece technology.
“I‘m raising the money to attend at least one day and track down the people that I want to talk to,” said Katie. “This also requires a lot of research for knowing faces of those individuals so that I have a game plan walking in.”
Read More
By Linda Forrest
Earlier this week, TechCrunch readers were given a rare treat – the chance to engage in a public forum with a technology icon: Sean Parker. One of the founders of Napster, founder at Plaxo, a former advisor to and the first president of Facebook (who bears little physical resemblance to Justin Timberlake who played an, according to Parker, historically-inaccurate, party animal version of him in last year’s Oscar-nominated film, The Social Network), and now director at Spotify. In short, Sean Parker has been an architect of many of the “large-scale societal shifts” of the last 15 years.
So, it was with great interest that I clicked on (and subsequently retweeted) the following Tweet:
Read More
By Alexandra Reid
I sat down with Delaney Turner, IBM’s social business strategist, editor and engagement lead, to expand on some of the subjects he presented to the Social Media Breakfast Ottawa crowd yesterday morning.
According to Turner, our world is becoming smarter as it becomes more interconnected. Businesses must acknowledge that social media is at least partly responsible for bridging new connections and adapt their communications strategies to utilize these new channels to their best effect.
Turner said IBM employees are encouraged to participate on social media channels on behalf of the company, and take personal responsibility for their work. “Social media is like the phone,” said Turner. “Rather than restrict access, we’re going to treat people like adults and trust that they’re going to use it right for business.”
Read More
This is a guest post from investment coach Martin Soorjoo. We welcome your comments.
By Martin Soorjoo
During the course of writing a book on pitching, I reminded myself of the magical presentation skills of Steve Jobs. I watched his mesmerizing Macworld presentations from start to finish, and read and re-read the text of his insightful and inspirational 2005 Stanford commencement address.
It therefore came as a deep shock to me to find out that, within hours of sending the completed manuscript to my publishers, Jobs had passed away. Having watched his presentations so many times on video recently, he was, in my mind, very much alive.
Read More
-
Canadian Cleantech Summit seeks to further Canada’s global competitive stance in clean technology
October 18, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
I sat down with Marc McArthur, Manager of the Ottawa Cleantech Initiative at OCRI, to discuss the upcoming Canadian Cleantech Summit and how it will seek to further Canada’s global competitive stance in the cleantech sector […]
Read more... -
Telling the right story to drive customer acquisition
October 17, 2011 by Francis Moran
When we caught up with Screenreach Interactive founder and CEO Paul Rawlings last week, he was in the midst of packing for a trip to New York, where he was booked as a panellist for the Digital Signage Investor Conference […]
Read more... -
-
PR’s David & Goliath: doing media relations for SMBs vs. large corporations
October 14, 2011 by Linda Forrest
Back when I was doing publicity in the music industry, working largely for independent artists, I’d often discuss with my colleagues what it would be like to be the publicist for a major, in-demand, household-name artist, how different the job would be. Rather […]
Read more... -
When a product fails miserably, why is the customer blamed?
October 13, 2011 by Francis Moran
When a product fails miserably in the marketplace, why is the customer blamed for not wanting to buy it?
Hang on, you say; that doesn’t happen, does it? Well, it did, and in spades, just last week.
Three well-established brands competed openly for the custom of a large pool of potential buyers […]
Read more... -
-
The integral role of social media champions
October 12, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
We have used the term “champion” many times on this blog to describe those risk-inclined individuals who become the essential drivers of progressive change within the commercialization ecosystem. Champions can wear many hats. We have described them as […]
Read more... -
Part II: Dissecting the brain of the market pays off for BlueArc
October 11, 2011 by Francis Moran
In last week’s post, we introduced BlueArc, a maker of networked attached storage (NAS) systems for managing unstructured data in high-performance computing applications, and Ken Rosen, a corporate strategy and marketing consultant who worked with the Blue Arc team in the mid-2000s […]
Read more... -
-
In PR, timing is everything
October 07, 2011 by Linda Forrest
If real estate is summed up by the expression, “There are three things that matter in property: location, location, location,” PR could easily misappropriate a slight variation of that: “there are three things that matter in public relations: timing, timing, timing.” […]
Read more... -
Achieving marketing escape velocity
October 06, 2011 by Francis Moran
It was with a mixture of delight and trepidation that I learned a few months back of technology visionary Geoffrey Moore’s new book, Escape Velocity. You see, I’ve been using the phrase for years to describe what I think is a critical requirement in the marketing […]
Read more... -
By Alexandra Reid 
Twitter
Tweets by @FrancisMoranRecent Comments
The Future of A&R – Walabe : [...] http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/top-10-questions-every-strategic-communicator-should-ask... [...]
Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]