Sheldon Levine aka. 40deuce
Master of Professional Communication. (self professed) Super-Genius. Social media misfit. Music addict. Smack talker. Loves to fall in love. Big kid. Awesome dude.
This is a collection of some of my personal blogs and such from around the interwebs.
Updates
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It's way past my bedtime and calling it quits. G'nite!
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I'm hungry, but I don't keep snacks in my house. Where's that delivery pie truck when you need it?
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@JonGauthier @unmarketing Thanks for the sell Jon!
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@sammygould Thanks!
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Forced into stopping work by some good friends who came by to celebrate my bday with me
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WHAT!!! Outlook's web access doesn't have my flagged folder!!! I hate Outlook!!
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@michellekostya Thanks Michelle!
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Ok, I think it's time to leave the office. No gym today either. Too much work to finish. Sucks
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@GusF Thanks man! There's still so much to do today though, and home is quite distracting
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@ashbergs Always willing to learn something new
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Woohoo!! Another blog post down! Only one more to write tonight! May do this next one from home. It is my birthday after all
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@ashbergs nerd!
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@gretchen I'm slightly aware that one may exist, but I have you on Twitter =)
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@randymatheson Until they hire me an assistant, someone has to get this stuff done
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@randymatheson Lots and lots of writing (still going) and a bit of strategic planning
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@casiestewart Everyone appreciates the effort =)
Posts
July 30, 11:51 AM
I've been very busy with work lately and haven't had time to really write a post here in a while. My apologies.
However, I did write a guest post for the oneforty.com blog yesterday that I really liked and I think you should read it. Rather than re-posting it here and stealing their readers, I'm just going to link to it. It's about finding an easy way for all departments in your company to have a handle on what's going on in social media without really disrupting their regular work flow. Check it out and enjoy:
June 28, 06:48 PM
Yesterday on the Sysomos blog, my colleague Mark Evans wrote a great post about what's in it for consumers if they "like" or follow your brand in social media? Some people will do that out of a real love for a specific brand, but most brands are trying to get anyone and everyone to also "like" them. But what are brands doing to earn that? Some aren't doing anything besides just asking you to "like" and follow them. This idea ties in perfectly with a picture I took this weekend.
This weekend I went out for a friend's birthday to a bar I've never been to before in the Toronto area (the name isn't important). What was interesting about this bar was that up on the wall was a giant poster, which I took a picture of because I thought it was semi humorous and I'd never seen a poster quite like this one before. This is the poster that was in the bar:
I thought it was semi clever of the bar to have a big reminder to check-in on Foursquare, Gowalla or Yelp. I would have checked in anyways (I need the points so I can beat my friends), but perhaps some people wouldn't have thought about it until they saw this sign. So, I checked in and... and nothing. That was the end of it.
I've seen posters and signs in places before reminding people to check-in, but usually it's because there's a deal to be had with that check-in or at least something for the mayor of that specific place. In this case though there was nothing beyond merely checking in. I thought that a bit strange.
What does my check-in do for that bar besides possibly a tiny bit of publicity to those that check where I've been on Foursquare (as I don't push my check-ins to Twitter or Facebook or anything). You would think that since they were clearly asking the pubic for a favour, by asking them to check-in, there would be some sort of "reward" or something to go along with that check-in, but there wasn't.
This goes back to my original question; what did this brand do to earn me checking in? I'm not really a fan of the bar in question, so I didn't do it out of my love for them. There was no deal for anyone who checks-in, mayor or otherwise. So what's in it for the average consumer to actual check-in? In this case nothing and I learned my lesson.
This also goes back to the Sysomos post from yesterday. Brands need to offer something to get people really engaged with them. It doesn't have to be a free something-or-other or even a discount, but there should be something to make us want to engage with these brands. Otherwise they're just asking us all to do some free advertising for them with absolutely nothing in return. That's not really a way to keep people engaged with your brand, that's a way to try to get people to advertise for you for free whether they really want to or not.
So here's my question I'm going to ask and you can answer in the comment section; What are you offering your audience in return for them taking time to engage with you? Content? Discounts? Engaging conversation? Anything?
Or, am I just being petty?
June 24, 12:20 AM
People by nature are social. That's pretty much the reason that social media has become so popular. We like to talk and connect with people over all kinds of things. But is there ever such thing as too much connecting? Can someone be fully into this social media revolution of "let's all be connected" and still have some kind of online privacy?
I face this challenge every day. Yes, I love social media. Yes, I love connecting with people over all kinds of things. Yes, I'm open to meeting and becoming friends with almost anyone anywhere in the world. However, sometimes I don't need the whole world to know EVERY little thing about me and what I do. That's why I'm pretty much open to connecting with people almost anywhere in the real world and online, but I reserve my Facebook for just select people.
I look at Facebook as a place to stay in touch with my real friends. Most of my good friends aren't into the whole social media lifestyle and Facebook is the one place that most of them are online. It's a place where can share pictures and talk and whatever. It's not like there's any incriminating evidence of me doing weird and/or illegal things there, but it's the one place online that I keep for just me and my friends.
I don't think it's that strange of a practice. I'm sure a lot of people do this. I mean, we've all heard the stories of people that have been fired because of something they said on Facebook forgetting that they're Facebook friends with their boss. Sometimes there's just a need to have a little private space.
I've been fairly good about sticking to this rule. Every once and a while I get a friend request from someone who I spoke to once on Twitter about business and I kindly let it slide. However, some people get offended when you don't become their "friend."
Here's my question though; do they have the right to get angry about it? Am I an asshole for not accepting their friend request?
I would understand if they were someone who considered you to be a real good friend, but someone who you sent two tweets to hardly constitutes a friend. I add work colleagues to Facebook, but only the ones that I've gotten to know and really consider a friend. People assume though that because I'm available to connect pretty much everywhere online, why wouldn't I let them into Facebook as well?
Is it too much to want a little bit of privacy online in a social media world?
I don't want to sound like a jerk or anything when I write this. I actually kind of mean it as a serious question. I've told you what I think of this, I'd love to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let me know if you think I'm a jerk or not. Do you have a private space on the internet? Do you wish you did?
March 07, 01:09 AM
Hello friends, it's been a while. Been a bit busy with work and havent found the time to blog lately, but today I have an alliterative motive to blogging. It's because I'm going to SXSWi and I want to be able to meet as many awesome people as I can while I'm there.
I've been working as a community manager for Sysomos for almost a year now (about 10 months) and I've built up a great network of people online, but haven't had a chance to meet many in person yet. I think a lot of these great people will be down at SXSWi beacuse it's a gathering of social media and tech people, and I want to meet as many as posible. I want to meet current clients, potential clients, social media writers and bloggers and pretty much everyone else that will be there.
On top of the Sysomos community, I have a great bunch of people in my online networks that I know from outside other places whom will also be down in Austin. I want to meet all of them too. If you can't tell I'm really excited to go down to Texas and pretty much meet everyone I can to expand both my company's and my own networks (although, they are kind of one in the same).
So if you're going to be down in Austin for South By South West Interactive, please let me know and lets meet in real life. If you're there and looking for me, because I hide my face in most of my online avatars, this is what I look like:
Meeting people isn't the only reason I'm excited to go though. I'm not sure if anyone knows this but I used to work in the music industry. Before there was an "i" on the end of SXSW, South By South West was a music festival/convention that I always wanted to go to. Tons of big bands and smaller emerging artists always play there and I always wanted to go down to check it out. I always attend NXNE which happens in Toronto, but I heard that SXSW was much crazier and better. I hope I can catch some wicked music while I'm down.
And of course, I'm also excited about the "geek parties". To go along with my wanting to meet people, I've heard the best way to do this is at the parties that go on during SXSWi. I have also heard many an epic story that has come from the parties for geeks at SXSWi and I can't wait to attend some of them. I don't think I have to say any more about this. You understand.
SO, if you're going to be down at SXSWi, I want to meet you. If you're not going to be there but know someone who is, chances are I want to meet them too. Leave me a comment here and let me know you're going. Also, tweet at me, I'm @40deuce, so I can add you to my list of people I need to meet at SXSWi.
See you in Austin!
[The great photo of me above is courtesy of Rannie Turigan]
January 03, 06:07 PM
Happy new year everyone!!
I've been meaning to write a post on the idea of online influence for a while, but every time I think I have all my thoughts in order I think of something else I want to say. This morning though, I read a great article in Advertising Age about the difference in popularity and influence and it really seemed to be on the same thought wave that I am about the whole concept. It really got my mind racing, so I thought today would be the day to sit down and bang this out.
A lot of people in the social media community seem to be talking a lot about 2011 being the year of "influence". The only problem, in my opinion, is that no one really has the concept down properly. And that's probably not just my opinion, as a lot of people have been up in arms after hearing that Klout, a company that measures online influence, claimed that Justin Bieber is one of the most influential people in social media. According to the way Klout ranks influence though, it's absolutely true (and they back up their statement well here) To me, I see the problem as this not being the true idea of influence.
Now don't get me wrong. I have nothing at all against Klout. I've participated in one of their campaigns and loved it. I've had the Klout people guest moderate on my #smmeasure chat. I even met a couple of the Klout employees here in Toronto and keep in touch with them. When we met, I spoke with Megan Berry and I believe that Klout really is intent on constantly refining their process for determining online influence. However, for now and from how I understand their metrics to work, it plays off a bit more like online popularity.
To me, the difference between popularity and influence comes from an internal motivation. Liking and respecting someone are different than being influenced by them. We as people like a lot of stuff. It's part of our human way of classifying things so that we can understand. One of the easiest classifications for us is "things I like" and "things I don't like". Things we like we tend to pay attention to and things we don't like we tend to ignore.
In the online world there is so much stuff floating around and we tend to be drawn to search out the things we like. This includes web pages, products and even people. In social media we tend to follow people we like, people we respect and people we think are interesting or have interesting ideas. Some of these people seem to have large followings because they do embody one of these categories. These people are popular. Are they influential though?
To some people, yes. But I think to a majority of people they are popular and because of that are likely to have more people hear what they have to say. They have the ability to make sure thousands or even millions of people hear what they have to say, which is great, but just because I hear you doesn't mean you necessarily influence me.
To me, influence means that I trust someone enough to have their thoughts and opinions actually motivate me to do something. The key for me is the word "trust". When I really deeply trust someone I let their thoughts affect my own. And trust, I mean real trust, takes time to build. This is why I think the only real influence we get as people come from our trusted social circles and not some of the big "talking heads" we like to read online.
An example I like to use while talking about this with people is the online wine community. There is no doubt that Gary Vaynerchuk is one of, if not the most, popular online wine aficionados. People all over the world watch his Wine Library TV to see what he has to say. However, while Gary may bring new and interesting wines to the world's attention, does he necessarily influence what people think of wines?
In what I know of the world of wine (which really isn't too much) I've found that wine lovers are small communities of friends and acquaintances that like together and sip wine. They are usually like minded people who trust each others opinions and thoughts. These people influence each other on their wine thoughts. While Gary Vaynerchuk may bring new wine to their attention, it's when someone in their social circle recommends the wine that really gets people to act on it (in this case it would be buying or trying a wine).
It's through these much smaller social circles that I think real influence comes from. These social circles are made up of people whom we like, respect and most importantly trust. The trust is the key to motivation, meaning influence. I think that that if marketers and communications people really want to get a handle on influence they will need to find ways to penetrate these smaller social circles and reach out to the people there rather than go for the big popular talking heads.
I also want to point out here that I do think that popularity does have a part in the role of influence, but not nearly as much as a concept like trust does.
Going back to Klout, I think that they are working on ways to find these people that are influential within these smaller social circles. A problem they face though is that a lot of these social circles exist more offline than they do online. It's not to say that they aren't online, but there is something that these offline bonds have that just isn't found as much online.
In the meantime though, are a lot of people still going to see what popular people like Justin Bieber and Gary Vaynerchuck have to say? Of course. But are these people really having true influence over those that hear what they have to say? I don't think so. They may turn our heads to something we previously didn't know about, but true motivation to do or buy something new will come from inside of us and our feelings of trust towards who is telling us.
I know personally I trust my actual friends a lot more than the word of someone I've never met or spoken to but follow on Twitter.
And that's my rant on the idea of online influence. What do you think? Are we ever going to be able to truly measure the idea of influence?
December 29, 01:18 AM
I was planning on writing my year end blog tonight, but I'm now saving it for a few days so that I could write about this great documentary I saw yesterday.
Yesterday I was invited over to some friends' place to watch the documentary We Live In Public. It's dubbed the story of the greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of. The tag line does not lie.
We Live In Public is the story of an internet entrepreneur named Josh Harris. Josh Harris was a leader in the dot-com scene/ explosion in the end of the 90's. He started the first internet television network called Pseudo, but was obsessed with the idea of putting people's lives on the internet. He hit the hight of his obsession with two projects, or experiments as he called them, both with the title of We Live In Public.
The first "experirment" was actually called Quiet: We Live In Public. For this project Harris took 100 people and had them live in an underground bunker like building he specially built for a month. Inside the bunker he had set up pods for sleeping and hundreds of cameras and TVs that only showed what was on the cameras. The people were given free food, drink, board and even artillery (they had a shooting range in the bunker) in exchange for Harris being allowed to tape everything and probe for information from the inhabitants. The thing that was unclear to me was if this whole thing was streaming to the outside world on the internet, but I assumed it was given the nature of the man. It looks like it started off fun, but people eventually started to go a bit nuts with their whole lives being viewed publicly 24/7.
The second "experiment" Harris tried was just called We Live In Public. This was the first ever reality show almost. For this project Harris wired up his entire home with cameras and streamed the life of him and his then girlfriend to the world along with an interactive chat feature. Again, the pressure of being in the eye of the public 24/7 proved to be too much and his girlfriend left him and he eventually became frustrated with it and shut it down.
While these experiments on their own seemed really interesting, it was the commentary of the film and how ahead of his time Harris was that really struck me.
Today, social media is exactly like Harris' dream of what the internet would become. It's people talking about and sharing their lives with complete strangers via the interwebs. Through the use of blogs and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Flickr and other forms of web 2.0 we are all sharing our lives. Some more than others, but still enough of us that it's become almost the norm. Harris saw this happening over 10 years ago.
I don't want to ruin the whole film for you because I really think that everyone who lives and plays on the interwebs should see this film, but I need to give you one more quote from the movie. Harris makes a great play on Andy Warhols' famous "15 minutes of fame" idea by saying (and this may or may not be an exact quote as I'm working from memory), "people want their 15 minutes of fame... every day." I think that perfectly summarizes how some of us internet folk are everyday.
Yes, we do it for the social interaction and to share ideas in ways we couldn't 10 or 15 years ago, but we also do it for personal reasons. We all want to do something extraordinary and more than that, we want to be recognized for it. Even I'm guilty of this. In a world where we can be known around the world for something small, why wouldn't we constantly try to stand out?? Why wouldn't we try anything to be in the eye of as much public as we can if we have the means to??
The question will soon become though, like it did in the movie, how long can live our lives in public?? How long will social media be like it is?? How much of our lives can we share before we NEED to pull back??
Check out the trailer for We Live In Public here:
If you've seen the movie, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts about it. If you haven't seen the movie, see it, then let me know what you think. If you haven't seen the movie and don't want to see it, I'd still love to know your thoughts about living our lives in public through the internet, so leave me a comment and lets talk about it.
December 15, 10:31 AM
I'm by no means a big fan of politics. I pay attention enough to have some idea of what's going on here and there, but not much beyond that. But, like a large portion of the world I've become kind of enthralled by WikiLeaks. (I linked to a Google search because the web address for the site keeps changing)
While some of the things that have been released by the information leaking organization are chock full of interesting information about some of the most powerful countries in the world, I don't want to talk about that in this post. I don't want to talk about the continuing adventures of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. I don't even really want to talk about WikiLeaks specifically. What I do want to talk about is how from a social media slash PR perspective, the world was ready for something like WikiLeaks.
While some of the world has a certain perspective on PR people as "spin artists", those in the industry know different. One of the first things they told me in PR school was "don't lie." People want the truth. If you're going to give the public information about something, don't lie. There are certain ways to handle certain situations, but most seasoned PR professionals will tell you that lying usually comes back to bite you in the ass.
Then, In social media we talk a lot about transparency. Transparency is almost the exact same thing as "don't lie", but people in social media like to use it more. It also goes a bit beyond just don't lie and covers ideas like don't hide information, full disclosure and be accountable for your own actions. People now demand transparency from companies and celebrities and pretty much everyone in the world through social media.
If we demand these things from companies and people we look up to, why would we not demand the same from our governments?? The answer is we do, most people just wouldn't know how to act on that. Luckily though, some do.
While I don't believe some information should go out, such as releasing the names of spies or anything that really puts lives at risks, there are some things that people wanted to know their governments are up to. Sometimes governments do things that are morally wrong and more and more people are starting to stand up against this. There is no way to make them stop if we don't know about these things. The release of this information helps to hold people accountable for their actions. This is what the majority of people demand today.
Of course the people involved in the information released are upset, but that's what happens when dirty secrets get out. It's no different from when anyone's secrets get out. And when secrets get out we (usually) call people on them and want them to be accountable for their actions.
When companies do things that are immoral we call them out for it. To think that the same shouldn't be done with governments is just silly. People always want more information and when they find things that are wrong they want people to take responsibility for it. WikiLeaks has helped to bring some of that information to light for people to see.
That's why I think the world was ready for something like WikiLeaks.
November 04, 01:29 AM
I wanted to get this blog out a little while ago, but I lost the key component. I've found it now, but it's a little crumpled up, but at least I found it. So, without further ado, here it is and the blog post begins...
So you think your company needs to get more involved with social media, but they're not willing to? How do make them understand? The best answer I've seen from many other social media people is to show them what's going on online involving the company.
A few weeks ago I was speaking at something for the Ontario Government about social media and I met William Young, a senior issues analyst for the cabinet office. He showed me a little report that he makes up every week for his office he calls "Blog Watch."
Every week William puts together a report that highlights some things going on in the social media space that relates to his specific office. He splits it up into three sections:
- Featured Blog Topic of the Week: Here he writes about the most prevalent issue he found being talked about in the blogosphere or the one he thinks is most important. He gives a breakdown of what was being said and a couple quotes.
- Weekly Blog Report: In this section William takes other subjects being talked about in blogs and gives a brief description of each.
- Social Media Themes: In this last section he highlights issues from Twitter.
I like the idea of doing this in a report for a couple reasons. It's much more professional looking than just telling your boss. It separates social media areas to show just how many places the talk could be going on. Most importantly, it shows specific examples.
I think if you can put something like this together your boss may just see what you're talking about.
What do you think of this idea? Do you have a better idea for getting your higher-ups to believe you that you need to be more involved in social media?
October 12, 10:39 AM
A few weeks ago my friend Melissa asked me to help her out with some videos she was making for her work. She was interviewing "experts" about different subjects that they specialize in.
She tapped me as a social media expert. Who knew? Someone thinks I'm an expert at something.
Doing the interview was fun. It was very casual and I had a little bit of fun with it. It didn't hurt that I also knew everyone in the room at the time and we're a bunch that likes to joke and fool around. I think the lightness of it though makes the whole thing work.
Anyways, after a few weeks of patiently waiting, they uploaded the video. Bellow you can find me being an expert on something.
After you watch, please do me a favour and leave a comment letting me know what you think. This was my first time being an expert on anything and I'd really appreciate some feedback.
September 21, 12:10 AM
No, Weird Al isn't really dead. Your geeky mind can rest at ease.
I was having a conversation the other day about Weird Al with a couple friends about how we used love him. He was a huge part of so many of my friends' childhoods. But, where is he now?
He's still putting out records (he had one last year. I looked it up on Amazon to be sure), but how many people are listening to them? I was surprised to even see that he's still doing music (No offense Al). How many kids these days know the genius that is Weird Al? Probably not a lot. Why do you think this is? I'll tell you why: the internet.
Back when Weird Al was a big deal, things like music sharing and YouTube didn't exist. Weird Al got a record deal for being the best parody artist around. He was signed to a real record label and had world-wide major distribution of actual physical products (remember when music came like that?). This is how music got to the masses not too long ago.
The internet changed all that. Now any yahoo with some kind of device that records can create a parody song and upload it to the interweb for the whole world to see. You don't even need musical talent anymore. People are making funny songs and putting them on the internet at an alarming rate. It's hard for anyone to really stand out amongst the crowd of "parody artists" on the net. Something that's hilarious one day is old news and forgotten the next. Remember this one:
Probably not. But that's my point.
Songs don't even need to parody other songs anymore. They can parody real life situations caught on tape now also. Look how popular the "bed intruder" guy is! This song is iTunes for gods sake:
The point is old channels of distribution are dying. Everyone talks about paper is dying because of the internet, but it's not the only thing. Everything that used to get distributed physically is completely changed due to the internet. And if they haven't, they better or they could get left behind.
The days of the international parody artist may behind be us, but I am enjoying all the little stars that pop up every day.
Also, I still love you Weird Al!
August 10, 01:01 AM
This weekend Mitch Joel posted a fantastic article entitled "The Real Time Web is a Big Problem for the Web". In it he talked about how when things spread in real-time, like say over Twitter, it's not always the easiest to keep up. He used the story of how a plane had crashed and someone in the vicinity tweeted about it right away. Mitch saw the tweet and immediately checked CNN's website, but there was nothing about it there.
In today's society where we're exposed to information at a constant and quick pace through things like social media, instant messaging and cell phones that we expect everything else to be keeping up with us. Is that really possible?
In Mitch's case, a big news outlet like CNN has to hear about a story, do some research on the topic (even if that's just checking if said story is even really happening), write something up, edit it, get approval, send it to their guy that puts stories up on the site and then publish it before any of us common folk get to see it.
Mitch isn't alone with this problem. Tons of people, myself included, think of something and then expect instant gratification. Unfortunately the world doesn't always work like that.
I remember when I was young and I had a question, I had to wait to got home and then hope I still remembered the question. Then I could try and look it up in an encyclopedia and even then it wouldn't always hold my answer. A few years later the internet came around and if I could remember a question by the time I got home I could then google it. Now, I carry around an iPhone and when I have a question I can pull my phone out of my pocket and look up an answer instantly. Everything should be like that, right?
I work and talk a lot about brands monitoring social media for people talking about them. I wholeheartedly believe that they should be doing this and respond to a comment or join a conversation when they can. The problem is when we're the one waiting and expecting for that company to answer, we expect it to come almost instantly.
If I'm having a problem with a piece of software and I tweet at their twitter account, I would want them to answer me right away. But what if I was having my problem at 3am in the morning? Would I still expect them to respond right away? Probably, but that isn't a very realistic expectation.
You have to remember that whoever is on the other end is just a person (sometimes more than one, but still people). We say that we want brands to show us the real people working for them, but then we sometimes expect those people to be super people.
At work I handle our companies Twitter account from Toronto, but we deal with people all around the world. If someone in Australia tweets at me at my 4am, I'm not going to be able to answer them until I'm awake and moving in the morning. I'm a person too and I need my time to sleep, eat and do other things that take me away from the computer for more than five minutes at a time. I will answer them, but it probably won't be at 4:05am.
The problem with coming to this realization is that it's not going to really change anything. You're still going to expect people and brands to answer you instantly when you have a problem, or else you're going to say that they're not doing a good job with social media. Even worse is that writing this isn't going to change my perception on how the world should work either. Despite me being on the side that is supposed to be "watching all the time" and knowing the limitations to that statement, I'm still probably going to want another brand to be on the ready at my beck and call.
I suppose that's just the way our society has evolved... for now.
I figure as long as we can try to remember some of this every now and again, it's better than nothing.
What do you think?
July 15, 12:43 AM
Now that I'm working in the world of social media monitoring I hear and read a lot of stuff about sentiment. Mainly the talk is about negative sentiment. "We don't want people to say bad things about us", "What should I do if people are saying bad things about us?", "Here's how to deal with negative people", etc.
Now that everyone can have a voice on the internet they can also say whatever they want about whatever they want. Companies seem to have two main problems with this; a) they don't want people to say bad things in places where the entire world can see, and b) they're not sure what to do when people say something negative about them.
There's nothing you or anyone can do about the first one. People are going to speak bad about things all the time whether you're there or not, so you might as well be there. Get over that fear.
The second problem is going to have millions of answers for millions of different scenarios. The one thing that I will recommend you always do though is listen to what they're saying. Even if you're not going to respond, listen. The people who speak bad about you are your best critics in terms of constructive criticism.
Sometimes these people are just venting frustration about things, but sometimes these people are complaining because they think you're doing something wrong. Chances are if one person thinks it others do as well. If you listen to what these people are saying you're doing wrong, you have a basis to work off of on how to fix what you're doing.
When people tell you that you're doing something wrong it means that while they have something negative to say now, they're still paying attention to you. These people are part of your public, and social media in a corporate sense is about bringing together your public with your company. These people are paying attention to you but telling you they think you're doing something wrong. That means there's a good chance they want to pay attention to you and like what you're doing. By listening to these people you're getting insight into how to best reach your public in a positive way.
Some companies go for the quick fix. A quick response online apologizing and trying to make amends with a single person at a time. But, not everyone is always going to speak up. Like I said earlier, if one person has criticism of your company, chances are others are feeling the same way. Rather than respond to the ones that speak up one by one, listen to what they're saying and take it in to account when doing your next phase of planning. Don't buy people off, make them really like you by listening to what they say and take it into account.
Haters are always going to hate. People are always going to complain about something. You're not going to be able to change in response to every piece of criticism, but you are getting free input from the people that should matter to you.
Haters are gonna hate, but you should learn to embrace their hatred.
June 13, 01:58 PM
My best friend got married, I just moved into a new apartment, but most importantly I started a new job!!!
Yes, that's right folks, all my searching and hard work has paid off because I landed myself a new job that I'm super excited about!! I'm now the community manager for Sysomos, a company that makes social media monitoring software. This job is everything I was looking for. I get to do a perfect mix of PR and social media. I get to meet and talk to new people all day long about interesting things. What's not be excited about? Also, I really like the people at the company and the software, so this is going to be awesome!
Tomorrow morning on the Sysomos blog I'll be making my introduction to the community, so feel free to keep an eye out for that.
So, that's where I've been hiding, but now that I'm starting to settle in I'll be back posting here regularly again. Hopefully this new job wil give me even better inspiration for things to write about as well.
May 18, 08:08 AM
I wanted to have this post up last week, but a few discussions around the topic with some people made me want to go back and reformulate it a bit.
The idea for this post started because of my last post. I was feeling kind of proud about it. I thought it was one of the more intellectual posts that I've written here. But then, no one really said anything about it. More than that, no one was commenting on it. Not that I want you to think I'm begging for comments, but something about it made me think people would have something to say about it, agreeing or disagreeing.
I mentioned something about it, which sparked a little conversation between me and some people on twitter.
A friend of mine (@joncrowley) says that sometimes when people don't comment it's because you succeeded at getting your point across well. No one has anything to add or disagree with in the post. This could be very true, but even so, perhaps that is something they could have said.
This reminded me of a blog post by another Toronto social media blogger, Dave Fleet, who wrote that Commenting Makes You Sexy. In his post he says that he enjoys getting comments of any sort on his blog because it gives him a chance to interact with and get to know his readers. He gets to know if they like what he writes, if they have something to add or if they disagree with what he has to say.
This is what every blogger should want. Feedback from your audience. That way you get to know what your audience likes that you write about and what they don't. With this information you can then write better for your audience. Seeing your posts get so many clicks is one way bloggers can know if their material is being well received, but it's not the the feed back of the actual words.
On the topic of click numbers, a former teacher and current friend of mine, Karen Snider, said that comments aren't the only measurement for blogs, and she's absolutely right. There all sorts of different types of measurement.
This topic also came up in Danny Brown's blog last week, The Metrics of Social Media. In the post he listed some ways in which companies can start measuring the success of their social media campaigns. Some examples I first picked out were things like "likes on facebook" or "views on youtube", and how these numbers also related to sales. Down in the comments though, began a great discussion of what ROI in social media means and how different measurements mean different things for different campaigns. I brought up the topic of public sentiment and we discussed how both a mix of sentiment and other numbers can be put together to find success (or to find out what doesn't work).
Again this is true. Especially when we're dealing with companies who are ultimately trying to turn their social media efforts into actual sales. The more numbers they have to look at, the more they can find out what their public really responds to and constantly improve to reach them better. These are the number they can gather both through analyzing sentiment and other web analytics.
In the end I came to the conclusion that comments can mean different things to different people. But they seem to come around to the same thing; gathering sentiment. Both companies and bloggers like to know what their publics think of what they are doing. This way they can both better get to know and improve for their audiences.
While comments are not everything, they are helpful and always good to see.
Any comments?
May 18, 01:08 AM
I wanted to have this post up last week, but a few discussions around the topic with some people made me want to go back and reformulate it a bit.
The idea for this post started because of my last post. I was feeling kind of proud about. I thought it was one of the more intellectual posts I've written here. But then, no one really said anything about it. More than that, no one was commenting on it. Not that I want you to think I'm begging for comments, but something about it made me think people would have something to say about it, agreeing or disagreeing.
I mentioned something about it, which sparked a little conversation between me and some people on twitter.
A friend of mine (@joncrowley) says that sometimes when people don't comment it's because you succeeded at getting your point across well. No one has anything to add or disagree with. This could be very true, but even so, perhaps that is something they could have said.
This reminded me of a blog post by another Toronto social media blogger, Dave Fleet, who wrote that Commenting Makes You Sexy. In his post he says that he enjoys getting comments of any sort on his blog because it gives him a chance to interact with and get to know his readers. He gets to know if they like what he writes, if they have something to add or if they disagree with what he has to say.
This is what every blogger should want. Feedback from your audience. That way you get to know what your audience likes that you write about and what they don't. With this information you can then write better for your audience. Seeing your posts get so many clicks is one way bloggers can know if their material is being well received, but it's not the the feed back of the actual words.
On the topic of click numbers, a former teacher and current friend of mine, Karen Snider, said that comments are the only measurement for blogs, and she's absolutely right. There all sorts of different types of measurement.
This topic also came up in Danny Brown's blog last week, The Metrics of Social Media. In the post he listed some ways in which companies can start measuring the success of their social media campaigns. Some examples I first picked out were things like "likes on facebook" or "views on youtube", and how these numbers also related to sales. Down in the comments though began a great discussion of what ROI in social media means and how different measurements mean different things for different campaigns. I brought up the topic of public sentiment and we discussed how both a mix of sentiment and other numbers can be mixed to find success (or to find out what doesn't work).
Again this is true. Especially when we're dealing with companies who are ultimately trying to turn their social media efforts into actual sales. The more numbers they have to look at, the more they can find out what their public really responds to and constantly improve to reach the better. These are the number they can gather both through analyzing sentiment and other web analytics.
In the end I came to the conclusion that comments can mean different things to different people. But they still same to come around to the same thing; gathering sentiment. Both companies and bloggers like to know what their publics think of what they are doing. This way they can both better get to know and improve for their audiences.
While comments are not everything, they are helpful and always good to see.
Any comments?
May 06, 01:49 PM
While I was in my Masters program down in Australia one of my big semester-long projects was to come up with a full communications plan for a fictitious company. Of course, I decided to make my plan focus around the use of social media.
I came up with a plan I called "The Three I's". I liked it, and I did fairly well on the project. I added the comm. plan to my portfolio to show perspective employers, and those who saw it seemed to like the idea. One even asked if I had come up with it "all by myself"? Although, it didn't get me that job.
Anyways, that got me thinking. My Three I's plan worked for that specific project, but in reality I now believe that it can, and should, be applied to all social media campaigns. Let me explain...
The three I's of my plan stand for: Inform, Interact and Integrate.
These three simple things should be the goal of every social media campaign. Here's why:
First, social media is a way to stay in constant contact with your publics. The first thing you'll want to do through your points of contact is to Inform your public. You want to inform them of your company/product, things you're doing, things you're working on, etc. Pretty much anything that you feel your publics should know you can pass along through social media. Always be informing your public. The more info they have, the more they get to know you/your company/your product.
The second "I" stands for Interact. Any half-decent so-called social media expert (myself included) should tell you that social media is not a soap box to yell from, but rather a place to converse and interact with your publics. Once you've disseminated some information you've (usually) created something where a conversation can start. People can talk about liking or not liking your information, or it could go deeper into conversations about how the info came to be, or suggestions on how to improve on said information. The key is to have this conversation go on between your public and your own brand.
Interact doesn't only have to be about the information from the first "I" either. Conversations about any and all facets of companies/products are taking place across social media all the time whether you're involved or not. It would be much better if you were involved. This could be from jumping in on others' conversations, to responding to blog posts written about your company/product, or simply just answering messages sent to you by your public.
The key here is to make sure you're interacting with your public, not just (figuratively) shouting things at them.
The key here is to make sure you're interacting with your public, not just (figuratively) shouting things at them.
The last "I" is the most important one. It also incorporates the first two I's. This one is Integrate, and refers to bringing all parties together into one single community. It's not just enough to try and get stick your head in when people are talking about your company/product. People not only want to know that you are listening, but they want to know that you care and respect them. They want to feel like a part of your community. They want to feel welcomed by you. The more welcome they feel the more they will interact with you and the more they will like/respect you.
In my project I referred to creating this warm and welcoming enviroment by creating what is known as a "virtual third space". There are three key factors to creating this virtual third space, and here is how I laid them out in my project (the italics are what I'm adding in to generalize for every social media campaign, since my original project only focused on one specific campaign):
1) “Virtual third places should situate the interaction in clearly defined locations and/or cultural contexts.” (Soukup, 433)
My actual school project went into a bit more detail, but I think (and hope) you get the point of what I was trying to say.
In my personal opinion, if you can accomplish these three I's in your social media campaign then you have a great success on your hands. Of course there are other factors to look at like hard numbers for your ROI purposes and what not, but achieving these three I's should be a goal for all social media campaigns as well.
So next time you're putting together a social media campaign try to remember to Inform, Interact and Integrate.
I'd love to know what you think of my "Three I's" idea, so please leave some comments and let me know.
Reference:
Soukup, Charles. (2006). Computer-Mediated Communication as a Virtual Third Place: Building Oldenburg’s Great Good Places on the World Wide Web. New Media and Society. Vol8(3):421–440
In my project I referred to creating this warm and welcoming enviroment by creating what is known as a "virtual third space". There are three key factors to creating this virtual third space, and here is how I laid them out in my project (the italics are what I'm adding in to generalize for every social media campaign, since my original project only focused on one specific campaign):
1) “Virtual third places should situate the interaction in clearly defined locations and/or cultural contexts.” (Soukup, 433)
- This will be where you will interact with your community. This could be one specific location, such as your website, or across multiple social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Deli.cio.us, etc), or any combination of online spaces.
2) “A virtual third place must create an environment that attracts diverse community members to join in and participate with the discourse.” (Soukup, 434)
- This refers to both where you are putting yourself as well as what information you are putting in those places. You may have different segments of the population you want to bring into your community and they probably interact in different locations and in different ways. For instance, your younger targets may be on Facebook and interact there through quick messages and the "like" button, while your older target publics may prefer Twitter and they like to have full conversations with you through it. The point is to know the diversity of your public and know how to make them feel warm and welcome as part of your community.
- This third points touches on the first two along with my first two I's. If you're putting out the proper information to the proper people in the proper places, and then trying to create that interaction with those same people in those same places, your community should be feeling like part of a real community. And that's the whole point of actually being on social media. Creating this warm and welcoming community.
My actual school project went into a bit more detail, but I think (and hope) you get the point of what I was trying to say.
In my personal opinion, if you can accomplish these three I's in your social media campaign then you have a great success on your hands. Of course there are other factors to look at like hard numbers for your ROI purposes and what not, but achieving these three I's should be a goal for all social media campaigns as well.
So next time you're putting together a social media campaign try to remember to Inform, Interact and Integrate.
I'd love to know what you think of my "Three I's" idea, so please leave some comments and let me know.
Reference:
Soukup, Charles. (2006). Computer-Mediated Communication as a Virtual Third Place: Building Oldenburg’s Great Good Places on the World Wide Web. New Media and Society. Vol8(3):421–440
May 03, 08:51 PM
The last post I wrote here I spoke about the second #HAPPO day that was happening on April 30th (last Friday).
My big plan was to write up a new #HAPPO post on Thursday to have ready to go fresh for Friday.
Unfortunately, I'm sometimes a forgetful idiot and I forgot about something major happening on Thursday. I was having eye surgery!!! (Click that link if you want to know about my eye surgery)
Anyways, long story short, I was blind for all of Thursday and even most of Friday. I never got to write my #HAPPO post and I never got to take advantage of the new contacts I could have made.
I wasn't planning on that day turning right into a job, but I was hoping to make some good connections for a possible upcoming jobs just as I had during the first #HAPPO day.
So, for all of those that read my blog and were looking for that post on Friday, that's why it wasn't there, because I'm stupid sometimes.
I do plan on making it up though with a fantastic post this week (not this one, I promise).
April 26, 11:22 AM
I'd like to take you back to a time long ago... about two months ago to be exact.
The day was February 19th and it was the first ever Help A PR Pro Out day, or #HAPPO for short.
The idea behind #HAPPO day was to bring together PR professionals and to help the ones who were currently not working to find new positions. Click here to read my pre-#HAPPO day explanation.
From what I saw, the day was a success. Not in that every person who wrote a pitch had a job by the end of the day, but new connections in the industry were formed all across North America. I know that I connected with people who I never would have known previously. This blog, where my pitch was posted, had the most traffic it had ever seen in a single day. I also received a lot of compliments from complete strangers on my pitch, which was very heart warming and almost as good as finding a job.
One thing I noticed was that a lot of the people who were pitching themselves to companies/agencies were people like me, current or very recently graduated PR students.
Apparently I wasn't the only one to notice that, as the organizers of #HAPPO, Arik Hanson (@arikhanson) and Valerie Simon (@valeriesimon), have brought around a second #HAPPO day specifically for current and recently finished students this Friday, April the 30th. For more info on this, check out the official #HAPPO website.
This means that I'm also going to have a second go at this. Since I already wrote a nice little pitch for myself two months ago (which you can read here) I'm going to try something a little different this time around, and I'd like to get a little bit of help from all of you.
If you know me, in any capacity at all, and have something good to say about me as a person, as a potential PR pro, as a social media "Jedi", as a friend, or any other way you think something nice about me, I would love to use it this Friday as part of my #HAPPO 2 post.
So here my plea to you: if you'd like to help me out and give me a recommendation than please contact me by email (42.fortydeuce@gmail.com) so we can set something up. I'm willing to take recommendations in any form you're comfortable with. It can be two sentences or a whole story. It can be written, a video, a song, even a drawing (that would be interesting). The only thing I ask is that you get it to me before Thursday April 29th, so I have some time to work with it.
So that's my favour I'd like to call in from all of you. My readers, my friends, my colleagues, my.... whatevers. Please help me help myself.
Hopefully this works better than I'm hoping it will, and if not I'll just do what I always do and get creative and do it myself, but I think this way could turn into something fun.
Looking forward to hearing from any and all of you, and thank you in advance.
April 19, 11:01 PM
This weekend I decided to update and tweak my Twitter bio a little bit. Nothing major. Just a few minor word changes here or there.
One of the changes I tried to make was finding a way to point out my expertise in the area of social media without actually calling myself an expert ('cause everyone is a social media expert these days). Because I'm a huge geek, I decided on the term "social media Jedi" because I figure most people will get the reference and associate the master of the Force with my new term for master of social media.
Then I got thinking...
In all the Star Wars movies they are always trying to bring a balance to the force. Anakin was supposed to do it, but we all know what happened there (well, us geeks do). Luke might have done it (I mean, he did defeat the entire Emipre, Emperor Palpatine and kind of, sort of Darth Vader). Anyways, Star Wars storyline aside, the point I was trying to make was that the Force always seemed to be unbalanced and there was always one person who was going to restore that balance.
This is the job of a person who does PR/Social Media work. They try to bring balance to the social media Force. They are the Jedi's fighting to make everything right in the world (or universe, as the case may be). Let's look at this:
First you have the public. The public is everyone in the world. In Star Wars the public was everyone who lived within the range of the empire. They were/are the everyday people who work their jobs, live their lives and basically just try to be.
Then, you have these big companies, always trying to influence the public. In Star Wars these were the people on the dark side of The Force (not that all companies are evil, but some people will say they are and it works for this analogy). They want to rule. Be it the universe or market share or whatever.
Finally we have the Jedi. In real life these are the PR/social media people. They are the people trying to bring balance to the Force. Balance does not mean good over evil, balance means making everything even. Not too much light Force, not too much dark Force, but a nice happy Force right in the middle.These social media Jedi try to find a way to make a balance that works between companies and their publics.
Social media gives everyone a voice. These voices could be saying good things or bad things. The Jedi want these people to be saying good things about the companies they represent, but while still trying to accomplish the goals of said company. If they lean too much on just pushing product and not caring about the customer, they're using too much of the dark Force. If they're worrying too much about pleasing the customers so that they lose sight of the company goals, they're using too much of the light Force.
They have to find a way to balance out the Force. Make the public feel loved, appreciated and listened to while still helping the company to gain attention and sell whatever it is they sell.
That's what I want to do. I want to be the one to help find that balance in the social media Force. I want to be that social media Jedi.
What'd you guys think?? Is this a fair analogy to use? Now that I've legitimized it, is it fair for me to use the term "social media Jedi"? Leave a comment and let me know.
Oh ya, and may the Force be with you.
April 06, 12:13 AM
It's been a bit of time since I gave a an update about my job search... still no job.
Seriously though, I'm trying to up my game a bit.
A little while ago my former teacher turned friend, Karen Snider, recommended that I start to do some volunteer work. It would help me both meet people and get some more experience on my resume.
I wasn't too keen on the idea at first because it made me feel like I would just be working for free, which I didn't really want to do. I sunk a lot of time, effort and money into getting my degree and I want to get that money back (so does the Ontario government).
Now, I didn't go looking for it, but recently I've had a few people approach me and ask me to assist them with some projects, pro-bono of course. Remembering Karen's advice, I figured I have nothing to lose and gladly accepted the projects.
I'm not doing anything too major for these people, but I am doing things that are relevant to my (not too far in the future) field. I think that these things will look great on my resume, plus you never know what kind of recommendation I may get towards a paying job from these people.
In the meantime though I think I may stick with this free work. I have a few things already on the go plus a couple of projects in the works that I've been talking with people about. Even though I'm not getting paid I've at least found a way to do what I want and what I love in my spare time away from my paying non-field-related job. That's what I think is really most important; doing what I love and want to do.
What do you think about working for free? I know most people don't like it, but do you think it can help in the future? Do you have a success story that came from volunteering your services? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
(and for those of you wondering, I may be willing to help you for free too. It never hurts to ask)
March 20, 02:11 PM
Last weekend the interweb was all a buzz about the new Lady Gaga and Beyonce video for "Telephone" (I didn't link to it here on purpose). Being the audiophile that I am, I decided that I needed to go ahead and check it out.
Of course, the first place I go to see this is good old reliable YouTube. Imagine my surprise when I look up the video, click on it to play and am not given the video right away. Instead I am greeted by a 10 second ad for some new movie with a mini banner at the bottom saying "Your video will start in..."
Where did that come from????
I've seen ads on YouTube before, but that was either because I looked them up to watch them (see this post for examples) or they were placed in areas on the page, but never inside the video I wanted to watch before. The whole thing seemed weird to me.
One of the reason I think that YouTube is so popular is because you, the user, got to choose what you watched. Nothing was forced on you. If you wanted to watch an ad on it it was because you wanted to. While there were ads on pages they were never really in your face and forced upon you. There really was a "you" to YouTube.
Of course, the first thing I did when I saw this new practice was tweet about my surprise. A few people responded saying that they've seen this happen before, but not often. I also have not seen it again since on any other of the hundreds of videos I've watched over this past week, which makes me wonder if it's something the company is just trying out as a new source of revenue.
Granted, I have no idea about YouTube's revenue stream and how or even if Google is making any money off the site, but I think this way isn't going to work.
Like I said before, people came to YouTube because they got to choose exactly what it was they wanted to see. Things were suggested for them to watch, but nothing was ever forced on them. I think if this is a new thing that's going to start happening on the site a lot, the company is going to see a big backlash from its users. I know I'm already upset about it.
Seriously though, the thing about the internet is that if people aren't getting what they want, the way they want it, they simply move on to a next site that does give them what they want how they want it. If I wanted these ads before things I watch I could just turn my TV on.
I'm curious to see how this whole thing plays out in the near future. Will it disappear or will it start showing up more often??
I'm also curious to know what everyone else thinks about this whole subject. Have you seen one of these ads before? Please leave a comment and tell me your thoughts about the subject. I'd love to start a conversation about this.
Finally, if you're dying to see the video click here (although I just noticed the ad I'm talking about isn't in front of the video anymore, but I hope you still got my point).
March 11, 08:40 PM
If you don't know the band OK GO then you obviously have not really spent any time on the internet in the past three(ish) years.
OK GO is a band that managed to go from relatively unknown obscurity (not total, they had been around for a while doing a few good things) to huge popularity almost overnight thanks to this YouTube video:
The video is a music video that the band shot themselves with nothing more than a camera, a couple borrowed treadmills and the choreography of a band members sister. The band posted the video onto YouTube and shared it with their friends and fans, who loved it. How could you not love that video??
From there, the magic of the interweb took over. This video started getting passed around by EVERYONE. This video went seriously viral. Seriously, even my dad has seen this video. The video that was posted officially by OK GO has a play count of over 50 million. Plus, there are other copies of the video on YouTube that also have well over a million plays.
One of the things that made this sharing of the video even more possible was the embed code that anyone could take off of YouTube to post the video on any other website. The band loved that and actually encouraged it.
This video propelled them into the public spotlight and even helped them to gain a spot performing at the MTV Video Music Awards and have the song featured on one of the Rock Band video games' many incarnations.
Fast forward to the fall of 2009. The band released a new album and put together a new low budget, but fun and awesome music video for a song called "This Too Shall Pass". Their record label, EMI, put the video up onto YouTube, but like all their other artists official music videos, turned off the embedding feature. That meant people could watch it only on the YouTube site. For this reason you'll have to click here to see the video.
The band was not happy about this. This lead to a huge fight with their record label over the issue. The band eventually went on to develop a second music video for the song outside of their record label with funding from State Farm Insurance. This one however could have the embed feature included with it. In my opinion this video is better than the first one:
This video was posted about a week ago and the official version already has almost 8 million plays! Also this week, the band left EMI to start their own label and handle all their own business. The band left their MAJOR RECORD LABEL because of how strongly they felt about being able to share things on the internet.
This is a band that understands the power of the general public and the internet. They became famous because of a viral video and they wanted to continue down that route, because they know it has so much more potential.
Other businesses. especially the music industry, need to see the power of the internet and the social networks of people around the world and think really hard about a way to make it work for them as well.
March 08, 12:06 AM
I originally started this blog to explore where the worlds of PR and social media meet. I also thought that it would be a great platform to talk about my journey into the professional world of both these things.
Lately I've been focusing it solely on my job search and not so much on the other stuff, so I'm going to try to mix the two together a bit more, starting now.
I started this blog off with a video that showed how the internet was changing our world, so it's only appropriate that I continue showing these videos as they keep getting made. I find the info in these videos to be both amazing and sometimes shocking.
This one is called The State of the Internet and was released a few weeks ago. If you haven't seen it already, here's your chance:
March 07, 01:45 AM
I've been meaning to write this post for two weeks now but have found myself too busy to actually get it out. I'm sorry if you missed me. I'll try to not let this much time pass between us ever again.
So any ways, think back, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to my last post. That was on #HAPPO (Help A PR Pro Out) day. This day was set up to help PR people (like myself) who currently are seeking work (like myself) connect with new people and new jobs.
Well in my opinion, the day was a huge success for making those connections. While I did not get a job offer or find anything really new, I did make a ton of new connections to people in the industry throughout North America, which is just as good.
This is what this social media stuff is all about. Making connections with people in ways that were previously impossible. I love that. Here's what I mean:
On #HAPPO day I put up my post that spoke a bit about myself and what kind of work I was trying to get into. I put it out to my network of people through as many online channels as I could. My network then also helped to pass my post along through retweeting my link and other means. That way new people that weren't in my immediate network were now reading my blog. From there I can only assume that some of these people knew about the #HAPPO movement (either that or they liked my post) because people I didn't know were also starting to pass along my post to their networks. I was also getting compliments on my writing from people across North America. One lady even said she thought I sounded like someone she could love (kinda flattering, kinda weird).
All in all, in 24 hours I had over 700 people read my blog post!! I don't know if that many people have read all my posts combined.
I'm sure that I'm not the only person who had this happen, and that's why social media is amazing for things like this. People were willing to help out strangers and making connections with people they never would have before. The movement was started to help people out, and on that day that's what we saw. An entire community of strangers came together and worked together in ways that weren't possible maybe even 10 years ago.
That's why I love this stuff.
February 19, 10:20 AM
A wise man by the name of Tyler Durden once said, "It's only after you've lost everything, that you're free to do anything."* So I listened. I left my job and decided to start again from scratch and that's how we got to here.
If you know me online, you probably know me as 40deuce. If you knew me in school you knew me as that guy who looks like he's doing nothing in the back but somehow is getting better marks than me. If you know me in real life you know me as Sheldon. If you don't know me, my name is Sheldon Levine. Nice to meet you.
Two years ago I left my job as the head of the US concert department for a small music promotions company and went back to school to learn the craft of PR. I excelled through Seneca College's Corporate Communications program. I then went on to get my Masters in Professional Communication from the University of Western Sydney in Australia. Both programs were fantastic experiences and gave me solid skills to work in the communications field.
While in school I also became, what some might call, a social media addict. I loved connecting with people in this new borderless world. I loved learning about this exciting new medium. I loved trying new things. I loved that I was part of helping to shape this new way of communication. I can see it's potential for the future and I want to be part of it. It's completely a platonic relationship though, I swear.
The head of Seneca's program noticed my little love affair and actually asked me to help with some ideas for putting together a social media in PR course. It was very flattering, so I of course did it. How's that for a recommendation?
What else can I tell you about me?
Some past work experience includes owning my own company that did club promotions around the Toronto area. We averaged over 150 people per event through online and flyer promotions. I was the viral marketing manager of a North American tour for The Inner City Surfers. This taught me the power of key influencers through my contact with big local bands and music bloggers along the tour route. I was the head of Supernova Entertainment's US concert department. In this role I produced up to five events a month and increased the company's artist roster and fan base through social networking. Currently, I operate multiple blogs that vary in subjects from online PR to sharing cool finds to writing about whatever is on my mind at the time.
Personally, I'm a music addict. I'm a people person. Sometimes I'm too nice. Sometimes I'm too mean. I have a strange obsession with watching curling and darts on tv. I tend to be sarcastic (but always in a good way). I can now surf on both water and snow (you might call it snowboarding). I love reading anything and I probably tweet too much.
So, this brings us to now. I just graduated in November and I'm now looking for a job where I can combine my past experience, my PR skill set and my passion of social media.
With all that said, let's get down to the nitty-gritty here.
I'm looking for a job in the PR and social media field. I'm willing to explore both agency and in-house positions. I've mainly been looking within the Toronto area, but I'm very open to interesting relocation ideas worldwide. I think I'll be great in this field and I hope that you do too now.
Here's to #HAPPO! PLEASE HIRE ME!
If you'd like to know more about me, want my resume, or even just want to chat, feel free to contact me by leaving a comment here, or though any of these networks you should see listed on the right, or email me at 42.fortydeuceATgmailDOTcom.
* Quote from Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club
Posts
August 17, 10:31 PM
I love this hoodie!! It’s reversable so you can wear it as a black hoodie on your way out, then turn it around for full disco mode when you get to the party!
I may have to buy one.
In fact, I like a lot of stuff I found on the Beta Brand site. Check it out. I may go on an online shopping binge.
August 15, 12:31 PM
First Listen: ‘Muppets: The Green Album’
via nprmusic: Some Music For Your Morning
A new collection of Muppet songs covered lovingly by OK Go, Andrew Bird, My Morning Jacket and other artists. Enjoy!
June 27, 04:57 PM
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the Muppets. That’s why I’m super excited that there’s going to be a new full length Muppet movie out this fall cleverly titled “The Muppets”.
While that is super cool on it’s own, it’s not the reason that I think you need to “get hep” to it. What is super cool is that although the movie is coming out in the fall, they’re already getting people talking about it far in advance… and in a very clever way. Rather than saturating us with the trailer (see video above) for the movie over and over again, they’re playing up to other movies that are coming out this summer and general genres and adding their own little Muppet flair to it. Check out some of these bellow:
Here’s one that’s a take on Green Lantern:
This one play’s like the trailer to The Hangover 2:
And finally, this take on the “rom-com” genre and doesn’t even mention The Muppets until the end:
I’m totally loving these and won’t be surprised if see a bunch more of these all the way up to Thanksgiving.
Keep ‘em coming Muppets!
May 30, 01:13 PM
This is my favourite girl on the interweb right now. Karmin is actually the name of the duo, but this girl is just too awesome.
The video above has been making it’s away around the internet because it’s just a good cover, but I highly urge you to go check out their full channel of just covers.
On the page you’ll find some other gems like this cover of Jessie J and B.o.B’s “Price Tag”:
May 15, 12:48 PM
A) I loved this track when it was just a hot tune from Tiesto & Diplo B) Busta makes the song even hotter And C) The b-boys in this video are amazing Enjoy!
Tiësto vs. Diplo ft. Busta Rhymes - C’mon (Catch ‘Em By Surprise)
May 12, 12:40 AM
I’ve never seen anything like this on YouTube before. Pretty cool stuff. (Make sure you click the link in the first video, it’s the second one that’s the awesomeness)
Jack Black YouTube Epicness!! You got to see it to believe it!! (by DreamworksAnimation)
March 19, 02:05 PM
This is AMAZING!! Super Mario Bros as a first person shooter. So much goodness here
February 28, 03:29 PM
February 28, 12:47 AM
Boba Fett fangirls, rejoice with me! For these are undies by Ashley Eckstein, voice of Ahsoka Tano in the Clone Wars, and founder of Her Universe, which makes awesome clothes and merch for geek girls. And they are super comfy.
Thanks for the submission, Allegra!
November 15, 10:46 AM
Girl Talk - All Day
It’s been about two years since the mash-up king released his Feed The Animals album, but today Girl Talk returns.
Available now, you can download All Day from Girl Talk for free from the Illegal Art website. All you need to do is click here, download and enjoy the party in your ears.
November 03, 12:00 AM
MC HAMMER - BETTER RUN RUN (JAY-Z DIS… Yes, I said MC Hammer has a Jay-Z dis song)
So, apparently Hammer wasn’t happy that Jay-Z mentioned the time he went broke on one of Kanye’s good friday tracks called “So Appalled”. The once rapper now preacher is so upset that he made a hip-hop video for the first time since…. iduno, 1994?
It’s especially funny for the following reasons:
- What Jay-Z said wasn’t that bad
- Everyone knew about Hammer going broke, so it’s not like Jay gave away some big hip-hop secret
- MC Hammer is a preacher. Are they even allowed make dis videos?
- The super long intro makes no sense and is really just Hammer talking on the phone for almost 2 mins
Anyways, I thought it was hilarious and needed to be passed around the interweb.
Wanna hear what Jay-Z said? Here’s the track MC Hammer is so upset about:
October 27, 09:53 PM
Super Awesome Tron Watches That You Can Help Get Made
How awesome are these?
These are just concepts right now, but a Tokyo watch company is having people vote on if they want them really made. I urge you to click here and vote “YES”.
They say the time is easy to read on them (the outside circle is the minute hand and the inside is hours). But really, who needs to tell the time when you look this bad-ass?
October 04, 11:29 AM
Kanye West - “Power” (Live from SNL)
Did you catch Kanye on SNL this past weekend?
Neither did I, but thanks to my friends over at Sidewalk Hustle I found this video of him performing “Power”.
I have to say, this is one of, if not the, coolest SNL performances I’ve ever seen. Kanye’s too cool for the normal warehouse backdrop, and what he did with the whiteness and beautiful ladies is just pure canned awesomesauce.
Enjoy.
September 21, 04:39 PM
I’ve been looking for a camera for a little while now and I think I may have found it!
This little beauty is a small and slick looking DSLR camera. The best part is that it’s not huge and bulky like most of the DSLR’s on the market currently. It also has a cool looking digital/optical hybrid viewfinder that could prove to be super interesting.
You can read all the details and specs about it here, but I think I may have found myself my next new camera… if i can wait until 2011.
September 21, 12:49 AM
I disappeared for the summer but I’m back and will posting on the reg again!
Starting tomorrow.
May 14, 11:06 AM
FEEDLY - my (and your new) favourite RSS reader
A few months ago I was looking for a new, good looking, RSS reader. Google Reader just wasn’t doing it for me. That’s when I discovered Feedly, and I haven’t looked back since.
Feedly is a plug-in for FireFox and Chrome (possibly Safari now also) that works with google reader, but makes it oh so much better. It displays your subscriptions in a magazine style, complete with front page headlines and different sections. I’ve used it for both FireFox and Chrome and both are equally as good (although Chrome took a bit more to set up).
The program takes into account number of comments on articles and how many times it was shared to move important articles to the front of your cover and digest pages, but you can also set it by what subscriptions you think are most important.
It opens the articles right there on the page in a smaller box and has lots of options for sharing the article with your networks.
The look is fantastic and easy, which was my big selling point. Give it a try, I’m sure you’ll love it.
The FireFox version is easy to install and use, Chrome takes an extra step or two to get it running optimally, but luckily I found this article the other day that helped me get it up and running.
Enjoy!
May 13, 12:02 AM
B.o.B - The Adventures of Bobby Ray
You’ve probably heard the song in this above video. I did, but paid no attention to who it was. Then I heard a lot of hype around the artist B.o.B and decided to check out his new album, The Adventures of Bobby Ray.
Turns out that song was his, but that’s not his only good song. I’m currently loving this album and have it playing almost non-stop on my ipod as I travel for the past few days.
He’s deffinitly his own artist, but he kind of reminds me of a mix between Kanye and Andre 3000 (of Outkast).
Do yourself a favour and check this album out.
Now here’s another track from the album that doesn’t have an official video, but if it doesn’t get you moving, you might be dead:
April 19, 07:05 PM
Superhero Gender Reversal:
what if some of your fav super heroes were women instead of men??
Clink the link above to see more
(via buzzfeed)
April 12, 11:48 AM
Make Your Own Google Search Story:
Remember Google debuted a new cute commercial at this years Super Bowl?? Yes, this one:
Well, now you can make your own!!
I see this having potential for some really funny Search Stories from people.
Just for a quick example I made my own. It was really quick and easy to do. Check it out:
Now go make your own (by clicking the link above or the one at the end of my video), and please share them with me (easiest way is to tweet it to me at @40deuce) and others. Can’t wait to see what people come up with.
Posts
August 02, 12:41 PM
The other day I posted my first blog post about the #LowCarDiet challenge I'm doing through the month of August. I was planning on doing a bunch of subsequent posts here in my blog for the rest of the month as well. However, I'm making a slight change in plans...
Instead of doing a lot of updates about my #LowCarDiet here, I've decided to start a Tumblr blog dedicated to following my progress. I figure that way I can also do a lot of smaller posts, post the odd picture and video and some other things and have it all in one easy to find place.
I'll still do some larger blog posts about the #LowCarDiet here and then cross-link them over to my new Tumblr, but if you want to follow along with all the action please follow 40deuce's #LowCarDiet.
Also, please like and share anything I post there. As well, I think it will help me to win if you like the YouTube videos I post there as well. And don't forget to tweet at me using the hashtag #LowCarDiet.
Anyways, you can find this video on my new Tumblr, but here's the first #LowCarDiet video I made, because I promised I'd share it here as well. (This was also my first time EVER editing a video)
July 30, 02:06 PM
A few weeks ago a buddy of mine pointed me towards a really cool contest being put on by Zipcar called the #LowCarDiet. The contest was looking for people who were willing to walk, ride their bike, use public transit, go to the gym and occasionally use a Zipcar. The point is promote a lifestyle where people don't drive everywhere all the time, and it sounded perfect for me. Luckily, I was one of the people chosen to represent Toronto!
The whole thing is a contest where 12 cities from across North America are competing to see which city can live this lifestyle best. Being someone who live in downtown Toronto I think that this kind of lifestyle is totally fitted for this city and I intend to win.
Over the next month I'm going to taking part in this #LowCarDiet by being more active in how I get around. I'm also going to be making videos of some of the awesome things I do with my Zipcar and other aspects of the contest. I hope you all follow my progress and support me and Team Toronto. We win just by being active; both in life and with the contest.
There are also some really awesome sponsors for the contest that have hooked me up with some cool stuff. First, I got a free membership to Zipcar so that I can use the cars when I need. I also received a bunch of Zip Car gear, a pair of New Balance shoes (which I still have to actually go and get), two tickets to The Second City here in Toronto, $200 in VIA Rail travel, a giant gift box of Pop Chips (which I was kind enough to share with some of my work colleagues even though I like them myself), a nice bag and free membership to LogMeIn, Jabra sports headphones, a whole bunch of Zevia Natural Soda (which I haven't tried yet, but it says it's no calories or sugar, so that's good) and apparently we're getting even more stuff soon. Pretty crazy for something I would have done without any of the stuff.
So please follow along with me. Check out my #LowCarDiet profile. Follow the contest progress. Tweet me about it and use the hashtag #LowCarDiet. Watch out for my blog posts and videos (I'll post them all here for you to see) and leave comments and/or like the videos. Essentially the more I participate and get other people to help me participate in the contest, the more of a chance I have to help Toronto win.
Anyways, I just wanted to tell everyone about this and ask for your help. I just booked my first Zipcar rental so I can run some errands this afternoon I haven't been able to without a car and I'll make a video to share.
Thanks again to Zipcar for choosing me to do this and a thanks in advance to anyone who helps me in my effort to win!
June 22, 01:02 PM
Have you ever set out to do something awesome one night only to have the night go a completely opposite direction? That happened to me this past Saturday, but it was definitely for the better.
Last week (and weekend) was NXNE (North by North East) here in Toronto, which is a huge music festival. The festival toutes 650 bands playing at over 40 venues across the city over six days. Every year I look forward to this week because... well, because I love music. I'm always on the look out for cool new music and NXNE is a great way to find some. Finding new music was actually my happy accident on Saturday night.
On Saturday I was wandering all over the city seeing a ton of different bands. One band that I specifically wanted to check out was Handsome Furs. I've never seen them live, but heard they put on a wicked show. I showed up at the venue just before 1am (when they were supposed to be going on) only to find that the venue was packed to capacity. There was even a crazy line up for people who had "priority passes" which had worked to get me into a bunch of other packed shows last week.
Anyways, not one to be discouraged, my cousin and I decided to stop by another bar in the area that was also part of the NXNE venue list just to check out what was going on there. We wandered over to The Dakota Tavern and walked in to find the best new band I found throughout the entire festival. We got in to catch the second half of a band called New Country Rehab. I can only describe them as country/bluegrass/good-ol-fashioned-rock-n-roll. While it's not my usual type of music they were really awesome and definitely the best find of the festival (for myself anyways).
I managed to grab the last two minutes of one of their songs on video. Check them out bellow:
I wish I got to see more of them and got more of their stuff on video to share with you. Luckily, they're a local Toronto band, so I'll have my eye out to see them again.
In the meantime, here's another (full) song of theirs I found on YouTube so you can get a better idea of the band.
Can't wait for another happy accident at next year's NXNE!
May 16, 03:53 PM
A wise person (I have no idea who) once said to surround yourself with people whom you'd like to be more like.
I hope that my current roster of friends don't take any offense by this, but I need to listen to that wise dude's advice.
My current friends are fantastic people and each of them has brought something awesome into my life and made me who I am today. That said, I'm also always looking to constantly improve myself and my life and I need to start surrounding myself with more awesome people that I'd like to learn from and be more like.
So, I'm starting a new on-going series that will appear here on my blog that I'm calling Collecting People. In this series I'll be highlighting people (hopefully mostly through interviews) that I think I could stand to be more like. Each individual I feature will have some characteristic that I think I could use (and hopefully you can too) in my life. Sometimes it will be people who I admire as business people, sometimes it will be interesting thinkers or interesting people, sometimes it will just be people I really admire. Think of it as a mentorship program with many mentors. That's how I'm going to think about it anyways.
I already have a first candidate to "collect" in mind, but I'd love to hear from you (all 3 of my readers ;)) about what are some areas of your life you think you could stand to be better at or more like someone else at? Also, who are some of your personal mentors (whether they know they are or not)?
February 23, 10:34 AM
Before I start, I just want to thank everyone that entered into my The Striking Truth contest. As well, everyone who helped spread the word of the contest was a great help as well. I really liked doing my first ever contest on the blog and I hope I can do more in the future. BUT, now for the real news....
Late last night we (and by we I mean me, but we sounds much more formal) closed the entries for the contest and took all the entries and ran them through Random.org. That way I had no influence over who won the pair of tickets since I did have a couple of friends enter the contest. Here's what we came up with:
So, congrats to Heada Cooper!! You won a pair of tickets to see the world premiere of The Striking Truth on Friday night!!!
For those of you that didn't win, I'm sorry, but I have some good news for you. If you still want to attend the screening there are tickets on sale, and I have a promo code for you to get a 20% discount! Just head over to Ticketmaster (use that link) and enter the promo code: TWITST
Congrats again to Heada and I hope to see you all (and GSP) there as well!!
February 15, 12:40 AM
I grew up a huge fan of wrestling. Yes, the WWE kind (although, while I was growing up it was the WWF). I loved watching these athletes do crazy things all in the name of putting on a great show. I know that wrestling isn't all real, but there was still that satisfaction I got of watching someone get dropkicked from the top ropes. It was like an action movie, but done live where the people involved had to get it right every time.
As I grew up I moved a bit away from wrestling. I still like to watch it on occasion, but I just don't see it as often as I used to. I still like watching people get beat up though. Especially when it's done right. Like wrestling, there's a real art to knowing how to properly beat someone up (now that I've written that I realize how weird it sounds, but it's true at the same time). I think that's why I became a fan of MMA.
If you know anything about MMA, especially if you're from Canada like me, then I'm sure you know the name GSP. George St-Pierre is the current welterweight champion in the UFC and in my opinion, one of the best mixed martial arts fighters EVER. I'm probably not the only person to think so. In fact, someone else who thought so made a documentary about him called The Striking Truth. Check out the trailer here:
If that trailer got you as pumped up as it did for me, then I have great news for you: I'm giving away tickets to the world premiere of The Striking Truth here in Toronto!! That's right, I have tickets to give away to see the world premiere of this documentary on Friday February 25th at 9pm at The Sony Center For Performing Arts.
So here's the deal; I thought I'd have a little fun with this contest. Let me know why you're the biggest GSP fan and the tickets are yours. Leave me a story in the comments section. Make a video and leave a link in the comments. Do something awesome to prove to me that you're the biggest GSP fan and you could be on your way to see the GSP documentary before anyone else.
Oh ya, did I mention that GSP himself will be there? Cause he will! And he'll be doing a Q&A session with his fans.
Soooooo, what are you waiting for? Start submitting your entries for this contest!!
I'll announce the winners one week from today (the evening of Tuesday, February 22nd).
Good Luck!!
PS- If you don't win, you can always buy tickets here.
December 31, 03:17 PM
Well, it's the last day of the year 2010. How was your year?
Mine was pretty awesome. I got an awesome new job that I love. I moved to new apartment that I really like. I made a ton of new amazing friends. I generally had a pretty decent year if I do say so myself.
BUT, I think next year is going to be even awesomer (that is a word because I said it is). I have a lot of things planned that I'd like to do next year. Now we just need to cross our fingers that everything goes according to plan.
One of the big things I have planned I'm going to tell you now as it involves this blog:
For the past few months I've been taking a beginners web design class. I've been learning how to build my own site because I've finally decided I'm ready to take the plunge and buy myself my own domain to host a 40deuce web page. This blog will be one of the things to move over to that new site.
I had been thinking of learning web design for a little while. Not because I want to change careers or anything, but I just thought it would be helpful to know since I work in the online space. I always tell people, "I can use the hell out of a computer, but when it comes to anything backend related I don't know jack." Luckily, one day a random tweet caught my eye...
The tweet said that Bnotions (a web design and strategy company here in Toronto) was offering a free 9 week course that they call The Yorkville Media Center. I looked a bit into it, and frankly the price was right, so I signed up.
We spent the next 9 weeks learning how to build a site from beginning to end. We started with planning and went through design, html, CSS, Javascript, Wordpress, uploading the site to a server and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was kind of a lot to take in and moved quickly, but I think I have enough to do this thing on my own.
If I can't though, I know I can always go back to the Bnotions guys for some help. Before I started the classes I knew one person who had just started working with Bnotions, but now I know most of the guys that work there and they're all really awesome people who are really dedicated to what they do. I think it's safe to say I made friends with almost everyone that works in that office and I'm really happy about it. While everyone who was there and taught and spoke were awesome people I just want to give a special shout out to Mark Reale who taught us most of the design stuff and will be helping me work on my new site's theme.
So, if all goes according to plan, I'm hoping to get this new site up and running sometime in January. However, I may be lying to you since I'm going to try to tackle this thing on my own.
Happy New Years to all who read this!!
Leave me a comment and let me know how your 2010 was or some of the awesome stuff you have planned for 2011.
Oh ya, and have fun but be safe tonight!
November 17, 12:55 AM
A few months ago I downloaded the Hipstamatic app for my iPhone. I absolutely love it! It takes the most amazing looking pics (as you'll see throughout this post).
The best part is that you can play around with how the pictures are going to turn out by (fake) changing around the camera lenses, flashes and film. Each have their own unique properties and it's really fun to mix and match them and see what you get.
One of my favourite things to do is actually randomize the settings and then just see what kind of picture I get afterwards.
As much as I love being able to just whip my phone out of my pocket and take these awesome pics, I always thought it would be fun to be able to do it with a real camera as well. Well lucky me, because a Lomography store opened just around the corner from my house.
Lomography cameras are modled after very old school cameras, but are new and made of plastic. They are almost as analog as you can get in terms of a camera. I wouldn't want it for everyday use, but I think it would be fun to bring one out on occasions.
The first day I saw the store I walked in right away and started looking around. My eye was immediately drawn towards a big box on the wall. The box was Diana F+ kit. It caught my eye because the kit came with the Diana camera plus a whole bunch of accessories. I was most excited about the multiple lenses it came with. But I didn't buy it.
I decided to go home and think about it. And I thought about it and I still want it. I was pretty much prepared to go and buy the kit this week, until yesterday.
Yesterday a friend said to me that maybe the Diana isn't the place to start, but rather I should start with a Holga (another type of lomography camera). He said that this camera has less options to play around with and would probably be better for a beginner.
Never the one to let me hold myself back I decided to do a little research on the subject. I started looking up comparisons of the Diana F+ and the Holga. The problem is, people who love lomography seem to love both the cameras. It was no help to me.
I'm going to go back to the store this week and talk to the people who work there to help me make a decision, but I figured I could also ask you sweet people of the interweb.
If you've ever played around with any of the lomography cameras I'd love to get your opinion. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
Now, take a look at some more pictures that were taken from my iPhone (as were the ones above):
So, what do you think? Should I go with the Holga or the Diana F+?? Let me know.
If you've ever played around with any of the lomography cameras I'd love to get your opinion. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
Now, take a look at some more pictures that were taken from my iPhone (as were the ones above):
So, what do you think? Should I go with the Holga or the Diana F+?? Let me know.
November 11, 01:15 AM
Dearest friends and family and random strangers that read my blog,
I never really ask much of you, especially through my blog, but this month is different. This month I have donated my beautiful face to help raise money for charity. That's right, I've donated the part of my face between my upper lip and my nose to grow a moustache in hopes of raising a little bit of money for prostate cancer research.
The whole idea of moustache fund raising is called Movember and was started in Australia a couple of years ago. It has since spread into a worldwide month long fund raising campaign. For the month of November men try to grow moustaches (no matter how ridiculous it makes me look) in hopes that people donate to show their support (and to hopefully help us feel like we're not looking like this for nothing).
BUT WAIT! Before I ask you donate, there's more.
So you know that I'm not cheating on this and that I actually look as ridiculous as I think I do, I've set up an account on Dailybooth where I will be taking a picture everyday to document my moustache's progression. You can watch it grow by clicking here. Feel free to leave hilarious comments on the pictures so you really feel like you're getting your money's worth.
Now comes the hard part for both you and I. This is where I ask you to please donate and support me and where you part with a couple of bucks. You can donate any amount you want, from $5 to $5,000,000. Any amount can help and is appreciated.
Please click here to help me out and donate. Thank you!
And, if you need another little laugh; a friend was kind enough to point out that my new moustache has made me into a celebrity look-alike:
Thanks again!
November 01, 08:53 PM
Halloween is my favourite holiday of the year. Everyone likes to go out and have a good time. Even better though, everyone dresses up to have a good time. This year I saw the best costumes I have ever seen!!
If you're wondering, that's me at the top of this post in my Wolverine/Logan costume. I was pretty happy with it.
I was supposed to spend the night at a friend's house party, but I got a last minute invite to roll with Sean Ward, Michael Nuss and some other folks to the Silver Snail Halloween party. For those of you that don't know, the Silver Snail is huge famous comic shop here in Toronto, so I knew the costumes at their party were going to be awesome. So, I went by the party before heading to my friend's house party.
Here are some of the awesome costumes I saw on Saturday night (and this is just Saturday night):
Obi Juan Kenobi
Jango Fett
Bender
Me & X-23
The movie X-Men
The cartoon X-Men
old skool Captain America
Mega Man
A Star Trek Red Shirt with a target on his chest (geeks will understand)
Steam Punk Ghostbuster (this had moving parts and everything)
The Sorceress (from He-Man)
Bed Sheet Ghost (no one really does this costume, that's why it was so awesome)
Roxy (from Scott Pilgrim)
Barf (from Space Balls)
Freakazoid!
Deadpool
Scott Pilgrim & Ramona Flowers
Ganesh
Robin
Orko (from He-Man)
Reverse sex Joker and Harley Quinn
Noheart (from Care Bears)
Han Solo & Chewy
Death? (iduno, but looked awesome)
Dexter
Daft Punk
Green Arrow
Sheldon meets Sheldon (best pic ever!)
Super Girl & Evil Super Girl?
Cobra
Muppets dressed as super heroes
Mario
Lelu (from The 5th Element)
Hit Girl
Kick Ass
I think this guy is getting raped by death
Captain Spaulding (from The Devil's Rejects)
Beavis
Butthead
And that's it bub!!
Actually, I'll close this post out with Sean Ward's vlog of the Silver Snail party:
Tell me in the comments what you were for Halloween. Better yet, leave a pic (if that's even possible).
October 30, 02:22 PM
Two weeks ago I went to see the Gorillaz and N.E.R.D. at the ACC here in Toronto, but it was just yesterday that I finally remembered to take my pics and videos off my phone, so I thought I'd put some up here to share.
N.E.R.D. is one of my favourite bands. They make awesome music, but despite being known previously as the producers The Neptunes, they haven't gained much headway in the mainstream. But take my word for it, they're awesome. This was my 4th or 5th time seeing them, but I will see them again any chance I get.
I was also pretty excited about seeing The Gorillaz. I had always wondered what a Gorillaz live show would be like because technically, their cartoons. I had heard on their last tour that they had a giant screen covering the stage and the cartoon characters walked around and played (kind of). This tour was different though. This tour they showed the cartoon characters up on the screen, but they had a real giant band playing for the crowd, and more importantly, Damon Albam and guests.
The show was better than I even thought it was gonna be. They had Snoop make an appearance via video on the big screen (because he's on the new album). There was a 6 piece string band and 8 piece brass band on top of the regular band. They also had De La Soul and a bunch of other guests there to help perform.
I don't want to talk to much about it other than say the show was amazing. Check out some more pics and another a video I took.
ps- How much more awesome do my pics look now that I've upgraded to an iPhone 4 from my 3G? This will be much better for blogging. Also, thanks to my new phone make sure you watch the videos in the post in 720p HD.
September 27, 04:49 PM
It's hard to believe, but even awesome people like me get a little nervous about things.
This week I'm going to be speaking to some groups for the first time since I finished doing presentations for school. Not just one speaking gig, but two in one week.
I'm not that nervous about speaking in front of crowd. I actually love doing that. I thrive off of public attention. The thing I'm nervous about is making myself look like an idiot.
Usually I don't mind looking like an idiot (if you know me, you know that's more than true), but tomorrow I'm speaking at a conference with some very smart people that I really respect. That's what makes me a bit nervous.
On top of that, I'm going for dinner with all of these smart people tonight. I'm almost positive that I'm going to be the youngest and newest to the game at the table. I'm going to be surrounded by a bunch of people who are well known people in the fields of social media, PR, and measurement and analytics. While I like to think that I know what I'm talking about in these areas, these are the people that I've learned from.
It's a bit nerve racking but I'm sure I'll get through it.
If you're interested in knowing where I'm going to speaking at, the first gig (tomorrow) is for Joseph Thornley's Third Tuesday Measurement Matters Conference. This one is going to be a great day full of great info and smart people (myself hopefully included). If you want to check out the full line up for the event just click here.
The second gig is a private one for provincial government workers. If I had more info to give you I would.
Anyways, this should prove to be an interesting and cool week for myself.
Wish me luck.
August 05, 12:45 AM
I'm fat. (Note: that is not my belly pictured above... but it probably could be)
I'm not super "wow that guy's fat" fat, but I think I may be near the fattest I've been since I was a kid. Yes, I was a chubby kid. No, I don't want to show you pictures. I also was never skinny, but I've definitely been skinnier. Anyways, I was looking in the mirror yesterday and realized that I really let myself go. The worst part is it's my own fault.
I haven't been to the gym in almost 4 months, since I moved away from my old neighborhood. I used to go almost every day and now I NEVER go. It's the worst. I've been half-assed looking for a new one in my new hood, but have yet to come across something good. I really liked my other gym, it's just too far. I used to go all the time because it was around the corner from my pad. I need something like that again.
I also eat a lot these days (I think). I don't eat really terribly. I'm not really a big chocolate bars and chips kind of guy. I'm also not claiming to be the best eater though. For some reason though I find myself being hungrier than I usually am. Not sure why that is, but I'm sure that it's not helping my stomach.
On top of that, I'm sometimes too lazy to go grocery shopping and there's so many good places to eat just around the corner from my place. And when I say good places, I mean they're good in the "this food is probably bad for you but too delicious to care" kind of way.
Anyways, it's my fault and I need to do something about it.
After talking to a few friends (because if you know me, you know I like to joke about my fatness) I was given a few good ideas that are easy to do that can help me start. Of course, I'm going to start smaller than they suggested, but at least it's a start.
First is the easiest and most obvious ones for me. Puleen said that I should exercise and walk more. Well, I'm trying to find a new gym already, I just need to really do it already. (If anyone knows a good and affordable gym near King and Bathurst in Toronto please let me know in the comments). Also, I already do walk a lot. Usually if I can and have the time I walk everywhere. I even got my bike I've had since I was 14 fixed up a few weeks ago and I've started riding it around the city a lot too.
Sammie suggested a few quick and easy exercise I could do around the house. Sammie is the creator and owner of Booty Camp Fitness, so she probably knows what she's talking about. I'll also probably tap her for ideas once I get into a gym. Anyways, in case you're wondering, this is what Sammie recommends in Tweet form:
"just do a circuit in your living room, full body exercises. 4 sets each of body squats, jump squats, pushups and bicycle abs""10-20 reps each, 30 for the abs tho! Rest 1 minute between circuits. Better than nothing at all!"
While I can't guarantee I'll do them all the time, I'm going to make a conscious effort to try to do them when I can.
The last piece of advice I was given will be the hardest to do. Christine tells me that your metabolism slows down after 7pm (if you wake up around 7am) so you digest slower. She says I shouldn't eat after 7, but that's not going to happen. If I'm lucky on a good day I eat dinner before 830-9pm. So, what I'm going to try to do is not eat after 10pm. Maybe even earlier if I can. I'm usually awake for at least three hours after that anyways. At least it's a start.
Anyways, I thought if I wrote these things out and put them out there for people to see I'll feel more compelled to stick to these goals (even if no one reads this blog). And if anyone is reading and you're also feeling like me, I say try to do these easy things too.
Anyways, this came out a lot longer than I thought it was going to so I'm going to shut up now.
If you have any other REALLY easy to follow tips, by all means please leave them in the comments.
July 27, 12:55 AM
Big games in public spaces seems to be a new cool trend these days and yesterday I participated in an awesome one.
Yesterday I went to Kensington Market to play a game called Gentrification. The best way I can describe it is as a giant game of real life Monopoly with extra stuff. The object of the game is to improve a neighborhood. There's five rounds in the game. Each round your team gets assigned a random property (which is a real space in real life). You can also purchase two more properties per round by taking a picture in front of a property with a sign for that round before a next team does. Once you have properties you can start building on them. The more properties in a row you own the larger of a store/business you can build. As well, each round your team has to do a task to win over the neighborhood such as advertising (chalk art on the sidewalk), a PR campaign (giving out candy to strangers), beautification (picking up recycling) a parade (this one's for real. we had an impromptu parade) and other things. You win points for completing tasks, and more if you do them well.
All and all, the game was a ton of fun to play, but my team also made it more fun. I played with Lucia, who was our team captain and recruited us all. I knew her before, but the rest of my team I just met the night before. The rest of my team was Mike, Jon, Khaleed and Meghan, who were all awesome people and brought something to the team.
Check out some of the pics:
Of course, our team won!!
Thanks for the people at Atmosphere Industries for putting this on. I would totally play this or any other game they do again.
And then we got free hugs!
Thanks for the people at Atmosphere Industries for putting this on. I would totally play this or any other game they do again.
Sorry, but it just has to be played now:
July 13, 07:25 PM
Last week I went to go see Spoon and The Flaming Lips at the Molson Amphitheatre here in Toronto. While I always liked The Flaming Lips it was Spoon that really sold the show to me, so off I went.
Spoon went on around 8:30, which isn't too late for a show at the Amphitheatre since they have a curfew. The sun was still out and I was digging their set. Problem was, only 7 other people seemed to feel the same way. The crowd was kind of lame, but Spoon was stil amazing playing a setlist of mostly older stuff from Ga Ga Ga and Gimmie Fiction.
Sorry for the crappy looking pics, but I can't find my camera so I'm still confined to the iPhone for pics.
Anyways, The Flaming Lips were on next. Like I said, I liked them, but I was just at the show for the fun of it. I quickly changed my mind.
Right from the start, the Lips went hard. Coming out of giant vaginas. Walking on the crowd in a space ball. Giant confetti cannons. Giant bouncing balls been tossed around by the crowd. And that was just the first song!
They played amazingly and they put on one hell of a show. I didn't know what to expect, but that show is now somewhere in my top 10 shows list. Not sure where yet though.
I will 100% go see The Flaming Lips any and every time they come to Toronto again.
Here's some footage taken by people I don't know that were kind enough to upload to YouTube:
June 27, 11:32 PM
So this weekend the G20 rolled into Toronto. Our usually peaceful city got a little bit crazy.
On Saturday, my roommate and I headed out to MEC to pick up a few things, but had heard a protest parade was headed near our neighbourhood so we thought we'd check it out on the way there. We expected to see a parade of people with a few cops interspersed in-between. What we found was much more insane.
We were at the corner of Spadina and Richmond trying to see the protest that was a block north of us at Spadina and Queen. We were met by police officers trying to keep us bystanders back from the protest. It started off with one single line of officers, but it quickly escalated into about 100 cops just around a bunch of people trying to see what was going on.
While we weren't actually in the protest, it was pretty intense at times. Especially when all the cops near us started to put their gas masks on and aim gas grenade guns in our direction.
I snapped a lot of pics over the hour and a half I was standing there. Here's a few of them:
(Sorry about the quality, I was ill prepared and only had my iPhone camera)
Thankfully nothing happened where we were. Too bad the same couldn't be said for the rest of the city. Windows were smashed in buildings all over the city. Police cars were set on fire. Other crazy shit went down. Thankfully no one was really hurt.
If you want to see the rest of my photos from saturday you can see the set here.
Also, on sunday there was another big to-do at Queen and Spadina where cops held a bunch of people in the middle of the road for some unknown reason. A lot of those people were just bystanders as well. I was watching the tweets from a friend of mine trapped in the middle of it. It seemed very eerie.
Now the G20 is done and hopefully my city gets back to normal. It was way too strange seeing the Toronro like this.
There was also a huge
April 28, 01:40 PM
... Well, kind of.
I suffer from a hereditary disease known as Karatoconus. What it basically means is that instead of my eyeballs staying round like most people's, my eyes are coning and becoming more the shape of a football. If you want to know more about it click here for the Wikipedia entry about it.
This is a degenerative disease meaning that it's just going to continue to get worse as time goes on. I already wear glasses (although barely), but as my eyes change shape the prescription needs to also change. While there is no full cure for Karatoconus they have come up with a procedure that can help stop it from worsening.
I'm getting this procedure done tomorrow morning.
Before I go any further, I need to tell you that stuff pertaining to my eyeballs really freaks me out. I've never been able to do eye-drops without someone (like a nurse in the eye doctors office) holding my eyes open and lots of nervous eye twitching. Also, I've never even looked into contacts (even though I was told to numerous times) because the idea of touching my eyeball creeps me right out.
So this is how the procedure I'm getting tomorrow goes:
They prop my eyes open with some sort of machine that in my head I picture as looking like the things they use to hold Malcom McDowell's eye's open when he's getting brainwashed in A Clockwork Orange. They then put these special drops in my eyes for 30 frigin' minutes straight. These drops are all fancy chemicals I don't know anything about, but the main active ingredient in them is riboflavin. Yes, riboflavin like in your morning cereal. After the 30 mins of drops, I then have to expose my eye to a special UV light for another 30 mins. Then we repeat the procedure for the other eye because they can't do both at once for some god awful reason.
What this will do is harden the linkages of my corneas so they stop changing shape. It's not going to fix my eye sight, but it will help to stop it from getting worse. There is also a slight chance (and I'm hoping this happens) that when my eyeballs harden they will slightly retract a bit too, making my eyesight slightly better. Also, 6 months down the road there are some other things I can look into to help improve my site, but not laser surgery. Apparently laser surgery weakens/thins your corneas meaning it would just reverse what I'm having done tomorrow.
I've been ok and even semi-excited about the whole thing for a while. Until last night. I was reading about what could happen after the procedure is done, and now I'm a little freaked. First, I'm going to have to use drops while my eyes heal. Not looking forward to that at all. Also, they said some people will experience blurry vision for the first week or so, but some may experience it for a few months. I'm really hoping I'm the first week type of person.
I don't think any long term harm can come from having this procedure done, but it's still freaking me out. I mean, these are my eyes!! Hopefully though this will prevent me from needing full corneal transplants later in life.
Anyways, I'm freaked, but excited at the same time.
Wish me luck.
Now, here's a song (kinda) about eyes that I haven't heard in a while:
April 19, 12:54 AM
Not to brag, but I have too many friends.
There's just too many people I've acquired over the years in places like facebook that I'm not really friends with, or they have no value to me (no offense if you're one of those people). It's just time to go.
Have you ever logged into facebook and seen a person come down your news feed and just think "who the hell is that person?" or "really, why do I have that person on facebook?" I get that thought a lot, so I decided to do something about it. It's called Social Spring Cleaning.
Here's the concept, every time you get one of those thoughts, remove that person as a friend. Take a look at their profile, and if you don't see a reason for having them, don't have them anymore.
I try to reserve my facebook for real friends. I'll add strangers in other networks no problem, but facebook is where I like to keep just my friends and/or people I used to be friends with. No total strangers though. However, I've added people that I may have met once, say at a party, but have never spoken to again since. They gotta go.
The best part of this concept is that it works for everywhere you've added friends online!! I'm also doing it in my Twitter. Anytime I see a person whom I know I'm not into what they tweet about and we never ever speak, I'm deleting them.
Granted, there are some networks where you're going to want to keep strangers for one reason or another and that's fine. I do the same. I just think that some areas and places could use a bit of tidying up. A little bit of a dusting. A little Social Spring Cleaning.
I suggest you try it too.
March 22, 11:02 AM
Last year around this time I attended a fantastic even known as #Twestival. This is a world-wide event that brings together the Twitter community in local parties for a global cause.
Parties are thrown in hundreds of cities around the globe to raise money for charity. Last year the charity of choice was Charity:Water and the global Twitter community helped to raise over $250,000 which assisted in the building of 55 water wells in Uganda, Ethiopia and India.
This year the #Twestival will be raising money for Concern Worldwide. A little bit about Concern Worldwide not in my own words:
"Concern is a non-governmental, international, humanitarian organization dedicated to the reduction of suffering and working towards the ultimate elimination of poverty. Their mission is to help people living in extreme poverty achieve major improvements in their lives - improvements they can sustain without ongoing support."
Not only does #Twestival help to raise money for good causes, but it's also a really fun time. Last year I attended the local Toronto party, aptly dubbed #TwestivalTO. The party was at Circa Nightclub and featured great tunes, good times and lots of Twitter friends. In fact, it was at this party I met a lot of my online friends in real life for the first time.
If you don't believe me it's fun, just click here and check out the Flickr set of photo's from the past event for yourself.
Anyways. I hope that where ever in the world you're reading this from you can find a #Twestival near you to attend, and if not, you can always donate and watch and follow the parties online.
And if you're going to be at the Toronto party, make sure you come say hi to me.
For more info and to find a #Twestival near you check out the official #Twestival site. Through there you can usually get tickets to your local event.
So, do some good, have some fun, attend a #Twestival!
March 15, 12:33 AM
Like I said in my last post, I need to move at the end of this month... and I still have no idea where I'm going to live. That means in two weeks I could be homeless.
Hopefully, that's not going to happen. I have a good feeling it won't.
The worst part about the whole thing is, I don't want to move! I love the apartment that I live in now. I've lived here for over 3 years (minus the time I was in Oz). It's the perfect location. It's a great size. It fits all my stuff perfectly. Best of all the price is amazing.
Prices for places have gone up since I found this place. Everywhere I'm looking that's semi-decent is at least $1200 for a one bedroom or $2000 for a two. It's a bit more than I'd like to be paying, but for a good place I think it's just what I'm going to have to do.
Another thing is that my current place has character. It's got an exposed brick wall and a great rooftop patio. A lot of the places I've seen are condos. THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME!! It's actually a little creepy.
Really, I think I'm just a bit weirded out by the idea of living in a condo. I've never lived in a building with more than six units in it, and even those ones were weird. I don't know why I think it's so weird, I just kind of do.
I am trying to warm up to the idea of one though. There could be a few good trade offs with living in one. The best one for me is a gym in the building. My current gym is very close to my apartment and I'll probably have to quit it at the end of the month. The idea of trading off a little bit more money in lieu of a gym membership is kind of good. Plus the gym would be right underneath me, which will make timing not always such an issue.
Anyways, I have no idea what's going to happen, but I had to write some of this down to get out of my head. I'm kind of going nuts and starting to freak out about it. I really don't want to be homeless. I have too much stuff to be homeless with.
I'll let you know what happens.
March 07, 12:44 AM
Hi!
It's been a while since I wrote something in here. My sincere apologies. But that's about to change, along with a bunch of other things.
March is a good time to start making some big changes all around. Why? Because at the end of this month I need to move into a new apartment, so it'll be like a fresh start. I plan on using this fresh start in a whole bunch of areas in my life.
For one, this blog. This blog used to be my only blog so I used to write about everything in here from personal stuff, to work related stuff, to whatever else I wrote about. Now I have a few blogs that I'm running and writing at the same time, so I'm going to try and keep them all a bit separate. This blog is now going to stay a little bit truer to it's title and become a bit more personal and about whatever I happen to be thinking about or doing when I write it. I'm also going to try to write here a lot more often. I know I've said that before, but this time I really mean it. Changes are happening.
For my more work related writings, such as PR, Social media and my quest to find myself the perfect job that combines the two check out (if you haven't already) the blog I started for a class in my Masters program but decided to keep going with, A Geek In PR.
Speaking of work related stuff, that's another thing I'm changing. I spent the last year and half in school and other ways learning and preparing for a job doing PR and social media work, but when I got back from Australia I fell into a job that is completely unrelated. I think I've become a little too comfortable there. While I have been looking for a job PR and social media, I haven't been going at it full force. Well, I'm going to step up my game there. Keep tuned here or on A Geek In PR for good things happening in this area soon.
I also have a few other changes to make in mind. There's some health related things I need to change in my life. I also need to actually figure out where it is I will be moving to at the end of this month. I'm going to save these things for some future posts here though. That'll make for content in the future and keep this post short. Always thinking I am.
Anyways, watch out for these changes, right here.
PS - I'm also making sure that every post in this blog has a song to go with it, cause I think that I let slip in a few posts in the past.
October 16, 10:23 AM
Anyone who knows me knows I love my iPhone. It's my baby. I ordered a special case for it off the internet because I couldn't find one in stores that would protect my baby enough. I don't know what I'd do with out it.
I'm also always searching for things to make my baby better. New apps. Themes. Plug-ins. Whatever.
Yesterday, Robert Scoble tweeted this link to AppsFire's blog that shows (what I assume can only be some of) the apps that he is using on his iPhone. I thought it was interesting to see what apps he uses. That inspired me to come up with this recent harebrained scheme entitled "The Ultimate iPhone Project".
I want to know what apps you're using and loving in order to make my iPhone (and hopefully yours too) into The Ultimate iPhone.
This is a really simple and easy project that I'm hoping a lot of people will be interested in helping out with. All you need to do is leave a comment with what you're using and think is the best thing for your iPhone. This can be apps, themes (for jailbroken iPhones), games, whatever you think is the best of the best on your iPhone.
Now my phone is only a 3G, which means I can't use apps that require the compass on the 3GS, but that doesn't mean you can't post any of them here.
Also, free and/or cheap apps are preferred (as I'm still a broke student), but if something is really worth the money you paid for it, put it up.
I thought I'd start with listing some of the apps on my 1st iPhone page and what I think of them to get the ball rolling.
- My theme - right now I'm using the illumine theme. I like (and am looking for) themes that are cool and sleek, don't require a lot of changing things around to make them look good and ones that don't have app icons that are so crazy that they make my apps whose icons don't change look very out of place
- Battery percentage - through SB Settings (must be jailbroken to use) so I can see how much battery I actually have left
- Score Mobile - I use this for my sports updates. I like the easy to use and read interface, but am willing to try something else
- Weather Eye - I use this one because they're the weather channel I watch at home in Toronto and it gives me more details than the one that comes with the phone
- TwitterFon - this is the current mobile Twitter client I'm using. (I also haven't updated it since they changed the free one to have ads. I think they now call it echofon) Always willing to try a new one. I use tweetdeck on my laptop, so wouldn't mind trying their iPhone app one day
- Evernote - I used to use this app a lot both on my computer and iPhone (they sync with each other) to remember everything, but now can't remember the last time I used it. Willing to take this off the front page
- Shazam - great for finding out the name of a song that's playing, but I don't really use it a lot
- NetNewsWire - I got this because I use their RSS reader on my desktop so I liked that they synced. Now that the desktop version uses Google Reader to sync, I'm willing to try any app that will sync with my google rss
- Icy & Cydia - I use Cydia for finding jailbroken apps and themes, but can't say I've opened Icy more than once. Should take that one off the first page as well.
- Categories - (available through Cydia on jailbroken iPhones) you can't see it on my homepage there, but I use Categories to make folders on my second page so that I don't have 1,000 pages worth of apps. The folders I made are "games", "useful stuff" and "fun stuff"
After I start to get a bunch of suggestions I can try out I'll update everyone with how I change my iPhone.
September 21, 11:40 AM
Just wanted to say this:
I don't understand why some people feel the need to thank everyone that retweets something they said or shared on twitter.
The other day someone said thank you for retweeting a link they posted. The thing was, it wasn't a link to something they had wrote, it was just something they had shared because it was interesting. This wasn't the first time this has happened either and I just don't see the point.
I post links on twitter because I thought something was interesting and I wanted others to see it. If someone retweets it than that's awesome, more people will see it and probably think it's interesting too. That's what I put it there for.
I'll thank someone if I put up a personal request like "I'm looking for info on ...." and someone on my list who may not know the answer will retweet it. They just did me a personal favour and I'll thank them for that. I just don't (usually) see retweeting a link I posted as a real favour.
Some people will say it helps to build relationships, but if you want to do that with me I'd rather we engaged and talked about whatever it was I just posted. That would help build a relationship with me.
But thank you to anyone who ever has or will retweet something I post.
That's just my personal thought on that.
September 21, 11:15 AM
Before I left for my trip I said that I was going to read Dan Schawbel's Me 2.0. Well, I finally did and here's my thoughts.
I would recommend this book to a lot of people, but it wasn't what I was looking for.
I bought this book looking for some new ideas on how I can expand my 40deuce name, my personal brand. This book was more for recent graduates who are looking to explore new ways to try and make them stand out in a job search. Most of the ideas revolved around using web 2.0/ social media to their advantage.
Most of the things the book recommended were ways to use social media, which I think I'm kind of on top of already. I would however recommend this book to people who are coming out of school and aren't as involved in using social media. If that's you, I would highly suggest you take a look at this book and try at least some of the ideas Schawble presents.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think it was a total waste of my time. The book did give me a few new ideas and even a few ideas to fix up some of my old ideas. Schawbel definitely knows what he's talking about and holds quite an impressive resume (which kind of makes me mad, cause I think he's younger than me).
Anyways, I think that aybe I should have looked more into a book on branding for my whole 40deuce life, but since I'm going to finishing my schooling days in the next 2 months and will be on the job hunt, I'm glad I read the book. BUT, if you're already have a job and are really into social media, you may not want to bother reading it.
I think this song goes with the get a job theme (plus it's funny because the drummer was my manager at the bar I worked at back home):
40deuce
August 12, 10:29 AM
Just in case anybody actually reads this blog... AND, just in case you actually enjoy my writing... I have news for you.
I had to start yet another blog as a class assignment. This one will soley be focused on looking at how communications professionals use Web 2.0.
If you care to read it, check it out @ A GEEK IN PR
Posts
Fact of the Day #104: Some Tumblr Facts
Follow the Googly Gooeys on Tumblr | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Could I possibly love Rachel Bilson more??
via funnyordie:
Call Me Doctor with Rachel Bilson
Rachel Bilson is a doctor. And she raps.
Did this really happen tonight? Because I totally respect it
via mymelancholy:
Tina Fey photobombing at the Golden Globes.
#SheldonsRule
for me it is 98% sheldon.
I’ve had a crush on her since her guest spot on Who’s The Boss. Or maybe Saved By The Bell. Or maybe both.
When will we meet and fall in love already?
via slightly1337:
no! it can’t be! oh well she’s still the most adorable thing ever.
The way she laughs! <3
/swoon
Oh my heart be still
I guess this is how data nerds break up
via ilovecharts:
An infography about why our relationship doesn’t work. (via Saray Juárez)
Brutal.
I love this!! My roommate would probably not allow me to have it though.
via knowyourmeme:
Still Christmas shopping?
KYMdb - It’s A Trap!
Audio
Profile
Director of Community at Sysomos Inc.
Public Relations and Communications | Toronto, Canada Area, CA
Summary
Sheldon Levine is the community manager for Sysomos, acting as his company’s public face to connect with its many audiences around the globe. Having emerged as a thought leader in the digital world, Sheldon’s engaging communication style has helped countless numbers of organizations understand how they can leverage social media to boost their business success. Through community outreach, new media marketing and public relations, Sheldon illustrates how social media monitoring and analytics lead to improved customer relationships and measurable ROI.
Sheldon is co-founder of a weekly Twitter chat, #SMmeasure, that focuses on the use of social media and how to measure its results. With a Masters in Professional Communication, Sheldon has taken his traditional PR training to a new level, transferring it into the realm of social media and adding his own personal twist to wake people up to all that social media can be.
When he's not online for work you can find Sheldon online having fun. This includes trying to keep over four blogs constantly updated (key word is "trying").
Sheldon is co-founder of a weekly Twitter chat, #SMmeasure, that focuses on the use of social media and how to measure its results. With a Masters in Professional Communication, Sheldon has taken his traditional PR training to a new level, transferring it into the realm of social media and adding his own personal twist to wake people up to all that social media can be.
When he's not online for work you can find Sheldon online having fun. This includes trying to keep over four blogs constantly updated (key word is "trying").
Experience
- Nov 2011 - PresentAdvisory board member / Social Media Week Toronto
- Jun 2010 - PresentDirector of Community / Sysomos Inc.• Acts as the public face for Sysomos, online and off
• Uses community outreach, new media marketing, and PR techniques to significantly increase the profile of the company
• Speaks at conferences, schools and events on behalf of Sysomos to further position the company as an industry leader in social media monitoring
• Liaise with both new and traditional media to secure coverage in a variety of key print and online outlets
• Writes blog posts, reports, social media strategies, client emails and other outbound communications
• Founded #smmeasure, the Twitter chat and community that facilitates discussion about social media measurement and analysis - 2008 - PresentWriter/ Operator / Multiple Blogs• Currently runs and writes for multiple blogs
• Topics of blogs vary from PR & social media, travels, personal thoughts and the sharing of interesting finds which are deemed “cool”
• Traffic and subscribers to each blog is constantly growing thanks to promotion through online channels such as different social networks such as Twitter and Facebook and blog networks such as Technorati
Blog Samples
• A Geek in PR – http://geekNpr.blogspot.com
• Get Hep To This – http://get-hep.tumblr.com
• A-D-D On Paper (Sort Of) – http://a-d-d-onpaper.blogspot.com - Dec 2009 - May 2010Operations / Portfolio Management Corp
- Apr 2007 - May 2009Owner / Muze Media• Founded the marketing and promotions company that specialized in party events
• Hosted events at different venue locations across Toronto such as West Lounge and Piccadilly Circus
• Coordinated and ran print and online marketing campaigns for all events
• Successfully brought out crowds of 150 people or more to each event - Oct 2007 - Aug 2008Head of US Concert Department / Supernova Entertainment• Successfully organized up to five shows/ concerts per month in different markets across the United States.
• Constantly recognized and won awards for being the company’s top booking agent
• Wrote copy for band finding strategies using social network contact which had a high response rate at Supernova Entertainment
• Wrote scripts for booking agents at Supernova Entertainment
• Significantly increased Supernova.com’s user base of bands and music fans through web 2.0 marketing initiatives
• Primary contact and liaison between all artists, venues, local representatives and Supernova for all concerts in the United States - Mar 2008 - Jun 2008Manager of Viral Marketing / The Inner City Surfers "Never Ender Bender Tour"• Responsible for viral marketing for the bands 2008 North American tour
• Attracted new fans along the band’s tour route through connecting via social networks such as Myspace
• Initiated contact with local media along the tour route including local papers, magazines and music blogs
• Assisted in booking to fill dates after tour has started - Mar 2003 - Jan 2007DJ/ Entertainer / Magen Boys Entertainmento Arranged and planned details for events such as Bar/Bat Mitzvah’s, Weddings, Sweet 16’s and corporate events
o Provided entertainment and stimulated crowds for all events - May 2005 - Sept 2005Intern / The Management Trusto Assisted with everyday office administration for the musical artist management firm, including; secretarial duties, research for tours, contacting of promoters and total reorganization of inventory in the stock room
Education
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2009 - 2009University of Western SydneyMPC in Masters of Professional Communication
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2008 - 2009Seneca College of Applied Arts and TechnologyPost Graduate in Corporate Communication & Public Relations
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2005 - 2007York UniversityHonors BA in Specialized Communication
Additional Information
Websites:
Honors:
Only person to graduate the MPC course with Distinction in my year
Recent tracks
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Don't Lose My Number by Phil Collins3 days ago
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One More Night by Phil Collins3 days ago
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Who Said I Would by Phil Collins3 days ago
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Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) by Phil Collins3 days ago
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Something Happened on the Way to Heaven by Phil Collins3 days ago
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All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints by Paul Simon3 days ago
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That Was Your Mother by Paul Simon3 days ago
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Crazy Love Vol. II by Paul Simon3 days ago
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Homeless by Paul Simon3 days ago
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Under African Skies by Paul Simon3 days ago
Top artists
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