Sean Ellis Speaking at meshwest
We seem to be living in the midst of a startup renaissance with a flurry of entrepreneurial activity. Heck, it’s even happening Canada, including the emergence of a growing amount of seed capital to turn ideas into companies.
Given all this activity, we’re thrilled to have Sean Ellis speak at meshwest. An entrepreneur, startup executive, one of the leading startup thought leaders and popular blogger, Ellis will offer valuable insight for startups and entrepreneurs looking for an edge in a highly-competitive landscape.
Ellis is the founder and CEO of CatchFree, an online service that makes it easy to find and compare the best free online solutions to meet your needs. CatchFree has raised $5.5-million in venture capital, and launched in May 2011.
Before founding CatchFree, Sean ran marketing at LogMeIn and Uproar from launch to NASDAQ IPO filings, and helped bring Dropbox, Lookout, and Xobni to market in interim marketing leadership roles. He also helped accelerate growth at Eventbrite, Socialcast, Webs, World Golf Tour, WordPress.com and Songkick.
Tickets for meshwest can be purchased here.
Tags: meshwest, sean ellis, startups, vancouver
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Vancouver, Here We Come!
Coming off a successful meshmarketing last week, we’re getting ready to host meshwest in Vancouver on Dec. 5 at the Salt Building.
Vancouver is the third leg of our Western Canadian tour that started in Calgary in June, before hitting Edmonton in early-October. So far, it’s been a great ride with some terrific speakers and, as important, an engaged group of attendees. As much as compelling programming is part of the mesh DNA, it’s the connections and networking that make help make mesh more than just your typical conference.
We’re excited about Vancouver because it not only does it give us a chance to hit the “Left Coast” but we finally get to follow through on the requests we’ve received since mesh started in 2006 to take mesh a cross-Canada affair.
meshwest kicks off with a keynote from Stewart Butterfield, who has moved into the gaming world with Tiny Speck, whose debut title is an ambitious massively multiplayer online game called Glitch.
We’ve got a great “Standup Panel” with Erik Blachford, Carl Schmidt and Jason Bailey. You might be wondering what “Standup” means; it’s a look at companies that have moved beyond being startups but still have to tackle key growth challenges and issues.
Janice Diner is going to deliver valuable insight into what to do with a Facebook Page to make it an effective marketing and sales machine.
We’ve also got Alexandra Samuel, Caroline MacGillvray and Elijah van der Giessen doing a panel on social media and political activism, which will be moderated by Darren Barefoot.
And Zite CEO Mark Johnson is going talk about the fast-moving world of tablet computing and how it’s changing how content is created and consumed.
For anyone interested in how the Web is impacting how we work and live, there’s something for everyone at meshwest. And we’ve got a great end-of-day social to wrap things up.
Tickets for meshwest are now on sale, including a block of tickets for $249 (a $40 discount) available through our friends at CIRA.
Tags: meshwest, stewart butterfield, vancouver
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The Goodness of .CA and meshwest
If you want to feel the warm tingles of being a proud Canadian in a digital world, you need only watch the .CA Impact Awards video. I guarantee you will feel the urge to create something with a .CA on the end of it just so you too can be part of this legacy!
The 2012 .CA Impact Awards open for entries January 9, 2012. They are looking for people and organizations that use .CA sites to truly make a difference in the lives of their users and those around them.
There are four categories you can enter:
Public Sector and Not-for-Profit, eLearning, Small Business and Applications (including gaming and mobile).
The honest truth of it all is that, mesh couldn’t be mesh, without great partners like CIRA, the member-driven organization that manages Canada’s .CA domain name registry. It is a pretty cool thing when two entities like mesh and CIRA can come together to promote the same Canadian conversation around what is happening online.
It has been so exciting taking mesh to Western Canada. We’ve already touched down in Calgary and Edmonton, and on Dec. 5, we will be in your backyard Vancouver!
CIRA, in their on-going support of mesh and in celebration of the.CA Impact Awards, is sponsoring a special block of tickets that are being sold at $249. Since it is 55 days to their entry deadline, from the release date of this block, there are 55 tickets available (or there were when I first stated writing this post- so don’t delay in buying quickly!).
I know the folks at CIRA hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to participate in Canada’s Internet conversation through mesh and the .CA Impact Awards.
It is our hope that you will join us in Vancouver on Dec. 5 to connect, share and inspire.
Now go watch that video again – I swear, it gets me every time!
To purchase tickets for meshwest, you can purchase tickets here. Our speakers include Stewart Butterfield, Zite’s Mark Johnson, Janice Diner and Erik Blachford.
meshwest Vancouver: The Standup Panel
For all the talk about startups and how to establish, finance and grow them, what about companies that have moved to the next stage – something we describe as a “standup” because after establishing themselves as businesses, they are ready to go to the next stage.
To dig into the standup and what’s required to take it to the next level, we’ve put together a panel of entrepreneurs how have been there done that, or have been and are doing that.
The panel, moderated by Stuart MacDonald, includes Erik Blachford from Technology Crossover Ventures, who was a key player in the growth of Expedia. Since 1995, Erik has been active within the startup world as an advisor, investor and entrepreneur.
Carl Schmidt from Unbounce will provide key insight into what’s involved in running a fast-growing business. For people not familiar with Vancouver-based Unbounce, it is a self-served hosted product that lets marketers build, publish and test landing pages without IT or software.
Our third speaker is Jason Bailey, who bootstrapped Super Rewards from no revenue to a $100-million run rate before it was acquired by Adknowledge, one of the largest online ad marketplaces. A founder and principal with GrowLab, Jason has invested in and is mentoring many local companies including DES Games, Compass Engine, PayPhone App, CrowdFanatic, and OverInteractive Media.
Early-bird tickets for meshwest can be purchased now for $239, while student tickets are available for $49.
Tags: carl schmidt, erik blachford, jason bailey, meshwest, vancouver
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mesh Vancouver keynote: Stewart Butterfield
Has it really been nearly seven years since Flickr was acquired by Yahoo!? At the time, it was one of the largest acquisitions of a Canadian online company, thrusting the spotlight on its co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake
Butterfield, who stayed with Flickr until 2009, has been working on a number of projects, as well as speaking about design and technology. He also co-founded Tiny Speck, a startup that is “building something enormous…that will blow your minds”. Tiny Speck’s first product, a multi-player online game called Glitch, launched last month. (see the video below.)
“”We wanted to make something very specific that hadn’t been made before,” Butterfield told the Guardian after Glitch made its debut. “Because it’s played in the browser, people superficially think of social games and expect a particular dynamic both in terms of how it makes money, and the experience of playing it. But people are playing live and synchronously with each other, and the monetization mechanics aren’t based around speeding up the gameplay in exchange for real-world currency.”
Given Butterfield’s involvement with Flickr, which was based in Vancouver, and how games are becoming increasingly more popular online, having Butterfield as mesh Vancouver’s keynote speaker seemed like a natural choice.
We’ll be interested in getting his view on online games, design, social media and how the world of online photography has changed over the past few years given the rise of new players such as Instagram.
Here’s where you can see the schedule and speakers for mesh Vancouver. Early-bird tickets for the one-day event are $239 until Nov. 4.
Tags: flickr, glitch, meshwest, stewart butterfield, tiny speck, vancouver
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mesh Edmonton: Ready for Takeoff!
In many ways, conferences are a labour of love.
There is an awful lot of work involved, dozens of balls in the air at the same time, speakers to invite, venues to be secured, etc. At the end of the day, it is rewarding to see everything come together, particularly when you’re organizing a first-time event.
This has struck me over the past few weeks as we have put the final touches on mesh Edmonton, which happens on Oct. 4. As the second leg of a three-stop tour in Western Canada (along with Calgary, which happened in June, and Vancouver, which happens Dec. 5), Edmonton is a market with a vibrant digital community that mesh is excited to embrace.
Over the past few months, we’ve reached out to lots of individuals, companies and associations to get a lay of the land, put together programming, identify potential speakers, and establish partnerships. It has taken a lot of time and effort but it is great to see things come together.
While I’m biased, I have to say the speaker line-up for mesh Edmonton looks great. We’ve got Ali Asaria, founder and CEO with Well.ca, kicking things off with a discussion on how Well went from a scrappy startup to Canada’s leading beauty and health e-commerce sites.
There’s a terrific entrepreneurs panel featuring Jevon MacDonald, Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana and Maura Rodgers that will provide real-world insight about how to create, operate, grow and finance a start-up.
For anyone interested in how social media happens tactically on a day-to-day basis, Allyson Simpson (Osum Oil Sands), Scott Walker (HootSuite) and Doug van Spronsen (DDB Canada) will shed light on what happens.
Another panel features Ashley Casovan and Mack Male, who will talk about open data and the impact it is having on how government operates and, as important, how citizens are getting more involved and engaged with government.
There is growing interest in how the real-time digital landscape is affecting crisis communications so there is bound to be great advice from a panel that features Christina Rontynen from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers).
And last – but certainly least – we end the day with a panel about game design featuring Owen Brierley talking with Victor Rubba (Fluik Entertainment), Jason Suriano (Rocketfuel Games) and Patrick Weekes (Bioware)
With a week to go, there are a few things that still need to get done but we’re ready for takeoff!
To purchase tickets for the event, which happens at the Shaw Conference Centre, head on over to our registration site. Early-bird tickets can be purchased for $239.
Tags: edmonton, mesh, meshwest
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The Lineup for meshwest Edmonton
In two weeks (Oct. 4 to be exact), meshwest will be moving into Edmonton – the second leg of our “tour” that started in Calgary last June.
After a lot of work behind the scenes over the summer – always a difficult time to focus on things other than vacations and BBQs – we’ve come up with a great line-up of speakers.
The day kicks off with Ali Asaria, the founder and CEO with Well.ca, which has become Canada’s leading health and beauty e-commerce site. Ali will talk about how to build an online business in a large but competitive market, the process of raising venture capital, and how to manage growth while maintaining great customer service.
Speaking of entrepreneurs, there is a terrific triple-bill featuring Jevon MacDonald (GoInsight), Maura Rodgers (Strutta) and Dups Wijayawardhana (Empire Avenue), who will talk about Canada’s start-up landscape and provide insight into running and growing a start-up.
Ashley Casovan from the city of Edmonton and Mack D. Male will sit down with Rob Hyndman to talk about how open data is changing how government operates and how citizens are getting more involved in engaging with government and creating new services.
For people looking to learn how companies operate social media programs, we’ve got a panel featuring Allyson Simpson from Osum Oil Sands and HootSuite’s Scott Walker. We did this panel in Calgary, and decided to do it again amid the great reception about the behind-the-scenes, tactical insight provided by the panel, which included Simpson, who was then working for the popular Melrose Cafe.
We end the day with a panel about crisis communications in real-time – something many companies are trying to get their heads around given the fast-moving and dynamic nature of social media. The panel includes Christina Rontynen from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
Early-bird tickets are now on sale for $239 so buy now.
Tags: edmonton, mesh, meshwest
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meshwest spotlight: Managing Your Community
Once you’ve got into social media and started to build a community, one of the challenges is being able to keep a handle on what’s happening – be it blog post comments, tweets or posts on a Facebook Wall – both externally and internally.
This can be a nice problem to have if you’re particularly successful in establishing and nurturing a large community. The downside is the resources required to manage and moderate these communities can be taxing on your resources and finances.
This has led to the emergence of third-party specialists that can help companies manage, support and grow their online communities. This lets companies focus on the creation of strategy and/or the creation of content to fuel their digital communities.
One of the leading social management and moderation companies is Winnipeg-based ICUC Moderation Services, one of the world’s leading social media moderation companies.
Keith Bilous, ICUC’s founder, concedes the company’s creation was a bit of a fluke but its continued growth and success has been very deliberate.
In a conversation with Mathew Ingram, Keith will provide insight into the challenges facing many companies in managing and moderating their communities, the opportunities that third-party services provide, and how ICUC has established itself as a leading player in the market.
Tags: ICUC, keith bilous, meshwest, social media
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Yahoo! + meshwest. . .Calgary- we are on our way!
When I got the call that the “guys” had decided it was time to head west, I said “Yahoo, Calgary here we come” and literally Yahoo! and I were talking the next day!
Their eagerness to partner with us, support us and help take the mesh message to Calgary on June 8, Edmonton in October and Vancouver in December was more then we could ask for. Yahoo, like mesh, has the reach to get to the qualified audience you’re seeking.
As a creative and innovative company, they make a perfect partner in our meshwest adventure.
So giddy up and Yahoo!
See you next week in Calgary!
Tags: calgary, meshwest, sponsor, yahoo
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Now on to Calgary for meshwest
After two great days of mesh, we’re going to take a short breather – okay, breather’s over – before we head out to Calgary for meshwest on June 8.
It’s the first event we’ve done in another province so we’re excited about hitting the road with a great line-up of speakers and programming. When we started mesh in 2006, we wanted to create a national event. It has taken us a little longer than we expected but it’s now happening.
The keynote speaker for meshwest is Tobi Lutke, the co-founder and CEO with Shopify.com, which has quietly become one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies. Based in Ottawa, Shopify has more than 10,000 customers and attracted financing from Bessemer, a high-profile U.S. venture capitalist.
Our panels and workshops feature:
- Mark MacLeod and Danny Robinson talking about the state of venture capital in Canada
- Leigh Himel, Sarah Dickinson and WestJet’s Greg Hounslow looking at what companies need to do to prepare themselves for success with social media.
- Doug Lacombe leading a panel on how to effectively use Twitter as a marketing tool
- ICUC CEO Keith Bilous talking with Mathew Ingram about moderating and managing a community, and
- Mark Evans looking at how to customize Facebook Page that do more than just attract “Likes”.
You can see the full schedule here, as well as details about the post-meshwest social event.
Tickets for meshwest can purchased here. We’ve got an early-bird special for $239 that ends at midnight tonight.
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