Here is a panorama shot i did of the Toronto Skyline while in town for the Flash in the Can (FITC) conference. I had some time to kill so I tried to find a great location to take a picture of the city from.
If you want to check this area out and see what kind of shot you can get from there … I have provided the location on the map. The area is a bit seedy but I think it is pretty safe. (ignorance is bliss perhaps)
As a follow up to the posts that I did a year ago I wanted to look at the growth of the Canadian Networks in Facebook. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to see, aside from my gut telling me that there are alot of Canucks on Facebook.
If you weren’t sure if the social web was catching on ….these numbers are going to astound you.  These are very impressive numbers for adoption of anything. I guess if you are in the Canadian market you might want to be looking at this and wondering “is this going to help me or hurt me?” and/or “how can i do something here?”Â
So here it is ….Â
Here are the numbers. This is a visual so if you want the actual spreadsheet here it is.
So what are you going to do with these numbers ? Reconsider your stance on social media? Look at the money you are spending on a publically funded portal projects? Wonder if you should be on? Figure out how to leverage the networks? Build apps for your Canadian Customers ? Spend your advertising dollars differently ? Something interesting to watch.Â
The word is out on the FROM MASS to GRASS conference being hosted by the Canadian Marketing Association. The event brings together a really cool bunch of speakers to talk with the audience. Sean Moffit the conference chair and social firebug talk about the conference here:
“Nowhere in Canada will you find a more entertaining and remarkable set of speakers dedicated to getting their companies noticed and talked about. Sure, there are other great conferences in Canada -mesh and ICE have their devoted followings, and for good reason. Whereas they deal with various facets of the new online and media environments in great depth, “From Mass to Grass” is designed to tie together these disciplines and shape insights and fully integrated strategies for progressive business people, marketers, entrepreneurs, agency people and media folk alike.”
I will be one of the people talking at this conference. I wish I could give you the exact details but I either don’t know them or I don’t know what has been made public. So I will wait for more official releases from the conference to announce those.Â
If you are interested in finding out more information about the CMA or the FROM MASS TO GRASS conference please check out the sites.Â
I am excited to be a part of this event and I hope you can make it part of your calender.Â
Flash In The Can (FITC) is the premier flash conference series in the world. This was confirmed by a fantastic Conference that wrapped up. I was most impressed by the quality of the people that were there. Everyone that was there was at the top of their game and looking to keep climbing. It was a jam packed event that brought some of the finest flash and interactive specialists to take the rest of us to school.
There was no shortage of great sessions to attend and I over heard several people wishing to be in two sessions at once. That is a great change from some conferences I have been to that you some where you couldn’t find a decent session.  I can’t even begin to list all the great sessions that there were … If you are serious about Flash and how some of the greats are building their interactive experiences this is the place you have to be next year. Â
A big shout out to Shawn Pucknell and all the great people that work so hard to put the conference. We only get to see the few days of events but their work continues on year long building a better experience. If I was giving any suggestions they would be very simple. Bigger pipe for internet (word was hilton was limiting connectivity), a place where people could get together and show off the stuff the are doing (show and share room). I have become very fond of Mars center for hosting events, I have been to a few different things there and it is a great venue, very open, bright and lots of the ever important bandwidth. Â Â Â Â
Great conference and hope to see everyone I met again next year …or sooner.
           It is time again for the MESH conference, it is just around the corner from what I can see everything seems to be rolling in high gear. If you have read this blog before you know what I think of MESH and the guys running it. Top notch all the way. I am continually impressed with the stuff that these guys are doing on top of the daily stuff they are doing. (Remember this isn’t anyones full time gig) They have pulled a great line up of speakers, workshops, networking and purely social events. If you are reading this on my blog … you should be attending MESH.Â
I think this years event is going to be much better then the previous. Here is why:
Mesh U: A new addition to this years line up is the extra day for the Mesh U.Â
A day jam packed with great presenters that can really help you take your game up a notch. MeshU is not included in the conference package I think that if you are serious about learning and leaving with a broadened skill  set then this is the day you want to be at. I know there are those who will bitch and complain about the added costs ….but if you have ever run an event …it is not cheap.Â
Look at this as an investment in your business, career, project or what ever reason you are attending. The smaller size and tight workshop environment is great. Here are 3 great examples of sessions you won’t want to miss.Â
Spend some time with Daniel Burka and listen to his tips on iterative design strategies….This guy has creativity to spare. Try to soak some up.
Jon Lax is going to teach you how to run better creative projects. Don’t miss this one! Jon is one helluva guy and you will be informed and entertained!Â
Leah Culver is the co-founder of pownce. She is the lead developer and is heavily involved with a all aspects of the direction and the development of the product. Â
Great Keynotes: I really like the line up for this years keynotes. I think that these are going to be informative and entertaining. Here is the quick summ up.Â
Ethan Kaplan- I don’t know if you got a chance to check out Ethan last year, he is funny, intelligent, working on some of the cool projects. His is incredibly well versed in the all aspects of the technology and I am excited to see him on the stage. Â
Lane Merrifield- Club Penguin might mean nothing to you but your kids know it. From a Kelowna Startup to a acquisition by  Disney …There is a story there that I think everyone should hear.Â
Garret Camp- Stumble Upon has been a huge success allowing people to stumble across cool sites that others have liked. Stumble upon was acquired by Ebay in 2007 for a tidy little sum of $75 million.Â
Matt Mason - This guy has done a lot of really cool things, has a wealth of experience all of which he has penned into the book “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism“
Session Speakers:Â I like the line up of people they have this year. It seems to be quite a few new faces and some faces that we have seen before in front of the audience. I think it depends on the format that the guys choose and the makeup of the panels. I have grown less fond of panel discussions as of late ….i think it is usually due to the poor moderation. Lets hope they have this taken care of and put on some great sessions with great moderators ……or what ever formats they choose.Â
Lets Get Meshing: I am going to be at the MEsh meetup on Monday …..hope to see you there.
When:Â Monday, April 21
Where:Â The Irish Embassy Pub & Grill, 49 Yonge StreetÂ
I guess there isn’t much sense in leading into this article with elaborate lead up to a big announcement, as my title has thrown off the covers. We are excited to announce that our full API is being released to all those who have been patiently waiting on it.
The release of the ConceptShare API signals a new era in our company history. We want to enable our clients large and small to leverage our platform to further improve their projects. The API will allow users to customize the ConceptShare experience for their organizations, teams and clients.Â
Implementation
An early API implementations include automated workspace generation from a web form. Our client wanted to create an automated way to get their customers to submit projects via the website. We worked with them using the API to build this functionality. The system allowed customers to setup new project spaces from a public web form on the corporate website. Customers submit a project brief via web-form and upload associated project files. The system automatically creates a new workspace for the customer project. Information from the project brief is presented as the first concept and associated files are saved into the workspace. The system will then bring the proper people into the project space and notify them.Â
This system reduced: time spent getting projects setup, missed opportunities and communication problems throughout the project. This resulted in increased project capacity, happier customers, reduced time between design iterations, and over all better project flow. Â Â Â
SupportÂ
We are here to work with you and support your development and integration projects. We will be providing support for the API via our webforums as well as direct support at our (support at conceptshare dot com) email address.Â
I look forward to hearing about the ways that people would like to work with this. A big thanks to our faithful users who have supported ConceptShare since our inception. We appreciate all the people we have talked to about this, we have listened to what you wanted and put it in the very comprehensive API. Thank you for the support that you continue to give to us as we grow.
If you have a question call us. If you have a suggestion tell us. If you want to talk about how this can help your organization call me.Â
I am a big fan of Michael Geist…. he seems to be the only one really looking out for our rights as Canadian members of the digital community. He has sounded the alarm on one very interesting case of Bell Canada throttling DSL connections. I started to think about this …. why would ma’Bell want to throttle connections …..and why now   From where I stand they have absolutely nothing to gain from stopping torrents. What if this move was something more insidious, something that they had everything to gain? What if this is a play that surrounds the olympics … the last bastion of open competition? I had mentioned previously that NBC is going to have the most kick ass offering for the olympics.  2200 hours of full HD coverage of all sports. Presented to you on your desktop. Watchable when you want.  Would that give Bell the incentive to cap DSL? Well I guess it would if they had interest in a TV station that was presenting the olympics …… oh wait they do ….What if this play was nothing more then the first steps in making sure you turned to CTV to watch the next olympics? While CBC still has the rights for this olympics …the next ones belong to CTV …which is conveniently owned by Bell. So knowing that there is going to be a loss of revenue thru Canadian channels and that more people will watch the online coverage how can we ensure that people watch our ads on our TV stations. After spending 210 million on the rights I would have to assume that every eyeball will count. So in preparing for the sale of next olympic sponsors they want to be sure that there is going to be good data to show advertisers how many people watch the coverage on TV. So it was very easy for the sale of this years olympic advertising. Here is what people did, here is what they watched , here is the growth over the last events.
 Salt Lake CityÂ
Global consumption of the Winter Olympics reached record levels. In the USA each of the 187 million people who tuned into the event, watched on average 29 hours over the two weeks – astonishing considering the choices available to American viewers. In Norway (29 hours), Finland (22 hours) and Canada (19 hours), consumption was also huge, made more impressive by the fact that the audience reach in these countries was in the region of 95% of the population - almost every person in those countries spent most of their television time watching the Olympics in the two weeks.Â
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Salt Lake City Â
Canadians were treated to almost 700 hours of Salt Lake coverage, equating to 41 hours of Winter Games broadcasting every day of the Games on three channels, more than anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere. A decision by the broadcasters to show this much coverage was vindicated by a very successful Games for the Canadian Olympic team and record television audiences. Canada’s thrilling victory over the US in the Men’s Ice Hockey Final on the final day of the Games, which attracted a peak audience of 10.5 million viewers and a massive 36 average rating was the all time highest  television audience for a single programme in Canada.Â
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AthensÂ
In Canada, the Athens 2004 Olympic Games broadcast was a great success as viewer hours exceeded those from Sydney 2000 by 7%, establishing a new record for summer Olympic Games. Â
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Torino
Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games coverage in Canada was extensive,with broadcasters CBC,TSN and RDS offering a combined total of 557 hours of programming. The experience of the Games was eagerly anticipated,with each television viewer in Canada consuming more than 11 hours of coverage.  Â
So now what happens when this years stats come out and they indicate that a overwhelming number of Canadains watched online live coverage on NBC.com? How does that help the Ad sales? If I was an advertiser I would want to find out how I get on NBC.com. So could this be the first steps of ensuring that your audience wants to watch on TV? Providing you with the data you need to sell adds at a premium?  Could this throttling be nothing more then an ad revenue play under the guise of stopping file sharing? I guess this is the long tail problem of convergence.  As the largest (I think) provider of internet connectivity in Canada this gives them the power to ensure that people don’t find the online experience as fulfilling as watching your good old TV feed. I guess we will have to wait and see the stats on the coverage that NBC is going to deliver. Will the Canadian viewership rise as in the past or will it go online? I know that I will be watching all my coverage on NBC’s online coverage. Sorry CBC … you just aren’t flexible enough for my lifestyle.  CheersScott  Â
I am a big fan of the stuff that is going on over at Joost. A while back they were looking to do some testing on the newest addition to the Joost player. The ability to stream live to the world from the laptop using Joost. They were looking for people to help them test this new cool addition. I gladly obliged and became part of the test which lasted for most of the day.The test was nothing more then some videos being streamed live from a camera pointed at a monitor. As the day wore on you would see people walking by and then at the end of the test a hand reached in and thanked the participants and reminded people to take the time to do the survey. The survey was a quick documentation on our feedback through out the experiment ….and it had a tidy little offer of a gift certificate. 75 gbp to be exact.I did the survey as I know that is sort of the point of these beta experiments.  Well as it turns out I was one of the people who got a gift certificate….yah me.   So I am really looking forward to the release of this new feature from Joost. Should prove to be even more disruptive. Cheers Scott
How do we as Canadian tech community members spread far and wide across this great country connect and become part of a cohesive community that is there to help foster the innovation happening any where in Canada? I feel that I can speak with some sense of expertise on this as we has been digital commuters for the last 3 years or so.  We are prime examples of why we need to build a community that is going to span beyond the borders of 416/514/604 area codes.  I would much rather make Canada a Silicon Valley vs one specific area holding that title.  There have been a few interesting pieces written lately about a Canadian Tech Community Jevon’s post from startup north and David Crow had a great post … even Rick from JLA had an interesting prespective from a VC standpoint.  I wanted to take the notion a step further. How do we do it? Actually bring about some sort of ecosystem into existence? What needs to be done so that a company from Sudbury, Ottawa, Halifax, Moncton, Lethbridge or any points between can be active within a national community. I think the initial frameworks has been established through all the *camps that have been conducted across Canada and has gotten us to this point. How do we continue this on and span the country in an always on kind of way.   Here are things that I think if brought together in the right way could lead to something cool.  Â
Who is who - I think that a collective raise your hands in the air “Hi my name is Scott I am an ….” is really needed. We need to have a social network that can will allow for the base of communication. There needs to be a place where we can find Canadians who:
might  be interested in what we are doingÂ
might be doing something interesting,Â
have a rad technology
want to beta testÂ
can give UI feedbackÂ
might be able to introduce us to someone who can helpÂ
have been there before Â
Video - This seems like a Herculean task but I think as a group we can figure out some way to make it happen. There are lots of great things going on all over this country every single day. We are holding different camps for RoR, Drupal meetups, ajax and flash camps …. all great to the people who happen to be in the room but of no value to the people that are not able to be there. I can only imagine the great bits of knowledge that is being shared and could really be useful to people whom aren’t able to muster the support for a barcamp or tech meet-up in their own community.  How can we as a group compile a digital reference library of these talks, presentations , barcamps etc. Make them available to the members of the community?  Â
Showcase -  Where is the listing of tech companies in Canada? I think there should be a place where we can showcase what we are doing, a quick reference for all cool tech’s that are Canadian. This would help companies make connections with others located north of the border.Â
Collaborative Spaces - We are a part of the Toronto Tech Skype Group which is a place where all the people that are part of the Toronto Startup Tech community can drop into to ask questions, give advice and generally be part of the community. We are also part of a skype startup chat with 8 or so company leaders that give us a place to share ideas, ask questions and get feed back. This has been a valuable resource for us. Being located off the beaten path this has allowed us to be a part of discussions that we would have never been privy to.   Â
Physical Events - Physical events are required and are going to happen regardless example: Barcamps, Democamps, casecamps. Being part of the community prior only makes the importance grow. I am also more likely to hop a plane to Vancouver if I am familiar with some of the people that are going to be there, have interacted with them and listened and watched talks they have given, read stuff they have written… etc. Â
This is certainly a 50000 ft view of what I think. Is it the answer? Who knows. All I hope is that someone out there will agree with me and tell someone else and it will spread.  I have a few people in mind that I think could certainly help. Need some feedback from across the country.  Am I out to lunch or is this a viable thing? It will require you to your civic egos aside and think from a nation wide perspective. Â
I am having a real negative reaction to the whole Kelsey’s new campaign. How dare you defile my memories of a great show and try to slide in and be the place where everyone knows my name. I was there last week …. you weren’t glad I came nor did you know my name. I looked around and I didn’t find anyone with problems that were the same.
Am I the only one who thinks that this is wrong ? I mean I know from the marketing departments point of view it is a coup of monstorous proportions ? Â Personally I think that this is a cop out for real creative. How can this be called creative ? Ok so we have this song from a famous show about a bar …. lets sub in our restaurant for the bull and finch and nobody will be on to us. I have been to the Bull and Finch in Boston. I didn’t get the same feeling when I walked into Kelsey’s. There seems to be a lot of people feeling the same way about the ad.Â
The closing line is Cheers to good food ? Come on ….I smell a brand hijacking. Â Â Â
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So does it make people look at the TV when the song plays …yes it does ….do they look because they think it is Cheers …I know I did. Was I let down ….yes. Does that make it a success …Â probably.Â
If you want the true experience of Cheers …. i suggest going to the Bull and Finch around the Beacon Hill area of Boston. You will find the true outdoor shots that that were used for the TV show. They also have a true replica of the bar at Cheers Boston.Â
           It is time again for the
 
 So I am really looking forward to the release of this new feature from Joost. Should prove to be even more disruptive. Cheers Scott