A few months ago my colleague, Jill McCubbin blogged about Twitter – the micro-blogging site that asks users “what are you doing now?” However, it wasn’t until recently that I truly understood what Jill was saying and realized that Twitter is a great tool for anyone with something to say – including companies and marketers.

At the time of her post I was an infrequent user of Twitter. I had an account and understood why so many people liked it (because it allows people to have conversations in real time, sharing thoughts and ideas). I got it. I just didn’t get how I could apply Twitter in a business context.

Lately I’ve been dabbling more and more with Twitter and I’m beginning to see great potential for it beyond simply connecting with friends and sharing tidbits in 140 characters or less.

My first “Oh-I-get-it” moment happened a few weeks ago while using MailChimp – a software-as-a-service site that helps companies create, store and distributes html newsletters. MailChimp was undergoing some major maintenance upgrades, but instead of leaving users in the dark about the status of the updates, MailChimp set up a Twitter account and Chimps were twittering to provide minute-by-minute updates – frequency that could never be achieved with email send-outs. Twitter provided a way for MailChimp to potentially avoid a flood of calls to customer support while also keeping everyone well informed with site maintenance progress. Win-win.

MailChimp got me interested in Twitter again. If MailChimp was twittering, what other brands were using it? Turns out that MailChimp isn’t the only one taking advantage of Twitter:

• News providers, such as Reuters, bloggers, such as Robert Scoble, and websites, such as Engadget, are all using Twitter to notify followers when new content is available

• Presidential candidates, John Edwards and Barack Obama, both use Twitter to build and engage their community of supporters, notifying people of their locations as they travel across The United States

• CEO’s, such as Tony Hsieh from Zappos.com, are using Twitter to build relationships with customers, in the same manner other CEO’s use blogs (Read more about CEO bloggers in another market2world post)

• Retail chains, like Amazon, are using twitter to announce deals and sales

These examples prove that Twitter isn’t just for social chatter – tweets can engage customers, clients and communities in thoughtful and relevant ways, similarly to other social media tools such as blogs and podcasts.

Twitters popularity is growing everyday. In February 2008 there were 907 884 users and as of July 3, 2008 there are 2 049 451 registered Twitter users, according to Twitder – a twitter directory. These numbers are comparable to Facebook’s growth by 50% in six months - between summer 2007 and winter 2008.

As the number of users grows, so do the opportunities for marketers and companies to use Twitter to promote products, brands and personalities. Need ideas to successfully use Twitter and other social media tools? Contact market2world communications.

(Jennifer James is a Communications Strategist with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency.)

Yesterday I attended the last of this season’s Technology Executive Breakfasts (TEBs) sponsored by Ottawa’s Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI).

The session was titled: “Evaluating your media technique: are you a hooker or a pusher?” and featured a panel of sage industry veterans from television (Paul Brent, CTV Ottawa’s TECHNOW), radio (Rob Snow, CFRA Radio) and newspaper (James Bagnall, Associate Business Editor at the Ottawa Citizen).

The discussion was focused on how to approach and engage the media, and I took away 6 key pieces of powerful advice that those wishing to promote their organization through the media should pay careful attention to.

Is your story news worthy?
If you’re pumping out a press release for the sake of doing a release, you’re just wasting your time and money. Think carefully about your story angle and why it might be of interest beyond your organization's walls. No matter how you dress it up, if it’s not news, it’s not going to draw interest from the media.

Take the time to understand who you are pitching your story to
All three members of the panel stressed this. It isn’t unusual for an Assignment Editor to get over 400 emails and 150 calls a day (yes a day!) and the only way you are going to break through the clutter is to pitch a newsworthy story that is relevant to the media you are are targeting. Take the time to find out what your target media likes to write about, how they approach their writing, and what they have written about recently.

Know your story and have your facts straight
Nothing hurts your credibility more than having your facts wrong. Take the time to do some background work to set the context for your news, and offer the journalist interesting and accurate information that supports the story. A well articulated news item with thought provoking background material offers a journalist an appealing writing opportunity.

Speak in plain English
Resist the temptation to use technical jargon. Journalist want simple, common language that clearly and succinctly illustrates the story line. If they can’t grasp the essence of your story in the first 2 or 3 sentences of your communication, then they most likely are going to move on. 

Paul Brent read a great example from a press release he had recently received. The first sentence was  fifty-six words in length and was riddled with acronyms and technical jargon. The release did generate some discussion at the station however, but unfortunately for the author the talk was centered around how bad the release was.

Be brief
Enough said.

Be available
If you are lucky enough to have your story generate some media interest, don’t lose the opportunity by not having someone ready to answer follow-up questions or be available for an interview should one be requested. Media deadlines are tight and absolute. If you can’t make someone available for a follow-on discussion, then you’ll more than likely lose the opportunity.

Media placement is a powerful promotional tool for any organization, but if you're not paying close attention to how the media wants to be approached and engaged, then your efforts (and money) are likely being wasted.

To learn more about how you can harness the power of PR, check out some of our other blogs, or peruse our client testimonials to see how others have done it.

(Steve Reside is Vice President and Creative Director with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency.)

Today I’m attending Podcasters Across Borders 2008, the third of an annual conference that brings together smart, passionate podcasters from across North America to share best practices and stories.

I started attending the PAB conferences to garner technical tips and tricks to make my podcasts sound better and to find ways to reach more listeners. This year, however, it's back to basics — re-discovering what podcasting is really all about.

Podcasting, at its core, is passion. Passion for your audience, passion for your message, and passion for the delivery of that message.

Today Tim Coyne delivered an energetic session (An actor’s approach to podcasting) that reminded us to continually assess who our audience is, to be clear about what they want to hear, and to take the time to understand how they want to hear it.

Sage Tyrtle (Creating Audiodrama) is passion incarnate, and in her morning session encouraged us to be fully committed to our projects and to push to achieve the highest standards in how we deliver our messages.

Podcasting is a powerful communication tool, but it’s rarely put to great effect in the corporate world. If you aren’t passionately (and continually) paying attention to your audience, what they want to hear and how they want to hear it, then you’re not making the most of the medium and may be wasting your time and money.

To get a sense of what's possible for your corporate podcasts, check these podcasts out:

OCRIRadio.com is a great example of a podcast that has stayed on target since its inception in 2005, growing an audience by keeping focused on its goal of podcasting stories relevant to the Ottawa tech sector.

Mark Kuiack at CBA PracticeLink understands his busy lawyer audience very well, ensuring he keeps his podcasts focused on a single, digestible concept. The podcast themselves are rarely longer than 6 or 7 minutes in length.

MADD Canada nailed the passion angle when they used the podcast medium to deliver Karen Dunham’s riveting story as the mother of a drunk driving victim. Listen to Karen's story at "In her own words".

If you've got a messasge to deliver, podcasting can be a great option. But don't use it if you aren't prepared to dig deep and spend the effort to understand your audience. If you build it well, with your audience central to the process, they will come. If you just build it, you'll likely be disappointed with the results.

(Steve Reside is Vice President and Creative Director with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency.

Social networks like Facebook, provide companies with a ready-made social networking platform to access customers. Groups within a social network offer watering holes for your product, exchanging their membership and interest in your company for the latest information on your products.

As people join your social networking group they are publicly proclaiming approval for your company, potentially attracting their friends to your group through word-of-mouth – the person-to-person transfer of information. Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM), a growing marketing practice, builds on this concept of information and recommendation transfer and includes many categories, such as blogs, viral advertisements and of course social networks like Facebook.

Due to the personal, one-on-one conversational feel of word-of-mouth, an element of credibility and trust is added to a product or company when WOMM works. In November 2007, a report from PQ Media found that revenues from WOMM marketing jumped 35.9% in 2006 to $981.0 million in North America. The same report predicts that 2008 WOMM revenues will jump by 33% to $1.3 billion by the end of the year. It’s one of those “small but mighty” numbers when measured against total North American advertising spend, but I think it’s akin to search marketing – which grew from $4 billion in 2004 to 5.75 billion in 2005, approximately the same growth rate that WOMM is experiencing now. WOMM spending is predicted to grow at a compound annual rate of 30.4% each year, reaching 3.70 billion by 2011.

In addition to honesty, the marketing standard on the Internet, relevance must be present in order for a WOMM campaign to benefit a launch. In 2004, Burger King launched the “Subservient Chicken” campaign, which featured a viral website. On the site, a man in a chicken suit performed various actions, including the moonwalk, push-ups, cartwheels and 297 other moves, based on key commands from the user. The Internet was buzzing and people were sending invites to friends, making the site hugely popular. However, despite the success of the site, the campaign is often criticized for being a WOMM failure because no one was talking about Burger King because the edgy (and hilarious) campaign overshadowed the chicken sandwiches.

Quicken Loans and the “Yahoo! Answers Knowledge Partner” campaign is a great example of how to do WOMM the right way. Using “Yahoo! Answers”, a community-driven site that rewards users for posting questions and answers on a variety of subjects, Quicken Loans was able to leverage the site to answer questions that users were asking about home loans. Quicken Loans was incredibly honest about their presence on the site. In fact, only one rule was used to guide answers: “Answer the question. Don’t tell them how great Quicken Loans is. Don’t tell them how they will benefit from our product. Don’t tell them anything except what they ask.” This provided users with valuable information, not a sales pitch. The campaign was extremely successful and was awarded the 2007 Wommie Award from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Because of the power that a social networking group member brings, it is important that your company engage members in thoughtful and relevant ways because, after all, they are providing you with two invaluable things: time and trust.

Charlene Li, senior analyst at Forrester Research on social media, during her presentation ‘Big Brands and Facebook: Marketing Case Studies & Best Practices’ made a case for why Facebook and social network marketing requires communication not advertising. Ms. Li laid out five best practices for companies looking to begin a Facebook group:

1. Understand how similar groups meet or don’t meet the needs of the audience already
2. Create a unique experience that engages the audience
3. Enable and update the discussion board, the wall, photos, etc.
4. Read and respond to comments
5. Be transparent about your role

Bottom line: To succeed in putting social platforms to work for marketing purposes, your first priority is to respect your social network contacts’ privacy while talking with the members, not at them, in relevant ways that tie back to your company.

Want to learn how to swim in these new social networking waters? Give market2world a call.

(Jennifer James is a Communications Strategist with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency.)

Ottawa's tech sector continues to attract kudos in the mainstream media and beyond. A couple of weeks ago The National Post ran a story entitled Ottawa's tech sector: A galaxy full of stars that we were proud to be part of along with several of our clients. Last week, our 82000reasons.com campaign for the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) got a kind plug from SearchingWorks CEO Chris Biber at the Zone5ive marketing forum.

This week, the market2world team blog, 82000reasons.com and our OCRIRadio.com tech business podcast are all included in a new (started in March) Ottawa tech news aggregation site called Ottawa TechWatch by Peter Rochon. From Rochon's site:

OTW features a directory of Ottawa Start-ups to Watch with quick links to their news and ratings. To list your Ottawa Tech Start-up in the directory please send us a note.

As an added feature, OTW offers a listing of Ottawa Technology Job Sites.

For Tech investors OTW has a list of public technology companies with headquarters or major operations in the National Capital Region. OTW Tech Stocks offers quick links to stock quotes, news, filings and insider trade reports.

OTW also includes a listing of Ottawa's Top Tech Blogs. To list your blog in this directory, please send us a note. Submission criteria: the blog must be about technology and the author must reside in the National Capital Region.

Way to go Peter! Suggest this blog's readers bookmark OWT and plug in your start-up, stock or blog news wherever you can.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency, and the founder and co-host of OCRIRadio.com.)

“If possible, please refrain from ‘Our Tool Is The Best. We are the world, we are the children’ kind of answers to interview questions. My experience shows that if the answers are generally answered and genuine and perhaps include some references, people will visit the posting of our interview now and also in the long run...”

Almost a year ago Google launched universal search, blending various types of content such as images, video and maps – into general search results. In one short year, universal search has changed the search engine landscape, providing searchers with all relevant content, from stock quotes to news and everything in between.

Before Google flipped the switch on universal search – quickly followed by MSN and Yahoo! – search engines had a lot of content in vertical categories. News was here. Videos over there. Blogs were there. It was complicated and, as a result, was ignored by the majority of searchers. Universal search changed all that – it brought a variety of content directly to the user on one easy-to-view page. In a nutshell, universal search provides searchers with content that they didn’t realize they wanted to find until it was found for them!

Because of Universal Search, optimizing (properly tagging) everything to do with your company – images, news, videos – is extremely important to ensure that you show up in search results. Web page SEO alone just doesn’t cut it anymore because there is a lot of content vying for the coveted top spot.

A ComScore study released in March 2008 further emphasized this point. The data, gathered during one week in the U.S. in January 2008, shows that there were 1.2 billion Google searches and, of that total, 220 million were universal search results. This means that 17 % of all searches on Google showed up with at least one result with video, news, images, maps, weather or stocks.

Research from the iProspect-sponsored “Blended Search Results Study”, conducted by JupiterResearch and the NPD Group, further confirmed that searchers click on universal search results more often than vertical search results. The study, also released in March 2008, indicated that if people don’t find what they’re looking for on the first page, they’re likely to start a whole new search, not dig through following search result pages. In fact, nearly seven out of 10 respondents said that they clicked on a search result within the first page of results. This is a growing trend – in 2008, 68% of searchers clicked on the first page compared to 62% in 2006. In addition, the study showed that fewer people were willing to click on results past the third page – 8% in 2008 compared with 19% in 2002. The study also found that 37% of searchers associated being at the top of a search page with a company’s leadership within its industry. Convinced to optimize all of your content yet? Here are some more great stats:

• 36% of searchers click "news" results within universal search results; only 17% click a "news" result after conducting a news-specific search

• 31% of searchers click “image” results within universal search results; only 26% click an “image” result after conducting an image-specific search

• 17% of searchers click “video” results within universal search results; only 10% click a “video” result after conducting a video-specific search.

Bottom line: universal search increases visibility and presence on the web. Google changed how it searches, so you should be changing how you provide online content. You can get in on the universal search action really easily! How? At marketworld we submitted our address to the Local Business Centre, helping Google provide local search results to searchers searching both on the web and in Google maps. There are other key ways for you and your site to get the most from universal search, including:

• Submitting your news to be included in Google news

• Submitting historical news content o be included in News Archive Search

• Hosting your video content on Google Video or YouTube

So, happy birthday universal search. You’ve changed how we search (and have given us a great way to rise to the top of the Google search food chain)! Your e-card is in the mail.

(Jennifer James is a Communications Strategist with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency.)

“If you’re in the tech industry, you should be paying attention to what’s happening on Twitter. If you are a brand that targets the youth, just by listening you can gauge what are their newer interests and what’s the next new thing that they are latching on to. It’ll help fine tune your marketing strategies.”

Yesteray an article appeared in BusinessWeek entitle "The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit", offering more evidence of the growing trend towards the use of Macs in the Enterprise. If you're still not paying attention to the growing Mac market as a place for you to build your business, you should be.

Here's an exceprt from the article.

Soon after Michele Goins became chief information officer at Juniper Networks (JNPR) in February, she decided to respond to the growing chorus of Mac lovers among the networking company's 6,100 employees. For years, many had used Apple's (AAPL) computers at home and clamored for them in the office as well. . So she launched a test, letting 600 Juniper staffers use Macs instead of the standard-issue PCs that run Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows operating system. As long as the extra support costs aren't too high, she plans to open the floodgates. "If we opened it up today, I think 25% of our employees would choose Macs," she says.

Here's the original blog posting 

Today, more than ever, the Mac has become a great platform to run a business on. But have you considered the Mac as a great platform to build a business on? If you haven't, you should.

In a recent article in InfoWorld entitled "The Mac in business: it's easier than you think", Galen Gruman discusses the growing movement of users demanding Macs in the enterprise — a trend that crosses all business areas and even the public sector.

"Once confined to marketing departments and media companies, the Mac is spilling over into a wider array of business environments, thanks to the confluence of a number of computing trends, not the least among them a rising tide of end-user affinity for the Apple experience."

Indeed, earlier this month Daniel Eran Dilger reported that IBM’s Research and Information Services group had launched an internal pilot program designed to study the possibility of moving significant numbers of employees to the Mac platform. Imagine that, the inventors of the ThinkPad "thinking different" on an Apple notebook!

According to the report, over 81% of the people in the pilot study said that the Mac offered a “better or best" experience when compared to their existing computers and 86% of the pilot users requested to keep the Mac.

Combine these observations with Apple’s record first quarter 2008 sales and revenue report and reports from Forrester that estimate Mac adoption for businesses tripled last year, and it's easy to see why many companies are looking to the Mac market to grow their business.

In January of 2007 I wrote a post that outlined how Mac’s TCO meant business to market2world communications.  It was very clear to us then that the low TCO of ownership for Macs and the growing number of companies offering great business software on them was a recipe for success.

As Creative Director at market2world it has always been easy for me to find great software to fulfill my creative responsibilities, but now it’s becoming just as easy to find great software to help me perform all my business-related work too.

"We use Macs for everything from running our phone system using PhoneValet 5.0, to managing our contacts, tasks, projects, and invoicing using Daylite Productivity Suite 3 and Billings 2. And we seamlessly exchange documents with the corporate PC world using Microsoft Office."

There are just too many great examples of Mac-based software to list them here, but if you’re not convinced that Macs could support your business or offer a viable market for your products and services, check out companies such as Xsilva and their next generation POS (point of sales) software, FileMaker and their award-winning database software, or the ever pervasive Microsoft and their just released Office Suite for the Mac.

Each of these companies is thriving in a world that is beginning to "think different" about their computer platform of choice. You could too!

(Steve Reside is Vice President and Creative Director with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency. Steve has produced podcasts for many organizations including MADD Canada, MD Funds, OCRIRadio.com and the Canadian Bar Association.)

I have it on good authority those floggings are routinely taking place. Under-40 entepreneurs are being whipped upside the head by boardroom grey-beards for daring to suggest that the Indians and Chinese might possibly buy something versus rip off their intellectual property.

The grey-beards of course made their money piloting and selling their technologies in the Excited States and in some cases, Europe. Aside from the fact the E.S. economy is based on B.S. financial instruments and suffering badly from Wall Street through to Main Street, there are those hundreds of millions of newly minted middle class people in Asia who want to drive cars, eat more meat, and need billions of dollars of both made-in-Canada (read cleantech like solar, wind, hydro, biofuel) and information/telecommunications technology to transform their societies. They're doing it, now. If you've got something to sell there, you should be doing it, now. Grey-beards be damned.

We blew the India myth out of the water on our Telfer India Forum podcast last month at the University of Ottawa. To repeat from the blog post of our VP and Creative Director Steve Reside:

Mike Manson, Partner with the TaraSpan Group — a company that accelerates market entry to India for Canadian companies — says that the economic opportunity in India is “at a scale where most Canadian’s can’t comprehend”.

“We’ve exploded this myth that only the big players can play in India. What we’ve found is that if you have a product with a value proposition, Indian companies are moving at such a pace that if they get the value proposition there is definitely room for smaller Canadian companies to enter the Indian market.”

Mike Manson's got a solid proof point with a company-changing deal he helped broker for Recognia, an Ottawa-based stock chart pattern recognition software company led by Rick Escher. I've watched Rick work long and hard in the North American market. He's a great entrepreneur and his Indian deal with Reliance Money places his company in one of the world's hottest equity markets. As well as more cars, meat and technology, India's citizens are enthusiastic participants in their own equity markets. For the first time, market capitalization crossed $1 trillion in 2007. Reliance Money's Indian customers will use Recognia's software to get email notifications based on personalized criteria, such as opportunity type, the price range or type of pattern desired.  Subscribers will have the added benefit of receiving the daily 'Top Bullish and Bearish Opportunities' sent directly to them.

That's India. What about China? Well, my friend Mike Darch, Executive Director of Global Marketing for the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation is China this week leading a clean energy mission, and in a blog post entitled The new China: myths destroyed, he gives the grey-beards a pretty convincing argument for doing business in that country:

You can stay western, eat western, shop western and easily get by in English. Reading about the economic revolution, or watching it on CNN is one thing. Seeing it is quite another.

The numbers are also staggering. Already China’s solar energy companies are generating close to $100 million in revenue. And the target for 2010: $1 billion. It is China’s demonstration city for solar technology. It has embraced the sustainable energy movement and is positioning itself to lead China.

Another myth: bureaucracy. We are on a first mission, trying to build Canada’s image as a major innovator in clean energy, with our companies and universities looking to make contacts and build relationships.

We find out that Carleton University is scrambling to find a computer to develop a partnership agreement and sign it before they leave tomorrow. The discussion tables for our team members are busy all afternoon. We are talking about specific projects and follow-up with the Shenzhen Science, Technology and Information Bureau. And how to handle signing and publicity.

One of our presenters noted that although Canada had great innovation and R&D, it was slow to commercialize. It was clear in the seminar and follow-on meetings that clean technology was important to China and Shenzhen, and the mantra was “let’s do it not talk about it”. Which is the country supposedly bogged down in bureaucracy.

MythbustersRus. Tell the grey-beards to wake up, smell the curry and get going! 

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency, and the founder and co-host of OCRIRadio.com.)

(This was originally posted March 31st at the OCRIRadio.com blog):

In the March episode of OCRIRadio.com, market2world President and CEO Nathan Rudyk interviews five Canadian and Indian executives in attendance at last month’s Telfer India Forum at the University of Ottawa. Four technology executives and one experienced India observer are quick to push aside the myth that India’s only role in the technology sector is as a supplier of outsource labour.

In fact, a compelling argument can be made that India’s most important role moving forward for high tech Canada will not be as a supplier of talent, but as a market for Canadian technology products and services. And Ottawa’s technology sector is well placed to take advantage of this growth — especially in the booming Indian telecommunication, health care and software industries.

Consider the evidence:

• India’s economic growth is forecasted to exceed 8% percent for 2008
• India is projected to be the world’s seventh-largest economy by 2020, up five spots from where it sits today
• According to Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Canadian exports to India reached $1.7 billion last year — a 54% increase over 2005
  
• The number of new mobile telecom subscribers in India rose from 16 million in 2003 to 65 million in 2006. With 156.31 million subscribers across the country, India has become one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world
• According to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, the Indian healthcare industry has the potential to show the same exponential growth that the software industry showed in the past decade

To get more insight into the opportunities available for Ottawa high tech companies in India, listen to Nathan's interview with Peter Nesbitt — Export Development Canada’s (EDC) Chief Representative for India International Business Development. Nesbitt says that EDC is focusing on India’s middle-class because "it represents the fastest growing consumer market in the world”.

In a separate interview in the March show, Mike Manson, Partner with the TaraSpan Group — a company that accelerates market entry to India for Canadian companies — says that the economic opportunity in India is “at a scale where most Canadian’s can’t comprehend”.

“We’ve exploded this myth that only the big players can play in India. What we’ve found is that if you have a product with a value proposition, Indian companies are moving at such a pace that if they get the value proposition there is definitely room for smaller Canadian companies to enter the Indian market.”

Other guest on the show include; Gary Knee, Vice President of R&D and Operations, Redknee Solutions Inc., Sonam Devgan, CEO of Algol Semantics Inc. and Dr. Praful Naik, Chief Scientific Officer of Bilcare Ltd..

Listen to the entire show to learn how Ottawa high tech companies can leverage their experience to take advantage of opportunities in the rapidly growing Indian market.

Play podcast now or download as an MP3

Three years ago a friend of mine from the University of Waterloo's student newspaper where we developed our passion for writing, started a Web business conference called "mesh".

Mathew Ingram – now a successful Globe and Mail columnist and renowned blogger (and still a helluva nice guy) – and  some other friends of his in Toronto created what is now a must-go-event for entrepreneurs and investors who instinctively understand that new Web-based businesses can be built with a fraction of the investment capital required in most industries.

In its first year the mesh confererence was a little bit like teenage sex – a bunch of people talking fervidly about doing it, who in many cases had not done it all or weren't doing it very well. So ... fun, but not very meaningful.

Last year, based on the fact the mesh founders (and even families) are always in attendance throughout their event and are also hooked into the blogosphere for feedback, I expected better, brought along our VP & Creative Director Steve Reside, and mesh delivered. It was a fantastic interactive learning event from been-there-done-that entrepreneurs, and the networking led to a new client that will pay our mesh fees ($469 for a two-day conference that will likely, as last year, sell out) for many years to come.

This year Steve's looking forward to the new meshU, a one-day series of focused Web tech workshops. If you need more convincing, here's some hype from the mesh conference's email hypster (and lawyer to the start-up stars) Rob Hyndman:

Right now, we can tell you about several keynotes: author Matt Mason, whose new book The Pirate's Dilemma looks at the implications of digital piracy; Club Penguin co-founder Lane Merrifield, a Canadian who helped build a virtual world for children that was bought by Disney for $350-million; and Ethan Kaplan, the head of technology at Warner Brothers Records, who is intimately involved in the evolution of the modern music industry.

We also have some great panelists and other speakers lined up as well, including University of Toronto philosopher and author Mark Kingwell; the CEO and founder of Techdirt, Mike Masnick; media blogger Rachel Sklar from The Huffington Post; digital-copyright expert Michael Geist; Internet researcher Nancy Baym; the founder of RedFlagDeals.com, Derek Szeto: Blip.tv founder Dina Kaplan, CommunityLend CEO Michael Garrity; Agoracom founder George Tsiolis and a host of others. 

Just ... go.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency, and the founder and co-host of OCRIRadio.com.)

Culture.ca, Canada’s cultural portal, is an initiative of the Department of Canadian Heritage, as part of the Canadian Culture Online Strategy.

Culture.ca’s vast links collection and cultural content reflect the strong and vibrant presence of Canadian culture online while connecting visitors to a multitude of resources on Canadian arts, heritage, nature, society, recreation and cultural tourism.

Maurizio Ortolani, the National Art Center’s New Media Producer, explains the site’s role as "the curator of on-line Canadian culture and heritage”. It’s a great concept — a single place where you can find the best of what Canada has to offer in on-line media.

It’s an honour to have OCRIRadio.com included on the site. You can access the OCRIRadio.com podcast page on the culture.ca website here.

OCRIRadio.com was launched on November 23, 2005 to demonstrate to the Ottawa high-tech community how Web 2.0 tools like blogs and podcasts can be put to work so companies and institutions can tap in, participate, and grow business with social media.

OCRIRadio.com has been recognized by Podcasters Across Borders (PAB) as a podcasting pioneer — one of the very first technology focused podcasts created in Canada.

Past guests on OCRIRadio.com include Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft; Andrew Waitman, Managing Partner, Celtic House Venture Partners and John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems Inc.

The February 2008 edition of OCRIRadio.com features tech marketing author, guru and venture capitalist Geoffrey Moore. In an exclusive OCRIRadio.com interview, Moore says clean technology offers “the largest market in the history of the planet”. Check it out!

Play podcast now or download as an MP3.