This weekend I presented a quick “Who, What, When, Where, Why” of blogging and online branding for the Travel Media Association of Canada. The conference took place at the brand new Pinnacle Pier in North Vancouver and had a spectacular view of Vancouver from across the inlet. Unfortunately I couldn’t setup my shiny new Epson projector (due to the shining sun through the un-treated floor to ceiling windows) so I did the talk unassisted. I did however promise participants that I would post my slides on Slideshare regardless.

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This is my presentation pack from Slideshare in case you would like to view any of my recent slide decks from speaking engagements. The one for TMAC does not have accompanying sound but I’ll try to make it a slidecast in the near future. Enjoy!

WordCamp is returning to Vancouver in the summer of 2010, welcoming WordPress developers, enthusiasts and bloggers once the Olympics have moved out.

We have a great group of people signed on to organize so far who all want to see this event become a smashing success.

It’s still very much in the planning phases so please follow @WordCampYVR for updates from Duane Storey (BraveNewCode), John (sixty4media), or myself. The website will be up at WordCampVancouver.com and it’s already listed on the official WordCamp directory.

Related: See John Biehler’s post about WordCamp Vancouver 2010 as well.

I few weeks ago I was asked to take part in the Cool Twitter Conference, a global event circuit that is making its way to Vancouver this Friday, October 23rd.

CBC Radio’s Steve Pratt will be the keynote and speakers include The Vancouver Sun’s Gillian Shaw, The Georgia Straight’s Stephen Hui, Adam Loving, Eric Becker, Kari Quaas, Ray Levesque, and Lauri Stevens.

My talk will be about using Twitter for personal and business use — knowing when to separate them and also how to remain professional while still being personable and friendly.

Tickets for the event are currently on sale and you can also purchase a voluntary carbon offset. After Vancouver, the conference moves to Anchorage, then on to Orange County, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and off to Dubai November 18th.

The South by Southwest festival brings together music, entertainment, film, technology, social media, and a whole lot of BBQ each year down in Austin, Texas. There has always been a strong Canadian contingency, in particular from the Vancouver area. In preparation for next year’s SXSW Interactive, submissions have been collected and the public is being asked to vote on their favourite topics, which they will see presented in March of 2010.

I took a look through the 2,219 submissions in the PanelPicker and have weeded out some of the gems that are being proposed by some of our own local talent.

• Our good friend John Biehler is putting together a panel about the way we do business: Do Cool Kids Leave When the Suits Arrive?
• With the Olympics coming to Vancouver in 2010 this session proposed by Robert Scales is of great interest: Social Media and the Olympics: A Case Study
• Another one of our good friends, Dave Olson, has prepared: Hitchiking to the Boardroom
• James Chutter has two talks up for your consideration: Ubiquitous Participation: Graffiti Streets to Social Networks and the other is Beta Campaigns: Planning for User Driven Advertising
• Cecily Walker from the Vancouver Public Library proposed: Can I Reserve This Book With My iPhone?
• Ellitot Hurst from Supernova.com wants to talk about things like the CFOX Vancouver Seeds competition: Online Community Saved the Radio Star
• SXSW veteran and photographer Kris Krug is pitching the following: Your Content is You, Your Website is Dead and Listening the the Internet: Online Media Monitoring
• Not from Vancouver but our friend Meghan at Hill & Knowlton has proposed: Passionate People: The Key Ingredient to Social Media Success

The public vote counts for 30% with another 30% coming from staff and 40% decided upon by an advisory board. Should you have a panel submission you’d like us to check out, please feel free to link to it in the comments of this post. Best of luck to our peers and counterparts from Vancouver and we look forward to joining you down in Austin.

On August 22nd we’ll be participating in the second WordCamp Fraser Valley. The day will be laid out in tracks for beginners, intermediate users, developers, and a track just for Twitter use with WordPress.

This will also be our third WordCamp this year, having organized WordCamp Whistler, and attended WordCamp in San Francisco. My specific talk will be about how WordPress can be used for much more than blogging.

I’ll be giving examples of websites powered by WordPress where a blog is not the main feature and sharing some tips on how to achieve this use of the platform. It is in the “beginner” track so it will be far more educational than code-heavy. My hope is to spread the word that WordPress is powerful and easy to use but not just for blogging although that’s how my experience began.

WordCamp Fraser Valley is 9:00am – 5:00pm August 22nd at the SFU campus in Surrey at Central City. Easy to get to by SkyTrain and transit, with plenty of parking as well. Each track is $25 or you can get a ticket to all tracks for $75 by registering online.

The following is cross-posted from Miss604.com

I have the fortunate opportunity to participate in two upcoming conferences, both of which are geared for entrepreneurial women.

The first is the Enterprising Moms Network Conference on June 13th at the River Rock. It will run 11:00am until 5:00pm and sixty4media will have a swag table setup as well. My talk will be at 3:15pm and will be about social media basics specifically used for business. Other speakers that day include travel guru Claire Newell, Rita Kim of the Business Development Back of Canada, Fiona Walsh and many more. The Enterprising Moms Network is a community of business-minded working mothers who meetup regularly for workshops and events. Chapters span from Prince George, to White Rock, and down through Seattle. Proceeds from the conference on June 13th will go to Ronald McDonald House.

My next speaking engagement will be at the Chicks Who Click. It has been held in Kansas City, San Jose, Dallas, Raleigh, and now in Vancouver on June 27th at the Listel Hotel on Robson. Megan Cole, Monica Hamburg, Victoria Revay, Maura Rodgers, Erica Hargreave and Gillian Shaw are all my esteemed co-presenters throughout the day. I’ll be on a panel with Gillian and Erica talking about privacy and transparency online. There will be a tweetup the night before and you can follow all Chicks Who Click updates on the conference blog or Twitter by searching the tag: #CWC09.

John and I have been attending Canada’s largest blogging conference, Northern Voice, since 2007 and each year we’ve contributed liveblogs, podcasts, and been speakers in our own sessions or on the panel.

John speaking at Northern Voice. Credit: John Biehler

This year, I will be on two panels with some amazing individuals.

Who are you? Defining yourself in the online world
Panelists: Jenn Lowther, Rebecca Bollwitt [sixty4media and Miss604], Linda Bustos, and Nadia Nascimento

The panel will discuss the various social networking sites that can be utilized to build your brand online, and identify advantages and pitfalls of these sites, their usage, and their relationship to one another. During the discussion, they will provide context for the growing significance of social networking for personal brands, as we discuss the paths each of us took in order to build our personal online reputations.

Dealing with angry comments, Trolls, Spammers, and Sock Puppets
Panelists: David Eaves, Rebecca Bollwitt

The entire Northern Voice schedule can be found here along with information about the amazing keynotes including Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr.

The conference is sold out on both Friday, February 20th and Saturday February 21st, however plenty of conversations will be happening on Twitter and I will be liveblogging several of the sessions.

This past weekend sixty4media co-hosted WordCamp Whistler alongside Brave New Code. We had originally planned for 50 people and we ended up getting over 100 attendees joining us for the weekend for a day of talks about WordPress and online publishing.

Keynote Lorrelle Van Fossen (aka Lorelle on WordPress)
Dave Olson (Topic, Are you Worthy?)
John Biehler (Topic, How To Sex Up Your Blog With Photos And Video)
Dale Mugford (Topic, WordPress On The Go)
Andy Peatling (Topic, BuddyPress)
Quentin Mulhurt (Topic, WordPress and Search Engine Optimization)
Morten Rand-Hendriksen (Topic, Using WordPress In Alternate Configurations)
Tris Hussey (Topic, Using WordPress as a Generic Content Management system (CMS))

We were very please with the location and the accommodations, while the attendance, input, insights, and presentations exceeded expectations. We definitely look forward to doing this again next year.

You can read the live notes on the WordCamp Whistler website that John setup and I also have a few day blogs up on Miss604.com.

Today I’ll be speaking at the Making a Scene Conference on Granville Island. This annual event provides presentations, workshops, and panels about the professional theatre industry. I was asked to sit on a panel, “The New Face of Marketing”, to hopefully address questions about blogger outreach and online marketing.

Making a Scene runs from November 13th until the 16th, passes start at around $75.00.

After several successful WordCamps in Vancouver, Kulpreet got the wheels in motion for the next event, coming this winter. Last night on Twitter something magical also happened – the idea of having the event in Whistler was hatched and so planning for WordCamp Whistler is now underway.

Read Duane’s blog post for a preview, view the Facebook event, and feel free to sign up on the wiki. More details to come in over the next little while. sixty4media will once again be involved as an organizer as well as presenting.

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