By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are the Financial Post, The Globe and Mail, ReadWriteStart, Business2Community, Social Media B2B, and CopyBlogger.
‘Secret sauce’ behind Waterloo’s success
How do you build a more entrepreneurial culture in a semi-colonial, don’t-rock-the-boat country such as Canada? That’s the question being tackled by the founders of Startup Canada, an Ottawa-based volunteer movement launched three weeks ago. They’re undertaking a cross-country tour to sound out business owners on how best to unleash Canadians’ entrepreneurial potential. Author Rick Spence brings us up to speed on the movement’s recent achievements.
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By Francis Moran
My day yesterday? Twelve straight hours of startups, speakers, schmoozing and social media as I took in both FounderFuel’s second demo day and The C100’s AccelerateMTL. With what I am sure was more than a wee bit of coordination, one event followed the other in the beautiful and historic Monument-National theatre building at the very heart of this bustling city. The juxtaposition of a 120-year-old 
building with the youth and energy of the startup entrepreneurs was not the least bit jarring, although the canned pre-event PA announcement asking us all to turn off our pagers and cell phones was clearly meant far more for a theatre-going audience than for this crowd bent on tweeting every great line to the outside world.
And there were lots of great lines.
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By Alexandra Reid
Update, May 24:
As you can see from the comments at the end of this post, people have suggested that the comments in this post attributed to Gary Vaynerchuk are not representative. In a Twitter conversation I had with Gary, he told me that the blog post on which I relied for this post misrepresented his presentation and certainly misrepresents his social media philosophy. I’ve invited Gary to weigh in here, and we certainly hope does. Please read this post in this context.
I read a blog post today that annoyed me, the content for which came from a presentation Gary Vaynerchuk gave to more than 600 small businesses and local chamber and association leaders at America’s Small Business Summit on Monday in Washington D.C. His said that small business owners must get on social media right away or else risk getting run over by the “wave” of innovation. It wasn’t his call to small business owners to get started on social media that raised my red flag. It was his sense of urgency, that small business owners should get on social media immediately without asking the right questions and laying out a sound strategy first. This is the ill-advised leap-before-you-look mentality that saps budgets and kills new marketing initiatives before they have had the chance to properly develop.
His advice?
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By David French
This is the conclusion of a two-part series. Part one introduced patent searching and how inventors can use the “prior art wall” to their advantage.
Whether or not a prefiling patent novelty search establishes that the road is clear for you to attempt to obtain patent rights, there is tremendous value to be obtained by just carrying out the search. In my last post, I explored this premise and started down the path to demonstrate how you can conduct a search of documents that are online at the U.S. Patent Office.
To recap, I shared tips for searching with key words using this page on the U.S. PTO website. As an example, the search was focused on an improved garden rake. Documents relating to rakes were located by initially entering the words “rake” and “handle.” I also suggested that searching can be conducted using the classification system available in the U.S. PTO website, which is what I will explain here today.
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By Alexandra Reid
Joi Podgorny, who presented at Social Media Breakfast Ottawa yesterday, is an expert in dealing with children and other sensitive information online. In fact, she has nearly 5 million kids to watch over as the director of community engagement for National Geographic’s online kids game Animal Jam. As a marketer, community manager and creator of branded entertainment for children, Podgorny is under enormous pressure to ensure her product is as entertaining as it is safe.
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The root of all evil
May 16, 2012 by Leo Valiquette
Back in November, Peter Hanschke blogged about the need for the lean and mean startup to beware the million-dollar cheque. In that spirit, I have an anecdote to share which illustrates that the mere prospect of such a windfall can also do significant damage […]
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Managing client expectations throughout an outsourced social media marketing program
May 15, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
Demonstrating a marketing program’s success is key to maintaining a happy client. Do good work and prove how it contributed to the client’s goals – seems like a simple enough equation. But managing client expectations throughout a social media marketing program […]
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How to make better inventions: Part 1
May 14, 2012 by David French
I recently had an extended discussion with someone which resulted in the conclusion that there is more to patenting than just getting patents. We started with a discussion of the business value of a patent and then addressed the business value of patenting. Here is […]
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Three interesting developments in modern journalism
May 11, 2012 by Francis Moran
A few years back, my pal Ian Graham acquainted me with his “law of three.” If any subject or person or issue crosses Graham’s attention three times in relatively short order, he believes he ought to pay attention to it. It’s an intriguing notion that I have found plays out […]
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Great articles roundup: call to action mistakes, defining tech companies, sustaining startup media coverage, and the VC model
May 10, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
As a regular weekly feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Copyblogger, GigaOm, The Flack and GeekWire […]
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How I learned to stop worrying and love a blank page
May 09, 2012 by Leo Valiquette
As a student of the written word, I’ve dealt with just about everything when it comes to catering to a client, managing a team of journalists and editing the work of others. But the greatest challenge is often found in the mocking white glare of an empty page […]
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Anything they can do you can do better: Competing in social media
May 08, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
I shamelessly adapted the title of this post based on the original Fast Company article, Anything they can do you can do better, which explained that when it comes to designing new products, companies must aim to build them better than their competitors […]
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Five old school mistakes creeping into digital and social media planning
May 07, 2012 by Rob Woyzbun
The near-ubiquitous availability and always-on nature of the Internet has changed how consumers learn about, consider and make decisions regarding almost everything: purchases, politics and even the causes they support. We live in a world where Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic claim that “the medium is the message” is true — in ways even he might not have considered […]
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As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are the Financial Post, The Globe and Mail, ReadWriteStart, Business2Community, Social Media B2B, and CopyBlogger.
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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...) [...]