mesh

meshwest: See Ya Next Year, Calgary

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media No Comments Tags: , ,

Screen shot 2011 06 07 at 8 23 00 AMEven though mesh has been around since 2006 and established itself as one of Canada’s leading Web conferences, there is always some anxiousness when we (aka the mesh gang) launch a new event.

Some of the questions we ask ourselves is whether there’s room in the market for a new conference, can we put together compelling programming, and will people pay for something with no track record. It was with some trepidation that we launched meshmarketing in 2009, particularly given the economic downturn had pounded marketing budgets. With some luck and great content, we’ve established a pretty strong foundation for meshmarketing.

So when we decided to pull the trigger on meshwest, there was a combination of excitement and trepidation. We always wanted to take mesh national, and the time had come to either do it or shelve the idea. In the end, we decided it was a good idea, and we launched meshwest last week in Calgary.

With a mixture of happiness and relief, meshwest got off to a great start. We had a full house at the University of Calgary that were engaged and enthusiastic. And we had a great line-up of speakers – people such as Tobias Lutke, Keith Boulis, Danny Robinson, Dan Debow and Mark MacLeod that came in from out of town, and a local crew led by Doug Lacombe and Greg Hounslow.

As important, we met lots of interesting people and made some great connections that will only help us make the next meshwest in Calgary even better – along with meshevents in Edmonton and Vancouver later this year. From a personal perspective, it was insightful to get a handle on the local high-tech community.

Some of the highlights from last week include:

- The keynote conversation with Shopify.com CEO Tobias Lutke. Shopify is one of Canada’s most successful Web companies with an e-commerce platform that has more than 15,000 customers that generate sales of about $250-million. Lutke provided some great insight into how to start a business, the ways to maintain a healthy corporate culture, and how Ottawa-based Shopify has financed its growth.

- The panel featuring Leigh Himel, Sarah Dickinson and WestJet’s Greg Hounslow, which was focused on how companies can establish a strong foundation to succeed with social media. Hounslow provided hands-on insight into what it’s like to operate a corporate social media program, while Himel and Dickinson

- The Twitter panel with Allyson Simpson, Tony Rino and William Bakker. Rather than talk about the strategy or the tools, the panelists offered up first-hand experiences in using Twitter to drive marketing campaigns and business. In particular, Simpson charmed the audience by talking about how the Melrose Cafe has used Twitter to build a community and attract business.

Here’s a video of Doug Lacombe talking about the social media landscape in Calgary:

Doug Lacombe Talks About Calgary’s Social Media Scene from Mark Evans on Vimeo.

Calgary, Here We Come!

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: , ,

Screen shot 2011 06 07 at 8 23 00 AMFive years ago, five guys walked into a bar….

It may sound like the beginning of a good joke but the punchline is the five guys decided to create a conference so people could talk about all the exciting things happening on the Web. The conference, mesh, has become a lot bigger, and we’ve branched out by adding more events (meshmarketing and meshU) but the core of what we set out to do in 2006 still holds true today.

As much as mesh has turned into a business, what motivates the five of us is being able to feed off our enthusiasm about new trends, development, start-ups and interesting people to put on conferences. These events are a lot of work but terribly satisfying.

We always thought about mesh as being something for Canada, even though none of us imagined holding events in other cities. After all, we were five guys with no conference experience. Tomorrow, however, mesh takes a big step forward with the launch of meshwest in Calgary. It’s a one-day event that we hope will help us establish a presence in Western Canada and, as important, make mesh truly national.

In some ways, it feels daunting to being adding more events given we all have full-time jobs. On the other hand, it’s exciting to watch something grow and evolve into something you never imagined.

We’ve got a great line-up of speakers at meshwest, headed by a keynote conversation with Shopify.com co-founder Tobias Lutke. What’s nice about meshwest is there’s a good balance of speakers coming in from out of town, along with local talent such as Greg Hounslow, Doug Lacombe, Tony Rino, Allyson Simpson and William Bakker.

We’re looking forward to a great day of conversations and new connections tomorrow. If you’d like to join us, tickets can be purchased here.

mesh ’11: Armano on Influence

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

Last month (was it really last month!) at the mesh conference, I had a chance to sit down with Edelman’s David Armano about the growing focus and importance of influence within the social media landscape. David provides some thoughts on what’s happening, why there is so much interest, and the tools to harness influence and influencers.

The influence panel with Armano and Valeria Maltoni was a good conversation but it felt like a good meal in which you later feel hungry. There was terrific insight and discussion but what I think the panel illustrated is influence is still an elusive beast that no one has a handle on yet.

The biggest challenge with influence and influencers is they’re moving targets. While there are some people who are clearly influencers due to their stature or following, the influence landscape is fluid – influencers come and go, they emerge out of nowhere and then disappear just as quickly. This makes identifying and engaging with influencers a constant challenge and struggle.

And although there’s plenty of excitement about influence tools such as Klout.com, there is no definitive or dominant tool…yet. A growing number of companies are approaching influence in different ways so I expect the market will start to evolve much like the social media monitoring market slowly emerged and then exploded.

David Armano on Influence from Mark Evans on Vimeo.

Here are some of my other thoughts on influence:
- The Fascination with Influence and Influencers
- A chat with Klout.com’s Joe Fernandez

mesh was marvelous

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Media, Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , ,

Mesh bean bagsmesh is like a good house party. Afterward, you’re exhausted but happy that everything worked so well. After seven months of preparation, the two days of mesh were over before you knew it, and now we’re on to the next thing – meshwest in Calgary on June 8.

So what were the highlights of mesh ’11? Without going into too much detail, here’s a personal list:

1. The venue – the Allstream Centre – was a major move for mesh because it’s much bigger than MaRS, which hosted the first five mesh events. Like any new home, there were a few kinks but, for the most part, it worked really well. It was great to have more meeting rooms and more space to mingle and eat.

2. The sponsors village – However you want to cut it, sponsors need to be part of the mix for a good conference. They provide the support needed to put on a good show. At the same time, sponsors want to be more than just a logo on the Web site and swag. At mesh, the village was part of the landscape so that they had great exposure that seemed natural and non-obtrusive.

3. The keynotes, particularly Gabe Zichermann’s talk with Stuart MacDonald about gameification. There are speakers who have a gift for entertaining, educating and engaging, and Gabe is a perfect example of someone who delivers all three. It was a keynote that delivered endless pearls of wisdom, and I found myself scribbling lots of notes.

A great example was Gabe’s contention that Web sites need to be simple rather than offer a lot of options, which is something that I constantly advocate when doing Web site projects for clients. Gabe also talked about the importance of rewarding users when they do what they you want. This can even message message such as “You’re amazing” after they register.

4. The porn panel – With a great lineup of speakers that included Pink Visual CEO Alison Vivas, who runs an adult entertainment company, it epitomized a mesh panel at its best. The panelists were engaged with each other, they had different perspectives to offer, they were entertaining and educational, and the audience was into it. Here’s the Huffington Post Canada story on the panel.

5. The bean bag chairs from FatBoy, which were a hit of the conference. Imagine walking into a large conference ballroom to discover there are 20 different coloured bean bag chairs to sit in. Now, a few people may have gone too far when they decided to take a nap but they were one of the small touches that made mesh really work. (Note: The photo above is the mesh gang post-mesh.)

6. The influencer panel with David Armano and Valeria Maltoni – With so much interest in the role of influencers within social media, the room was packed. As some of the leading thinkers about digital marketing, Armano and Maltoni were well-armed to provide perspective. If I had to moderate the panel over again, I would have pressed them into talking more about the tools – PeerIndex, Klout, mPact, etc. – because everyone gets that influence is an important thing but a lot of people are struggling with how to identify and successfully engage with influencers.

7. The TVO panel with host Steve Paikin, Micah Sifry, Jesse Brown, the NDP’s Charlie Angus and Tony Clement, the new Treasury Minister. It was a wonderful panel, highlighted by Angus proclaiming Twitter had little value – something that didn’t go over while in a room in which Twitter has enthusiastic support, including Clement.

There are lots of other highlights but these are some that jumped out. I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the other important part of mesh – the people who attended and spoke, and their enthusiasm to network, exchange ideas and engage. It’s something that makes mesh different and wonderful.

Now, it’s on to Calgary for meshwest, and pretty soon, we’ll be getting the programming machine going for meshmarketing in November…and then it’ll be time for mesh ’12 in May 2012!

Links: It was great to see so much coverage of mesh. One of the blog posts that caught my attention was Louise Armstrong’s post on conference etiquette, which captures the essence of mesh. As well, Micah Sifry (aka TechPresident) did a wonderful post about Canada’s Internet landscape.

More: Here are the “official” mesh photos.

The Nuts and Bolts of mesh

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , ,

Mesh logoWith mesh kicking off tonight with a pre-party the Drake Hotel, it feels like the calm before the storm.

In many ways, mesh feels like a giant party rather than a Web conference. It’s a lot of fun, you get to invite cool people and it’s immensely satisfying to see everyone enjoy themselves. But it’s an awful lot of work that consumes hundreds of hours.

The preparations for mesh start, in earnest, about October (or eight months before the conference) when the six of us (Mike MacDerment, Mathew Ingram, Stuart MacDonald, Rob Hyndman, Sheri Moore and myself) start to brainstorm about potential speakers for the keynotes, panels and workshops.

We get together on Wednesday nights, which usually involves at least 30 minutes of updates, gossip and bad jokes before we get to the serious part of the evening: food, which tends to have a strong carnivore component.

Then, we get into lengthy and often animated discussions about speakers and content. At times, it’s a thing of beauty to see how collectively we can come up with ideas and great speakers.

But it’s not always peaches and cream. We’ve got different interests and agendas that sometimes cause some friction when a great idea is shot down. At the same time, we’ve all got demanding day jobs so there can be times when you don’t have the energy or patience to play nice. But much like brothers and sisters scrap, no one takes it personally because we’ve all got the best of intentions.

In an ideal world, we’ve lined up keynotes by late-January. The process is fascinating because we start with a list of 30 to 40 potential speakers, which is boiled down to 15 or so invitations. After dealing with polite rejections because people don’t want to travel, have conflicts, etc., we eventually arrive at the four keynotes.

At the same time, we’re coming up with ideas for panels. Some panels happen with little effort, some take a lot of time and work to emerge. The advantage of having six people involved in putting mesh together is there are lots of ideas and different perspectives.

That’s the programming side of the house. The event planning is another huge piece of work handled by the super-energetic Sheri Moore and her team at MCC Planners. They’re the ones who secure the venue, deal with the caterers, audio/visual people, accommodations and flights for speakers, social events, and all the small details that collectively add up to a lot of work.

And then you’ve got sponsorships, which is handled by Alicia Kalozdi-MacMillan. Without the support of sponsors, mesh would be difficult to make happen. It may come across as pandering but it’s truth because conference economics only work with sponsors involved – unless you’re willing (and able) to sell expensive tickets.

mesh is a lot of work that happens because a group of people pour a lot of blood, sweat, tear, energy, time and passion into it. To us, mesh is more than just a conference, it’s something we love doing because we think we’re doing something good and right for the community.

It also provides all of us with tremendous personal satisfaction. Personally, the best part is when the lights go out just before the first day of mesh begins when you can feel the excitement in the room – excitement that has been created after months of preparations.

So, let’s bring on mesh ’11!

More: David Crow wrote a really nice blog post, which captures the essence of what we do.

Pulling the Covers Off mesh ’11 (aka mesh 6.0)

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

After months of work and sushi-powered meetings, we’re finally ready to unveil mesh ’11.

To paraphrase Ed Sullivan, we’ve got a “really big show” with terrific keynotes and a line-up of excellent panels and workshops. Before getting into the details, there a few new wrinkles for mesh ’11. They include:

- More workshops. Given the popularity of workshops, we have decided to offer six per stream. Yup, there will be 24 workshops in total, which will provide lots of opportunities for hands-on, interactive learnings.

- Moving to the Allstream Centre at Exhibition Place. After getting a feet wet by moving meshMarketing to the AllStream Centre last November, we decided to take the plunge with mesh as well. With more room and lots of parking, we think it’s an excellent venue that will make it possible to let more people come.

- A “Sponsors Village” in which the companies that support mesh will be able to strut their stuff.

So what about the programming? For starters, here’s the line-up of keynote speakers.

Society: Ron Deibert of the Citizen Lab will provide insight about state control of the internet, efforts in the Arab world to shut down the internet, and efforts taken to circumvent that.

Marketing: After wowing the crowd at meshMarketing, we felt compelled to bring back Gabe Zichermann, who will talk the online psychology, behaviour and motivation of online users, including the growing role of gamification.

Business: With the Web having a major impact on the work landscape, Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation will get into how companies can be social and motivate and keep younger, Web-savvy employees, who are used to moving around and doing things that motivate them intrinsically instead of extrinsically.

Media: Jeff Jarvis, a popular blogger and former journalist, will talk about how the media is changing, the rise of WikiLeaks as a press entity, crowdsourcing, transparency and other factors and where the future of journalism is headed.

As a bonus, we also have a “Super Panel” featuring Mona Seif, an Egyptian activist who will give us some insight into how digital activism played a key role in the political uprising ended the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak.

You can get more information on the mesh Web site about the rest of the speakers who will be appearing on panels and workshops within the media, society, marketing and business streams.

You’re probably wondering about tickets. Until April 20, you can buy early-bird tickets for $539 + HST. (After that, tickets will be $639 + HST). There are also 50 student tickets available for $99 each. You can buy tickets here.

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