Welcome to meshmarketing ‘10!
Last year, we took a major step forward with the launch of meshmarketing, a one-day event focused on providing engaging, hands-on and stuff-you-can-use sessions about the fast-changing digital marketing landscape. It was a major success with lots of terrific feedback about the workshops and panels.
So, we’re really excited to pull the covers of meshmarketing ‘10. meshmarketing is happening on November 17, 2010 in downtown Toronto. (We’ll announce the location soon.) Tickets are $489 (plus HST) before Sept. 17, and $539 afterwards. There are also 50 student tickets for $99 each (plus HST). And, of course, we’ll have a social afterwards. Tickets can be purchased here.
While we’re keeping the same focus and approach, there are some wrinkles that we think are going to make meshmarketing even better.
First, we’ve partnered with Trina Boos, who has been running the successful Ad Lounge events. Trina delivers terrific insight into the advertising and marketing worlds, as well as a huge community that she has nurtured and built over the past nine years. As meshmarketing’s programming director, Trina is the driving force behind the event’s sessions and and speakers, and we’re overjoyed about her key role within meshmarketing.
Second, we’ve tweaked the programming format. Rather than have a single keynote, we will kick off meshmarketing with two keynotes – Michael Slaby and Marian Salzman – along with a super-presentation by Lee LeFever. Part of the change in format was our excitement about several speakers. Rather than pick only one, we decided to go with a three-pack.
Michael Slaby is executive vice-president and global practice chair of Edelman’s digital practice. Before joining Edelman, he was a technology and new media advisor to the Obama administration where he led operational and long-term planning for technology including web strategy and utilization, and data integration opportunities.
Marian Salzman, one of the world’s top five trend spotters, will offer insights into the future of digital marketing and communications. As a leading communications professional, digital marketer and author, Marian will provide her insight on what’s on the horizon and what we need to know now to prepare.
And for those not familar with Lee LeFever, he (along with his partner and wife, Sachi) are the brains behind the popular Common Craft video series that provides user-friendly insight into technology and technology trends that everyone can understand.
As for the rest of the programming, we’ve got a great line-up of speakers, panels and workshops – everything from the ROI of social media customer and trans-media storytelling to how retailers are using location-based services, and future of social TV. For more details, visit the speaker and schedule page.
meshmarketing tickets can be purchased here. Don’t forget to take advantage of the early-bird special until Sept. 17.
Tags: conference, marketing, mesh, meshmarketing, social media, Toronto
Posted in mesh news, meshmarketing | 2 Comments
mesh Workshop, Anyone? (Part 2)
In the previous post, we talked about how the workshops at mesh are extremely popular with standing room-only attendance. This is probably because they are hands-on, interactive sessions led by people in the trenches. As a result, they deliver tangible, real-world lessons that people can quickly take from workshop to workplace.
Here’s an overview of the the other workshops on the schedule.:
“Building a B2B Community”: High Road Communications’ Eden Spodek will talk about that while building a personal online community is relatively easy, building an online business community for existing and prospective clients can be more challenging. Eden will highlight real-life examples of companies (primarily Canadian) leading the way in B2B community building along with tips, challenges and success stories of those who do it well.”
“Getting Your Start-Up Ready for Investment”: Mark MacLeod (aka @startupcfo) will lead an interactive workshop that explores the key questions around startups and fundraising such as The pros and cons of getting outside capital? If yes, how much do you need? Angels vs. VCs – who, how, where, when, why? What do you need in order to raise money? How does the money-raising process work? Who’s got money? Who doesn’t?
“The Olympics as a Case Study”: Alon Marcovici, VP, Digital Media and Research of Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, will about what it’s like to put together a major multimedia online campaign for a national and international event, and Kim is talking about what is involved in being a “user-generated content editor” and social-media co-ordinator for a major media website.
“Social Media and User-Generated Content in the Newsroom”: Kim Fox, CBC News’s senior producer of social media, will do a workshop looking at what’s involved in being a “user-generated content editor” and social-media co-ordinator for a major media website.
If you haven’t purchased your tickets to mesh, I would encourage you to get them soon because there are only a handful left. You can purchase them here:
Tags: conference, mesh, Toronto, workshops
mesh Workshop, Anyone? (Part 1)
When mesh was started in 2006, we decided to add some workshops but didn’t expect they would attract a lot of attention because they were scheduled at the same time as two panels.
Much to our surprise, the workshops were jam-packed, which made it abundantly clear there was demand for hands-on sessions that provided people with tangible insight, case studies and information that people could implement when they got back to the office.
Over the past four years, the workshops have become a core part of mesh even though they probably don’t get as much and attention as they deserve. We’ve got a great workshop line-up for mesh ‘10. Here’s a sneak peek of some panels – with some previews coming in a subsequent blog post.
- Death and Digital Legacy: Adele McAlear will examine the intersection of death, social media and technology and look at the ripples that are created with loss. This workshop explores the chasm between online communities and families; legal, privacy and security issues; policies of online services; the impact on businesses; and what each of us should do today to prepare our digital assets.
- The Art & Science of Scaling Social Media: Bringing together earned, paid and owned social media, when done correctly, can generate a perfect storm of credibility and reach – in many ways, the Holy Grail of the social web. Earned is highly credible, but expensive to generate, paid has mass reach, but do users really pay attention? Maggie Fox will lead a discussion on how companies can scale their social media efforts.
- How Small Businesses Can Survive and Thrive by Being Creative with Social Media: RightSleeve’s Mark Graham will offers tips, recommendations and real-world examples of how his promotional marketing merchandising company has thrived in a competitive marketplace by leveraging social media.
- Managing the Transformation to a Social Business: David Bradfield will explore how global organizations and Canadian innovators manage the transition from control to collaboration. Bradfield will talk about how many companies are grappling with the impact of social media on traditional business and marketing models.
To purchase tickets for mesh10, here’s how you can register.
Tags: conference, mesh, Toronto, workshops
Spotlight on mesh Keynotes
With mesh just about two weeks away, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the keynotes that we’ve lined up.
In many respects, this year’s keynotes offer a fascinating mix of people who will be talking about a variety of topics – everything from how a newspaper is using APIs to grow its business, and the troubling world of cyber-hackers, to online payments and social networking.
The keynotes include:
Chris Thorpe, the Developer Advocate for the Open Platform with The Guardian, will talk about the newspaper is working on ways to integrate its content, data and APIs with other people’s technology and businesses.
Joseph Menn will provide insight how cyber-criminals are hacking to major government and corporate computer systems, and how governments of Russia and China are protecting and directing their behaviour.
Scott Thompson, the president of PayPal will provide his take on how the company has maintained its status as the world’s leading online payment system, and where e-commerce and online payments as heading.
Given LinkedIn’s rapid growth over the past year and its decision to add more feature, Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s Vice President of International, will talk about what’s driving the company’s growth and where it sees the social network marketing going.
Tickets to mesh can be purchased here, while tickets to meshU, the one-day event featuring hands-on workshops about Web design and development, can be purchased here.
Tags: conference, keynotes, mesh, Toronto
Posted in mesh10, meshU | No Comments
The mesh Rainbow – Green, Blue, Red and Orange
Thanks to the work of Jeff Sarmiento and Seth Singer, the mesh Web site is a thing of beauty – terrific design and lots of colours.
What you might not realize is there is a method to the madness of the colours – in addition to the fact we think it makes the Web site look purdy. Here’s a break-down on the mesh rainbow.
Red – Red is media, which covers our keynote (Chris Thorpe), panels and workshop about things such as real-time content, user-generated media, the battle between machine-generated and human-generated media, and a case study on the Vancouver Olympics.
Orange – Orange is our society stream in which you will learn more about hackers from keynote speaker Joesph Menn, how Médecins Sans Frontières is using social media, and panels about the growing issue of online privacy and what’s going on with open government.
Blue – For the marketers in the crowd, blue is your colour. Blue covers our keynote speaker, Arvind Rajan, from LinkedIn, as well as panels on real-time and how it forces marketers to be real, what businesses should really do with Facebook, and workshops on how to scale social media, and 10 no-nonsense ways social media can be applied to your business.
Green – Like the colour of money, green is our business stream, led by keynote speaker Scott Thompson, who is president with Paypal. Green also accounts for panels on the state of Canada’s seed and start-up landscape, mobile as a way to drive business, and why real-time matters.
So, there you have it – the mesh rainbow explained.
To purchase tickets to mesh, head on over this way.
Tickets for meshU, our hands-on workshop event for people who design and development online services, and people who manage designers and developers, can be purchased here.
Tags: conference, mesh, social media, streams, Toronto
Posted in mesh10 | No Comments
What’s meshU? Who Should Go?
I had coffee earlier today who someone who told me that she thought the difference between mesh and meshU was that mesh is for adults while meshU is for young’uns looking to learn about technology.
It’s not an accurate description but I embraced it as much-needed constructive criticism given we haven’t done a great job of really explaining meshU and why people should attend. So, here’s meshU in a nutshell:
We started meshU in 2008 after getting a lot of requests from mesh attendees to create an event that would deliver hands-on workshops about new ways to design and develop Web sites, as well as insight into how to manage teams developing and designing these services and applications.
The workshops at meshU are led by some of the Web’s best and brightest people. These are people who are talking the talk and walking the walk. They are people starting and building leading-edge Web sites and online businesses, which means they bring real-world insight and experience to the table.
This makes meshU is a place where attendees can walk away with new insight, knowledge and information about how to do their jobs better, more efficiently and more successfully.
If you’ve been to meshU before, there’s a lot of discussion happening and a healthy amount of note-taking.
Here are the top reasons to attend meshU:
1. Gain insight and knowledge from people such as Bill Buxton (our keynote speaker) Joe Stump, Dan Martell, Sean Ellis and Isaac Garcia – knowledge that you can bring back to the office and put into action right away.
2. Build new relationships with people within Toronto’s Web community who are developing and designing services and applications, or managing teams making it happen.
3. Support meshU, and its role in providing workshops that provide a different and unique perspective.
Here’s where you can buy meshU tickets. If you’d like to support meshU by sponsoring, you can contact Stuart MacDonald at info@meshconference.com.
Tags: bill buxton, conference, meshU, Toronto, workshops
Posted in meshU | No Comments
Why Mike McDerment’s Stoked About meshU
I’m excited – let me just put that out there.
I’ve spent the past seven years building FreshBooks (a Web business), and the past five years involved as one of the organizers of the mesh conference series. Over the past three years, I have also played a key part in organizing mesh University (or meshU, a one-day conference for people who want to learn more about building online businesses.
So why am I excited? Let me tell you about this year’s meshU line-up.
First, there are three important component you have to get right when building an online business: the design, development and management (of things like sales and marketing). This year, meshU will be hosting top-notch talent – people have helped build kick-ass Web apps. You may not have heard of them all but you don’t want to miss out on what they have to say.
Building a dev team? Who better to learn from than the chief architect who took Digg from nothing to something – Joe Stump, who just struck out on this own.
What about low cost marketing activities to acquire users? Have you heard of services such as Box.net, Xobni, or logmein? These services are all known for having touch-less sales cycles, and many are using freemium products. As well, they are among the most successful products that aren’t called Google, Yahoo!, Facebook or Twitter.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that one person had key role in making all these products viral by helping to design their registration processes: Sean Ellis. Don’t miss your chance to learn from Sean.
While we’re on the topic of sales, let me tell you about one of my favorite entrepreneurs. He’s hugely successful and you’ve probably never heard of him. He’s Isaac Garcia, the founder and CEO of Central Desktop, a massively successful online project management service. You may not know about Central Desktop but Isaac has built one hellevua business that’s based on profitable high growth. He’s going to teach you how to run an inside sales team. For any venture capitalists out there, get your portfolio companies to this one.
This is the first installment of the meshU lineup. It’s just the tip of the iceberg as we haven’t put the spotlight on the designers coming. Please pass along this post along to anyone you know who wants to build a Web business. At $289, meshU is a steal for this kind of high-quality content – get your ticket now.
Tags: isaac garcia, joe stump, meshU, sean ellis, Toronto
Posted in meshU | No Comments
Welcome to mesh ‘10!
It’s hard to believe that we’ll be celebrating the fifth edition of mesh in May. It seems like a long time ago when the five of us met at the Paddock in downtown Toronto on a cold February night to talk about what was happening online in Canada. Five years later, we’re excited that mesh has become such a popular event, and that Canada’s Web scene is vibrant and active.
Today, mesh ‘10 (which takes place on May 18/19) officially goes on sale. You can register here. The mesh gang has been meeting for months to talk about potential speakers and programming, and we’ll start to unveil more information in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we’re excited to announce two of our four keynotes.
Our media keynote is Chris Thorpe, the Developer Advocate for the Open Platform at The Guardian. His background as a research scientist and his early involvement in Open Access publishing makes him fascinated and passionate about what happens when data, content, platforms, identity and pretty much anything opens up.
Chris spends his time at The Guardian working on how to integrate its content, data and APIs with other people’s technology and businesses as part of the drive towards building the distribution and engagement channels of a mutualized newspaper.
Our society keynote is Joseph Menn, who just published his third book, “Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet”, a part true-life thriller and part expose that has become a bestseller.
A speaker at major security conferences, Menn will talk about the growing threat of cyber-criminals, and the involvement of organized gangs.
We’re looking forward to seeing everyone in a few months. In the meantime, we’re having a mesh meet-up on Feb. 25 at The Pilot Tavern to get everyone together, as well as celebrate mesh co-founder Mathew Ingram’s new gig as a senior writer for GigaOm.
It’s a free event but we ask that you register so we can get a handle on the number of attendees.
Tags: chris thorpe, joseph menn, mesh, mesh10, Toronto
Posted in mesh news, mesh10 | 7 Comments
Coming This Week: meshmarketing!
Just after the mesh conference last April, the mesh gang got together to for a wrap session and, of course, a few celebratory refreshments. In going over what we heard from attendees, a strong theme was the request for more hands-on and tactical sessions about digital marketing – what to do and how to do it.
After a lot of thought, we decided to do a marketing conference. It was a big decision because putting on meshU and mesh is a lot of work, and doing a conference in October meant working on it over the summer. Still, it was something we wanted to do so meshmarketing was born.
Over the past five months, there’s been a lot happening behind the scenes (particularly by our event planner extraordinaire, Sheri Moore), so it’s really exciting that meshmarketing is now only three days away (Oct. 22.)
We’re particularly satisfying is the high quality speakers that we’ve been able to attract – everyone from keynote speakers Hugh MacLeod, Ferg Devins, Katherine Fletcher and Mitch Joel to Dan Martell and Amielle Lake. And we believe the concept – a morning of a keynote and panels, followed by eight workshops – is the right content mix.
As well, it’s also been rewarding to see that the decision to hold meshmarketing was the right one – people are still looking for insight into what to do when it comes to digital marketing and, as important, how to do it.
For those of you attending the conference, things kick off at 6 p.m. on Wednesday at The Drake Hotel (Underground) with a pre-party featuring the artwork of Hugh MacLeod.
See you there!
Note: If you haven’t registered yet, you can do so here.
Tags: conference, marketing, mesh, meshmarketing, Toronto
Posted in meshmarketing | 3 Comments
mesh 2007 Meetup, Part Two – This Time, It’s Political
Come out with the mesh guys and get your political blog on, Toronto!
We had a great time at the first mesh meetup, but there are still a few weeks left to mesh ‘07 and we’d like to get together again. And this time, it’s political.
Blogger and National Post columnist Andrew Coyne, blogging M.P. Garth Turner, former Paul Martin speechwriter (and of late writer, humourist and blogger) Scott Feschuk and Phil de Vellis, the creator of the “Vote Different” Hillary ‘08 YouTube sensation, will be doing a panel at mesh ‘07 on what’s happening now with Politics and the Web, but let’s get the conversation started early!
Whether you’re a political blogger, party stalwart, consultant or media observer, or like us just plain fascinated by the impact that the Web is having on the way we discuss, organize and create political change, come on out and join us and folks from the Toronto Web 2.0 community on May 9 for snacks and libations at The Charlotte Room – details and signup at the Upcoming site, and please help to get the word out by forwarding this post to someone you can beat at eight-ball. Worst case, you can settle your political differences the way we were meant to – over libations and pool tables.
Tags: Andrew Coyne, conference, Garth Turner, meetup, mesh, mesh07, mesh2007, Paul Martin, Phil de Vellis, Scott Feschuk, Toronto, Web 2.0
Posted in mesh news | 7 Comments
