Tom Purves – Product Management, Fintech & AI

Photo, enjoying a drink on the patio of the lovely Gardiner Museum before CaseCamp2.1.

Academic evangelsim: Daniel Shapiro, Audience Marketing Manager, Microsoft

* Discussed long running Microsoft program to find and reward student evangelists
* Historically, hired leading students paid hourly rate, expensive but somewhat successful
* New program reward students post-facto for acheivements in promoting Microsoft for organizing events, communities on campus etc.
* Importantly reward students non-monitarily. MSDN subscriptions, job contacts/interviews with microsoft or msoft partners
* Students valued these rewards higher than the cash and program/students were able to evangelize msoft in a much more authentic way

Pushing the buttons that make Toronto come alive: Matt Blackett, Editor, Spacing.ca

* Matt Blacket invented the buttons in one part to promote his magazine as another to show up how awful the job the TTC does at promoting itself
* Sold 800 buttons the first day at trade fair
* Big break was when the mayor started wearing them, then boingboing picked up on it
* Buttons brought in tons of cash for the little magazine
* 11% of online button buyers ended up buying subscriptions – a huge conversion ratio compared to, say, direct marketing
* dailly visitors to their website before buttons 68, after launching buttons 473, after buttons plus starting a blog 651- 3,000

Podcasts Gone Bad – Leesa Barnes, President, Caprica Interactive Marketing

* Great idea to do a case on a good marketing idea gone bad and what we can learn from it
* Bad idea to do a case were the presenter blames the failure entirely on “the client” hmmm

Unboomed: Andrew Michael Baron, Co-founder, Rocketboom

* context, in case you missed it the biggest blogosphere story of the week the untimely and shocking departure of Amanda from rocketboom one of the webs leading sites in the very new field of video podcasting (300k+ viewers a week)
* they had just closed their first ad deals for 40k and 80k a week in advertising though the money was still yet to come in.
* “communication problems” since march. Amanda the host wanted to go to LA.
* Andrew the producer and writer of the show was willing to move but ‘she didn’t want me to come with her’
* They had been in discussion for weeks with a mediator. Last thing that happened and who had given Amanda an offer to continue doing the show bi-coastal or, worst-case, to arrange a transition to a new host. Amanda “walked out” “in the midst of negotiations”
* Thus far this is a story of “what happens when you lose control of the message” Andrew you could Towle has been dying to tell his story, but has remained restrained so far.
* Clearly scared ” this is the biggest challenge have faced in my life” but he’s moving on. Rocket boom will go to air on Monday.
* “I know the audience will be back” he says. “the only way to make it true this stage is… um… not sure” final quote.

Enjoyed a lovely dinner afterwards with some fellow campers. Rather unexpectedly, the night ends with John and Malgosia both in bed with another woman. It was CBC filming a pilot for a new talk/improv/reality show this one on the subject of infidelity. and shot on the streets of your Yorkville. in a bed. Fav quote from Malgosia “I can’t even remember sex before John..” awww Watch for the cute couple on a national television near you…

Had a good time as usual at democamp the other night. It’s fun to watch this thing grow, now with so many camp inspired meetups going on (and more every week) we’re soon going to either the most clued-in and/or the most chronically alcoholic tech community anywhere.

Some feedback though for presenters and organizers at future camp events:

1. Teach us don’t tell us. As always the best presenters don’t just tell us about yet another ruby on rails (YARR) web2.0 they live together in record time for the burgeoning Yak herding enthusiast community of Toronto etc. but rather – teach us about what to learn building it. The Paruba.com folks did this well, they didn’t just show us the application they told us what they learned and what mistakes they made along the way and offered advice for anyone trying to build something similar.

2. Wait until you have users. There’s a temptation to demo as soon as the software is ready, just when you most excited about it. If you are demoing a product and not just pure technology, it’s all still theory until people start using it. there were a bunch of interesting questions last night about how users and communities who are using these new softwares but the answer was always the same – I dunno, we just launched it. Ask us in three months? So my advice, you to wait until you have some users and you’ll have more to teach, or be sure to come back in three months and tell us how it turned out.

3. Acoustics. Again this was a problem for some people in the back. When you have a budgetless organization meeting in ad hoc locations sometimes things like considerations for some systems and acoustics don’t happen. This was one advantage I believe of meeting at MaRS. I seem to recall everyone could hear.

My photos of democamp 7 (John Green took like a thousand)
more photos photos of democamp 7

+Those paying attention to the sidebar may have noticed a few things lately. By request I’ve added a subscribe by e-mail feature for those who wish to receive my updates by timely e-mail. Powered by some guys name FeedBlitz. And no neither I nor them will do anything nefarious with your e-mail. Personally I’d argue you’d all be better off just getting on the bloglines wagon for your substitutions, but apparently, some people are still hooked on e-mail even in this day and age.

+I’m also playing with a location gadget on the sidebar inspired by plazes. Plazes is the web2.0 firm that lets you do handy things like… automagically geotag your eggs benedict. For anyone curious it’ll help you follow a track what city/country I’m in at the moment. But not without a little manual hacking of the XML source feed. Colleague Jevon calls this “early adopter behaviour”.

+Hmmm, plazes, feedblitz. In web2.0 naming conventions, it appears “z” is the new “r”. Can’t wait for someone to use both, maybe throw in a leading “i” as well? Sigh, seems that in a few years the only fresh domains still freely available could well be entirely spelled in some bastardized h4x0r argot.

+If you’re schedules not full yet this week, remember tonight is DemoCamp #7 (wow) and this friday CaseCamp 2.1 (yay!).

+As for an update on the Enterprise2.0 meetup last week. It was good! and there’s so much more to talk about so we’ll be doing another, larger event later in July (I’m angling for the week of the 17th)

+Further to my intermitent and arguably quixotic quest to champion the med/longtail of quality content… Saw these were playing recently, best two films I’ve seen in years. both intense, laser-smart and at moments deadpan yet wildly hillarious (if that’s how you like them, run don’t walk)
* Brick – trailer
* [Sympathy for] Lady vengance – trailer

+And lastly just back from a downing some refreshing barium milkshakes for breakfast this morning. extra large, slight banana-ish flavour with a little radiation on the side. mmm. Does Web2.0 actually give you ulcers? We shall see. (heart attacks though, are certainly a known hazard)