9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning

Mount Royal University’s Continuing Education and Extension is hosting a one day forum and trade show on social media marketing featuring a variety of dynamic speakers from the forefront of this growing phenomenon.

Social media is here to stay and is an increasingly important factor in marketing and communication strategies for growing businesses.

Hear first-hand the pitfalls and payoffs of using social media for your growing business. Gain insight through real-life case studies and examples from people working in the trenches of social media.

Get practical advice and be inspired about the possibilities of using social media for your thriving business.

The forum is specifically designed for small- to mid-sized business owners and anyone charged with marketing, brand or customer loyalty programs for their organization.
communicatto’s Doug Lacombe is the master of ceremonies and will be sure to keep you entertained.

Some other speakers are:

• Scott Stratten – Social Currency
• Ernest Barbaric – The Ripple Effect
• Richard Einarson and Stephen Carter – Marketing a Mayor
• Karen Richards – Marketing a University
• Greg Hounslow – Owners Online
• Eric Weaver – Be Seen, Be Found, Be Engaging

Location

Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning
Mount Royal University
4825 Mount Royal Gate SW
Calgary, AB  T3E 6K6

Cost

Lunch and refreshments are included.

Regular rate: $299+GST (as of May 26, 2011)

To register and more information, click here!

Last November we hosted our first seminar on Online Marketing Strategy in 6 Hours. It was sold out and a tremendous success. So much so that we are offering this seminar again – re-titled as Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours.

The topics and dates for these new sessions are:

• Quickinar: Tweet Like a Pro in under 3 Hours on January 21
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Monday, January 31
• Quickinar: Lights, Camera, YouTube Action in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 10
• Quickinar: Facebook Business Page in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 17
• Quickinar: Kick Your Blog Up a Notch in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 24
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Friday, March 25

As you will notice we are calling these sessions, Quickinars. This is a name that we came up with to emphasize that these are short, intense seminars that focus on relevant topics. Right now we are focusing on providing social media training for the Calgary market – we may expand.

We hope that you find these seminars useful and valuable. For the entire list of seminars and more details look at our Quickinars page on Eventbrite.

If you have questions please email me, jeff.nelson@anduro.com or call me (403) 410-3803.

Hope to see you at one of the sessions.

As a result, we had an objective (do the video) but this was one of those situations where we had no time, no media room, dysfunctional equipment, and no one to shoot the video.  Being 2 resourceful guys we improvised. We met at Mount Royal University, snagged a classroom, set up our cameras on a tripod, hammered out a script (very loose) and shot the video. Here is what we came up with. Enjoy.

Today I thought I would highlight some other websites that are interesting and use video in a different way.

The first is KhanAcademy. See www.khanacademy.org. If you are struggling with math concepts like ratios or statistics – go to this site. But to really see his genius you need to look at the videos on his site. If you want to learn about motion, Newton’s Law of Gravitation, venture capital, or even the French Revelolution – go to this site. The founder (and faculty) of Khan Academy is Salman Khan. You can see his talk at the Good Experience Living Conference here: www.khanacademy.org/about#GEL. Bill Gates thinks highly of Salman Khan, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A07Pj71TUA. KhanAcademy has over 1,900 videos on YouTube and thousands of videos on KhanAcademy. Great resourse.  Interesting material. Fantastic presentation. Excellent teacher.

The second site that has fantastic video is CommonCraft. See www.commoncraft.com. The site was started and developed by Lee Lefever. He founded the company with his wife Sachi in 2003. See About. The tag line of the site is “in Plain English”. In fact, Lefever started writing blog posts and then switched to videos of his drawings. See RSS in Plain English. Topics include CFL Light Bulbs, Blogs, Twitter, Social Media, and Social Networking.  For a full list of his videos have a look at www.commoncraft.com/videos. Awesome video. Easy to understand.

The third site is TED, Ideras worth spreading. See www.ted.com. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. The topics and videos are avant garde. How about this topic: Carolyn Porco flies us to Saturn? Porco takes us on a journey from Earth to Saturn. Or this topic: Jeff Han demos his breakthrough touchscreen – multi touch and pressure sensitive computer screens. Of course this technology is now commonplace but this video was shot in Feb 2006 which makes it phenomenal. Or Sirena Huang playing violin – she’s 11 years old. She is good. Or Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen. Rosling’s website is www.gapminder.org.

The last video site for today is Vimeo. See http://vimeo.com. This site is for the creative types. Have a look at Chromeo’s video, Hot Mess. 5-Second Films has over 500 very short videos in its catelog. See http://vimeo.com/fivesecondfilms/videos.

One of the topics that I cover near the end of the course is business ethics . For this session I use a round table discussion and have each person present a situation where they had to make a decision that involved ethics – choosing right or wrong. I typically start the discussion by describing a time when our company ordered a new ink jet printer from Dell. We received the printer, all the cords and the discs with the printer drivers. The issue started shortly after receiving the printer when we changed computers and found that we had misplaced the discs. As a result, we couldn’t print. Normally, the printer drivers would be online for download but the printer was so new that this option was not available. I called Dell and they said they would send us replacement discs. We waited a couple of days and to our surprise a rather large box was delivered. Inside was a new printer, the same model as previously sent, and the discs we required. We loaded up the drivers and our original printer worked perfectly.

At this point, I stop telling the story and open up the floor for discussion. As you can guess the ethical situation is what to do with the second printer: keep it or send it back. On one hand, Dell is a huge company and likely won’t miss a tiny ink jet printer. Why shouldn’t we keep it? This assumes that Dell has made a mistake and can’t trace the fact that they sent us two printers. The issue with this option is that Dell may figure this out and then send us a bill for the second printer. We could always use a second printer but we didn’t want to pay for an extra one. On the other hand, we never paid for the second printer. So why should we keep what we haven’t paid for.

The framework that we use in class for analyzing ethical situations is offered by Santa Clara University, The Jesuit University in Silicon Valley. This framework identifies Five Sources of Ethical Standards:

• The Utilitarian Approach
• The Rights Approach
• The Fairness or Justice Approach
• The Common Good Approach
• The Virtue Approach

What I like about their framework is that each approach is integrated into the decision making process:

• Recognize an Ethical Issue
• Get the Facts
• Evaluate Alternative Actions (using each of the approaches listed above)
• Make a Decision and Test It
• Act and Reflect on the Outcome

Ethically, the decision about the printer is simple. Don’t keep what you haven’t paid for. And that is what we did but it took an hour of calling numerous departments at Dell to figure out how. By the way, we had no complaints about Dell’s service, they even paid to have the printer picked up.

However, the lingering question with most ethical situations is “What if I could get away with it?”. As one smiling student said, “If the value is low and the risk is high, then it is easy to make the ethically right decision but if the reward is huge and the risk is low then everything changes.”

An ink jet printer is about $250. And after making calls for an hour I felt that the risk of getting caught was reasonably low. I think we could have kept the printer and not paid for it. The class was about 30-70 on this issue. Some would have kept it and most would have returned it.

But what happens when the stakes are higher?

After discussing my ethical situation, I offer students in the class the opportunity to describe their situations. They use the same format, stopping before the conclusion so that we have time to discuss various options and the ethics involved.

One student described how while working overseas he could have made lots of money by collecting “gifts” from the companies to whom he awarded contracts. He didn’t make any collections but has since wondered if he would have the need for a class studying business and ethics if he had accepted those gifts.

Another student, working in Calgary, found $3,000 in an unmarked envelop by her car in a parking lot. She had no way of knowing who the owner was. What to do?

I jokingly said, “Next” and everyone laughed. I’m not exactly sure but I had the feeling that most of the students would have kept the money. The student, however, told how she had taken the money to the police. The police found the owner within 30 days. The owner was a bakery and they gave the student a reward – a loaf of bread, sliced. Ironically, the student is allergic to wheat!

While working in developing country, another student witnessed an accident where a man was hit by a car late at night. The student went over to the man who was injured and sadly found that the victim was already dead. At that same time another witness came to examine the body and agreed; the person was dead. The second witness, older than the student, quickly looked for a wallet to obtain the person’s identification. During the search the second witness found a stash of cash. What would you do?

The student and the second witness left the scene with $7,000 each. His rational was that the victim was obviously involved in some type of crime by having the cash and by the way he was dressed. The other witness was bigger and older than him, so he wasn’t about to argue. The driver was in hysterics and screaming. When and if the police did arrive they would have had no hesitation claiming the money for themselves. I’m not sure what I would have done but I don’t think I would have “given” the money to the police.

The final situation was the best. The student is well educated and currently works for a non-profit organization in Calgary with an outstanding reputation. She is originally from an African country (I can relate since I was born in Uganda). She has 2 children and impeccable manners. She told of a situation in her country of origin while bidding on a huge construction project for a large telecommunications company. Two other companies were bidding on the project and competition was fierce. She prepared her companies bid delivered it personally. When she arrive at the office to submit her bid the official was not at the desk and the bids for the competing companies were on the desk – bound but not in envelops. What to do?

As a group we laughed because although the information on the competing bids would be tempting to look at, looking was clearly unethical. To our surprise the student threw up her hands and said, “I looked at the bid, ran back to my office, lowered our bid and quickly went back to submit it.” Although we were all shocked we were won over when she explained that the livelihood of many families were at stake. Many people including herself would be unemployed if her company was not awarded the contract.

By the way, I told this last story to a few business colleagues and they agreed – they would have done exactly the same thing. Their rationale was that “reviewing” the competitor’s bids was part of gathering information for “business intelligence”.

In this case, it seems that the stakes were so high that the common good outweighed fairness and personal virtue. What would you do if you were in her situation?

Event Details
Date: Wed, Sept. 2, 2009
Time: Time: 5-8pm MST
Location: The Chicago Chophouse
604 8 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB

Agenda:

5:00 – Socializing (appetizers & cocktails)

5:15 – Welcome message by Jeff Nelson, Anduro Marketing

5:20 – IMC Vancouver 2009 introduction by Lennart Svanberg, IMC

5:35 – “Developing a Corporate Voice for Social Media” by Gillian Muessig, SEOMoz

6:15 – “Summer Social Media Campaign for San Remo Ristorante” by Doug Lacombe, communicatto

7:00 – “Dramatic Conversion Rate Lift” by Chris Goward, WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization

7:45 – Wrap-up message by Jeff Nelson, Anduro Marketing

Private parking or free street parking after 6pm

Click here to register for this event!