As the Web evolves and moves into new directions, and as people become more knowledgeable, sophisticated and immersed in the Web, mesh shifts as well.

As a conference organizer, it means there is no such thing as rinse and repeat. It would be an easy way to do things but the conversations and speakers wouldn’t be as relevant or thought provoking.

One of the challenges from a branding standpoint is the messaging needs to continually be updated. While mesh is about connecting, inspiring and sharing, it also embraces many different angles and needs. As we look to get a handle on what mesh is now, it struck me the best approach would be letting a few attendees step into the fray.

“mesh, in a nutshell, is all about big ideas, critical thinking, and emerging trends. It’s not often you get the opportunity to see some of the world’s best thinkers and innovators in one room. I left with not only a handful of great ideas, but with a new perspective on how things work and where we are headed in the future.”
- BV02

“[The] MESH conference in Toronto is all about ideas. Big ideas about social networks – where we are and where we’re heading. Questions too. The organizers present some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators who, over two days, share insights and challenge the audience to look at our connected world from a fresh perspective. It’s a bit like going back to university – in a good way.”
- Martin Waxman

“As the name suggests, Mesh is about connecting.”
- Financial Post

How would you describe mesh? We’re always looking for new insight so we welcome all suggestions and feedback.

This year we’re bringing mesh to the social web in a whole new way!  We’ve partnered with Hashcaster the leading Twitter event media platform to curate the #mesh12 hash tag in real-time on http://meshcon.hashcaster.com.

As many of you know keeping up with a rapidly trending hash tag like #mesh12 can be like drinking from a fire hose.  Hashcaster solves this problem by curating all the best content and identifying top influencers & contributors in real-time.  Never miss another great photo, video or blog on Twitter.  Read great crowd sourced stories and keep up with the latest news from speakers, sponsor and exhibitors.

Even better, become part of the Hashcaster experience!  How? Simple, just include the #mesh12 hash tag in your tweets.  Hashcaster automatically curates all content on the hash tag, include links, photos or videos!  If people like and retweet what you’re saying the platform will identify you as a top influencer or contributor and place you on stage by highlighting your content and Twitter handle on the mesh Hashcast site.

There’s nothing like having your name in lights to drive new followers and retweets of your contributions on Twitter.  So join the conversation on Twitter and keep up with all that’s happening at mesh this year, visit http://meshcon.hashcaster.com before, during and after the event for the latest news and information from the mesh community.

Enjoy.

We first partnered with Monster at meshmarketing11 and it’s been a friendship that continues today.  Monster is the evolution of the “job board” in this digital world we all share.  Their coolest innovations are changing the way connections are made.  In fact, they’ve made it their mission to help you find better candidates with technology like:

Career Ad Network®: Monster’s patent pending ad-network solution, the largest global recruitment-focused ad network which reaches 106 million active and passive users per month.

Power Resume Search: Monster’s proprietary 6Sense® Semantic Search Technology, Power Resume Search provides unrivaled candidate matches. 6Sense Semantic Search doesn’t just look for keywords—it “understands” concepts and context, and returns matches based on actual, relevant experience, skills, education and more.

SeeMore™: Monster’s new cloud-based talent management platform that gives recruiters unprecedented access to Monster’s proprietary search and analytics tools.

BeKnown™: Monster’s professional networking app on Facebook® enables job-seekers to harness the power of their personal network to break open new career opportunities.

But, wait, there’s more!!

Monster is offering a special offer on a 30-day Job Posting or a 14-Day Power Resume License to our very own mesh community.

Click here for a 30-Day Job Posting for only $525 (a savings of more than 30%) or Click here for a 14-Day Power Resume License for only $695 (a savings of more than 20%).

Brian has been part of mesh since 2006, having attended every year. This year, he returns not just as an attendee, but as a sponsor.  I believe he is the truest and best definition of what a “friend of mesh” sponsor is all about.  It also helps he is one heck of a nice guy!

Last year Florist One announced the Florist One API on the mesh blog, and told the story of how their API was inspired by mesh.

As an online florist with a partner program, the Florist One API is a free tool that lets  partners create and embed flower storefronts into their own websites and applications. Orders from flower storefronts are transmitted to Florist One in real-time for processing and fulfillment through local florists in the U.S> and Canada. Partners sending orders through flower storefronts are paid a commission on flower sales.

The result was a bunch of really cool flower storefronts!

Stewart Enterprises, a national operator of funeral homes, added flower storefronts to their funeral home websites that offer their own custom line of flower products and are delivered by local florists of their choosing.

Frontrunner Professional, a maker of online memorials for funeral homes, added flower storefronts to their online memorials. Website visitors viewing a memorial can buy and send flowers to the funeral service without ever leaving the funeral home’s Website. Frontrunner uses the Florist One API to offer flowers directly from their application to create new revenue streams for its funeral home clients.

But what about small independent funeral homes not affiliated with software providers – how could they easily implement a flower storefront without development resources? This was a problem Florist One solved by eating their own dog food.

Florist One used their own API to create a flower storefront that could be added with three lines of Javascript code. The result was a pretty slick flower storefront that an independent funeral home like Hansen Spear could add to their flowers page. The flower storefront is branded as Hansen Spear. Hansen Spear selects the local florists making the flower delivery, and creates a new revenue stream for itself. All this is done in minutes by adding a few lines of Javascript code to a page.

Florist One is feeling pretty pleased with itself – creating an API that lets flower storefronts be created anywhere, and then taking it one step further by using their own API to allow their partners to create flower storefronts for funeral homes in minutes.

It is their story – their API was inspired by mesh and now in the spirit of mesh, they want to share it with you!

We were overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response to the program, which made it extremely difficult to select the entrepreneurs to invite. Our original goal was 20 invitations, but we decided to expand it to 25, and then 29.

The way the program works is that participants get to enjoy two days of great speakers, conversations and networking – with the only requirement they spend 45 minutes meeting with the program’s sponsors – Ernst & Young, Microsoft and ME Consulting.

Our first cohort of startups includes:
Speechbobble Inc.
Viafoura
SampleSource
Remote Stylist
REfficient Inc.
Atendy Inc
Mulberry Media Interactive
iNotForProfit
Mimetics Canada
Gloveslap Social Stadium
Granify
Jobdeals Inc.
Spently
UME Golf
ePocket
mTriage
Gijit
Trystingtrees
Suprpod
Inklyo Ltd.
Lilikoi Data
Rayku
Tunezy
Next Parliament
Weever Apps
Verelo Inc
Cream
Uberflip
Greengage Mobile

Tickets for mesh can be purchased for $679.

As you may have noticed, we changed the format this year based on the idea a refresh would give us a chance to experiment with some new things and offer attendees different wrinkles. At the same time, we’ve kept much of what has made mesh so good – the networking, the opportunity to engage and participate in inspiring conversations, and opportunities to talk with speakers.

Here are five reasons why we think people should attend mesh ’12.

1. As one of Canada’s leading digital conferences, it is a great opportunity to not only see engaged and thought provoking speakers but gather with peers from a wide variety of industries to catch up, compare notes and meet new people. mesh has always been about giving people exposure to new ideas, trends and people, and it’s one of the things that makes mesh work so well.

2. We’ve got another slate of great speakers from around the world. People such as Dave Winer, David Weinberger, Rebecca MacKinnon, Clay Johnson, Dr. Mike Evans, Bruno Morency, Brian Halligan, Max Shron, Suresh Doss, D.J. Patil, Jon Lax and Zane Kaplansky provide mesh with a broad and, we think, unique group of speakers offering different slants on how the Web continues to have a huge impact on how we live, work and play.

3. The new format features a day and a half of single-stream programming in which all attendees gather in the main auditorium. At the same time, we’re offering a variety of formats: there are the fireside chats that have worked so well in the past, there are small panels (e.g. education), and we’ve introduced a new vehicle – the vignette – which are 20-minute mini-presentations focused on topics such as medicine, robotics and books. In the afternoon of May 24, there are workshops that have been a staple of mesh.

4. A return to our roots is a new hosted scholarship program for startups that lets 25 entrepreneurs attend mesh for free. All they have to do in return is have a few short meetings with our partners, Ernst & Young and Microsoft. We’re delighted to have received such an enthusiastic reception from startups. Meanwhile, we have a startup round-table happening on May 24 that will feature entrepreneurs providing real-world insight into what it’s like to launch, operate and grow a startup.

5. Finally, there’s the opportunity for attendees to open themselves up to new ideas. In our multi-tasking, time-strapped world, there aren’t as many windows as there should be to reflect, think, digest new thoughts, engage in conversation and be inspired to  embrace new approaches professionally and personally. mesh gives you all that and more.  While two days can seem like a big commitment, it’s a great investment…and for those of you who still need to work, there’s tons of free Wi-Fi.

So, join us on May 23 and 24 at the Allstream Centre in Toronto. Tickets can be purchased here.

If there was a seminal moment when the principles of the consumer-focused, crowdsourced Web 2.0 all came together, it was probably the publication of a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto in 2000. One of the book’s co-authors was David Weinberger, a senior researcher with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and a visionary thinker about the web and how it is changing our lives. We’re really pleased to have him as a keynote speaker at mesh 2012.

In addition to co-writing The Cluetrain Manifesto, David has also written several other books about the impact of the web and digital networks, including Everything Is Miscellaneous and Small Pieces, Loosely Joined. His latest book, Too Big To Know, is a thoughtful examination of how human knowledge is being fundamentally altered by the web — mostly for the better.

One interesting footnote: while he may be attached to Harvard now, David also has some strong ties to Toronto — it’s where he got his doctorate in philosophy, from the University of Toronto (his dissertation was on Heidegger, in case you were wondering) And we are delighted to welcome him back to the city to join us in a discussion of open science and the future of human knowledge at mesh 2012.

Tickets for mesh, which happens on May 23 and 24 at the Allstream Centre, can be purchased here – regular tickets are $679, while student tickets are $99.

One of the most interesting organizations involved in supporting, encouraging and enabling political and community activism is Ushahidi, a non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.

Ushahidi was originally launched as a Web site that helped to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. The Website, which now has more than 45,000 users in Kenya, made it clear there was a need for a platform that could help other people around the world.

At mesh on May 23, we’re excited to have Heather Leson, Ushahidi’s Director of Community Engagement, doing a presentation on how mapping stories is an important tool to connect citizen data and open data to create maps for election monitoring, crisis/emergency response, civil society actions and social protest. Heather will talk about how mapping stories should be also be embraced in Canada.

Tickets for mesh, which happens on May 23 and 24 at the Allstream Centre, can be purchased here – regular tickets are $679, while student tickets are $99.

Where: Reposado Bar & Lounge, 136 Ossington Ave.
Time: 7  p.m. to 10 p.m.
Who: Anyone interested in talking about what’s happening online.

Over the years, however, we’ve had fewer startups involved with mesh that we’d liked or wanted, so we’re excited about going back to our roots with something new called the mesh conference scholarship: A Hosted Startup Program.

It’s an opportunity for startups to attend mesh to expand their connections, share ideas and be inspired, and a chance for us to give back to the community that has supported us.

So, here’s how it works.

Sponsored by Ernst & Young and Microsoft BizSpark, startup entrepreneurs will receive a free ticket to mesh (worth $679). In return, all they need to do is have three 15-minute appointments with participating sponsors and suppliers over the two days of mesh.

So who should apply? If you’re a startup entrepreneur actively involved in the community, tell us about your startup and explain why you should be at mesh. You can apply to participate here.

Once the application process closes on May 9, hosted startups will be hand-picked, recommended and qualified by mesh. Then, vetted and invited hosted startup scholars will be asked to participate in the program free of charge.

For more details, including the qualifying criteria, visit the program’s information page.

Tickets for mesh are now on sale for $679, while a handful of student tickets can be purchased for $99 each.