From the category archives:

Community 2.0

Moving mountains

October 9, 2008

Mark and the Community Team at Microsoft Canada have been working hard on TechDays.This is the first attempt to move beyond a marketing event. Though you might not get that from the web site. It is a shift from Microsoft speakers standing on the stage with new product announcements and walkthroughs to sharing the stage [...]

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Galvanize the Empire

October 2, 2008

Jevon beat me to the punch. We have added a great group of speakers to the StartupEmpire program including: Don Dodge – Don is a Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team and was recently a panelist at the TechCrunch50 conference (check out his summary of TC50 launches: investor services & tools; social [...]

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StartupEmpire is the new black

September 24, 2008

Leave it to two knuckleheads, who tend to just do things rather than planning. The result is often something other than what was expected, sometimes you get bitten on the ass for your actions. Jevon and I both jumped the gun, showing you why entrepreneurs need help with logistics, legals and trademarks. Apparently there was [...]

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The battle for local

August 18, 2008

Lost Remote has a great description of the pending battle for local attention and advertising. It’s a great summary of the challenges and opportunities for each media outlet. Television Newspapers Radio “GYM” aka Google/Yahoo/Microsoft et al. Craigslist and paid classifieds Pure play locals City guides Yellow pages and other directories Alt weeklies and local magazines [...]

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Happiness as Your Business Model

July 2, 2008

Patrick points to a presentation by Tara Hunt. I can’t wait for Tara’s new book. This is a fun evolution in thinking about people, communities, and building a better place. | View | Upload your own There is the opportunity to make $$ making people happy – Tara Hunt The Universals of Happiness autonomy competence [...]

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Congratulations Bryce

June 18, 2008

Wow, Bryce and W.R. and Veronica and Sadie are all moving to Seattle. Bryce announed yesterday his big, exciting news. Bryce is joining the Microsoft Dynamics team as a User Experience Designer. This is phenominal and sad. As a Microsoft shareholder, the value of the company has increased. Bryce has done fantastic user experience design [...]

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Anniversaries

June 4, 2008

Today is my 1 year anniversary at Microsoft Canada. I’m guessing there are a lot of unhappy gamblers in the pool. It’s been a fun year. May and June are always full of surprises and changes, fortunately this year the changes were much less scary and exciting. Less scary.  Anybody remember DemoCampToronto6? Unfortunately I don’t, [...]

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Status is better than cash

April 27, 2008

Scientific American is reporting a study that shows “that money and social values are processed in the same brain region, providing insight into how we make choices”. Whuffie might be significantly more important factor in how people make decisions than cash rewards. “Although we intuitively know that a good reputation makes us feel good, the [...]

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The Adoption Funnel & Evangelism Marketing

April 24, 2008

Cross posted on CommunityNorth.ca | View | Upload your own Evangelism is… It was used more in the evangelistic sense of preaching, pounding on the pavement, getting the job done, taking the battle to the customer – all that stuff. And that’s the sense. It was kind of a good way of saying that this [...]

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Community lifecycle

April 11, 2008

Gordon makes reference to the customer lifecycle to as a method for thinking about the participants in community activities. Bruce Clay and Janet Ryan elaborate on the buying continuum: Reach – Claim someone’s attention Acquisition – Bring that person into your sphere of influence  Conversion – Turn that person into a paying customer Retention – [...]

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