The event featured the use of a new app called GooseChase, a scavenger hunt based app that was used to bring interactivity to each hole.  Basically every hole would have some task or goal that you had to take a picture of, then it would be saved to the app and you would get awarded points.  I took a shot white standing in buckets full of smooshed grapes, totally exploded a cupcake(see right), smashed a present pinata full of candy and took a dip in the pond all for points in the GooseChase app.  In the end my team got 17000 points and finished in a 3 way tie for first.  It was a lot of fun to play with, though I found it also had a lot of flaws when it came to picture management and social media integration.  I’m planning on writing an email to them tomorrow with all my user feedback.

There were prizes for all sorts of different stuff, so instead the usual closest to the pin or longest drive, they had the best team outfits or best Happy Gilmore shot. Here’s my Happy shot, didn’t win but I did totally crush the ball. There were also prizes for most active tweeter and many more, so it was an interesting array of prizes.

The networking aspect of the event was awesome, got to meet all sorts of new people and some people I hadn’t seen in ages that I had no idea would be there. My Wolfpack teammates kept asking me if I knew everyone, as I seemingly kept bumping into friends and acquaintances all over the course.  What can I say? I guess I get around.

The food at the post-round dinner was absolutely fantastic.  I believe it was catered by the Bauer Kitchen in Waterloo The GGCC catered and everything I ate was pretty out of this world.  Mini slider burgers, gourmet toppings, pulled pork and tonnes more were just fabulous. The Bauer Kitchen catered the poutine table at the event. It makes me want to take a trip out of my way to the Bauer Kitchen now, as it’s long been a place I’ve been meaning to check out.

I found overall the event was great and I had a really good time.  There were some things that seemed to work better than others.  I tried to tweet as much as possible, but I found I kinda had to choose between tweeting or using the GooseChase app. The scavenger hunt ended up being my primary focus, so I couldn’t possibly do both and keep up playing a round of golf and driving a cart.  Also I found there was definitely a discrepancy between those who did the social media stuff and “true” golfers.  The experienced golfers cleaned up on the best score and fastest round, but that was also a bi-product of the fact they weren’t actually doing any of the social media stuff.  I know social media is not everyone’s bag, but it was kinda the point of the whole event to participate above and beyond the golf aspects.

My golf game was positively awful today, so I was lucky it was best ball as I wasn’t faring so well out there.  Seems the only thing I could hit was those Happy Gilmore shots.  I had a great time and it was definitely something awesome to take part in. This was a very cool event organized by a bunch of great folks from around Waterloo Region.  Kitchener and Waterloo often play host to these new style, social media events, so it was great that Cambridge could be host to creative such an interesting and fun event.

As Twitter seemingly has no great way of following a multiple person conversation I’m going to do my best to present this in some type of orderly fashion.

As you can see this conversation starts out on a topic entirely unrelated to the restaurant, about eating bacon. There are casual jokes back and forth and the topic eventually shifts to a new local restaurant, Smokin’ Tony’s. Dawn (@saffyre9) has been to this restaurant and begins evangelizing the experience to others who were unaware of the place.  You’ll notice Dawn uses the hashtag #smokintonys to begin categorizing the topic and make it easier for others to discover Smokin’ Tony’s, as they currently don’t have a Twitter account to reference.

Next thing you know a whole group of local women begin organizing a get together that involved visiting Smokin’ Tony’s in the near future, all interested by this social media endorsement offered by Dawn.

As someone who follows all the people taking part in this conversation, this definitely piqued my interest.  I’ve been known to enjoy a good BBQ restaurant and have traveled to Hog Tails BBQ in Waterloo a few times, as well as going to Camp 31 in my hometown of Paris quite a few times over the years.  Discovering a new BBQ place just down the road in Guelph sounds like a pretty good idea for dinner.  I convinced my wife and we were off to Guelph to give it a go.

I proceeded to check in using location based social network Foursquare and announce to Twitter that I was having dinner at this new place and subsequently was asked about my experience by one of my local followers.

My previous check-in was noted by Dawn and she mentioned the people who had been taking part in the conversation earlier.  This began a whole new conversation about the restaurant and our experiences there.

My wife Corina (@quirkycori) tweeted about her experience, giving a glowing review, then telling an interested follower where to check this place out.

We’ll move forward in the story to Saturday and it comes to light that someone I had recently started following, Bang Ly (@superbang) was actually sitting at the table next to my wife and I at the same time we were there.  When he walked by I actually recognized him by his avatar, but just thought it was coincidence at the time.  Even more amusingly, he happened to take a picture and there are my wife and I in the background. Now I’m not sure if Bang also got the dinner idea from Dawn’s conversation, but it really is amazing how many local Twitter folk ended up checking out Smokin’ Tony’s on Friday night.

Looking at all these conversations I am pretty amazed thinking of the possibilities.  The genesis of this idea was as simple as one person mentioning a restaurant for the idea to spread. In the excerpts I posted there were 10 different people involved in these various exchanges and I really have no way of guesstimating how large of scope this conversation might have been exposed to through various people’s follower networks.  Sure not everyone in my, or other people’s Twitter network is local, but I bet you could easily have exposed a couple hundred potential customers to Smokin’ Tony’s in the span of a couple hours.  And this is just the stuff I can track and see within my network of followers.  How many other conversations might have been spawned from this one conversation?

How many dollars were generated just by this online conversation? Sure it might have started out as an innocuous Twitter back and forth, but more than likely it has, and will result in hundreds of dollars being spent at this restaurant.  Multiple people took action, hopped into their cars and opened their wallets to a new business, merely at the mention of it online.  Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful promotion methods a business can employ, but rarely will you ever be able to trace word of mouth like you can on Twitter.

Update 06/27 10:30am: All this positive commentary was happening online and it was probably entirely unbeknownst to the owners of Smokin’ Tony’s. I just sent an email to them through their website about this article and hope to hear back from them. If they do I will post an update.  The thing that gets me wondering is how often is this happening? How often are businesses generating new customers through social media without even having a presence of their own?  Imagine what happens when the business is on Twitter and can help guide the conversation.

I’ve been to tonnes of different social events around KW, Cambridge and Guelph so I wanted to see what Brantford was up to in social media circles. The event was held at Al Dente on King George Road, a place I hadn’t been to in probably 15 years. I was definitely impressed, as it was held on the covered patio outside. Luckily we had a perfect Fall night and didn’t get too cold. The unique location gave the event a vibe all its own.

The event was very well organized, with a slick accompanying website and printed materials. They had multiple sponsors and gave away door and raffle prizes, which I was lucky enough to win one. Kudos to @octopusred, @Trevor_Cherewka and @josefstevens for putting on a heck of a gathering.

Speakers for the night included @sabbatical, @kevinamagee, @sydbolton, @davecarrol, @brantfordcomedy and @digitalduckinc. The speakers of the night did presentations talking about topics like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and other social networks. The tone was rather introductory, as Brantford seems to have a rather fledgling community when it comes to social engagement compared to other events I’ve been to. All the speakers put on great presentations and really worked to engage the audience.

I had a great time at the event, meeting a bunch of people I had followed on Twitter previously, along with a lot of new people. I was very pleased to see Brantford mobilizing and engaging their social community. Communities need to be nurtured and it was great to see Brantford planting the seeds to a vibrant online social network.

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Google Wave was too closed for its own good.  I found that unlike Facebook, Twitter or any other social media services out there it never made itself known via email notifications.  There was never an official Google Wave app for iPhone or Android to send nice push notifications of what was going on with Wave.  I know there were some 3rd party solutions, but I doubt Wave meant enough to people to actually shell out money for it.  It seems most services nowadays cross pollinate using RSS or using APIs to be able to port data from one service to another.

I found in my own experience that I actually understood what Google Wave could do for me as a communication method, it was just very difficult to actually get people to use it.  I find that once a project you are working exceeds 2 people then email definitely becomes a little cumbersome to keep track of.  I tried on a couple occasions to get some clients that worked with on a regular basis to give it a go but could never seem to get people to use it simply because of logistics.  It wasn’t easy to just sign up and get down to business.

The biggest misstep I think Google made was the fact that Wave wasn’t part of the Google Apps product line right away.  If this were a product that integrated into Gmail in the same way you could get Calendars or GTalk to mesh in with the email experience they could have had a winner.   I could easily share stuff via Google Docs as a collaboration tool, but couldn’t easily do the same with Wave.  The fact that it really integrated with nothing when it launched was pretty much its death blow.

What I figure is many of the features that were in Wave will make their way into Google’s other apps, primarily Gmail.  Google definitely had some ideas that were work pursuing with Wave, they just made it too inaccessible to the masses to truly be adopted as a new way of communicating.

I shot a video of my office, just to show off the new setup.

Avoid ISP email addresses
Whether it be an @rogers.com, @sympatico.ca or some other smaller internet service provider, this just sends the wrong kind of message to prospective clients. Email addresses like this work as beacon to the rest of the world telling them you probably aren’t very well versed with the online world. If your address is from an ISP people could draw the conclusion that you’re just a part timer or that you may only access your email when they get home at the end of the day.

The biggest issue I find with these emails is what if you decide to change ISPs? Sometimes these changes are inevitable, be it for poor service or maybe you find a better deal with another provider and want to make the leap. Swapping hosts also means abandoning your email address. To make this change you need to tell everyone in your address book to update their contact info for you. This can be a huge task, as you can’t always count on people taking action. I have an old email address that I abandoned 5 years ago and still have a few stragglers that send the odd email to me there. If you’re using your ISP email address for business communication, you could even suffer from the added hassle of having to reprint business cards and other professional materials to reflect this change. Ideally you don’t want to be losing business leads because you decided to save a few bucks on your internet bill.

Avoid free online email accounts
Odds are pretty much everyone on the planet has a free email address from either Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail. I signed up for my first Hotmail account way back in 1996, before Microsoft bought them. These addresses are quite handy, but don’t give off the greatest signals when used for business purposes. As soon as I see a free email service used as someone’s point of contact, how I view them as a professional goes down a notch or two. Even worse is if the actual account is something silly like billybob3892@yahoo.com, it just shows you have little regard for how you present yourself online. If you have to go with a free provider for your email, the best bet these days for salvaging a shred of professionalism is Gmail.

I find the worst lapses in judgment for people is when they actually own their own web domain, yet haven’t made the effort to get email address aliases created and instead use a Hotmail.com email address. It’s like they’ve already run a marathon, then forgot to cross finish line.

Buy yourself a domain name
The cost of registering a domain for a year can be less then what you paid for yesterday’s lunch. Prices can typically range from $6 to $12 dollars, depending on what type of domain you’re registering. So really the barrier of entry is pretty low. If you don’t intend on creating a website right away, many registrars offer the ability to host email for you for a monthly fee. While this typically isn’t cost effective when compared to a hosting package, $3 a month for your own personal, professional email address is money well spent. If you are looking to create a website along with email addresses, I’m sure SlideawayMedia could help you out. If you’re looking for a good Canadian registrar, I use NamesPro.ca and host my sites with PinchHost.

Services like Gmail actually allow you to combine multiple email addresses into one inbox as well. Here’s a tutorial on how to combine multiple accounts into Gmail I wrote awhile back. This is handy on so many levels as it keeps all your mail in one spot and allows you to seamlessly use emails from your web domain, while still having the handiness of using Gmail to access your mail from virtually anywhere.

Projecting a professional image online requires the total package, including the use of professional email addresses. If you’ve worked really hard at crafting your image and reputation, don’t sabotage that by using a bad email address.

I wanted to comment on the idea that canceling the Drayton Theatre project would be a boon for Cambridge taxpayers.  I think making a move like this would be quite shortsighted and hurt our community in the long run.  Cambridge is in need of a facelift, badly.  In a recent Conference Board of Canada report we were given a “D” grade, which lumped us among Brantford, Windsor and Oshawa when it comes to attracting new people into our community.  That is not the type of company we want to be keeping when compared to other cities.

Cambridge needs to progress and evolve our community away from its manufacturing roots and begin to attract new, sharp, forward thinking minds to the area.  We need to work be towards a knowledge and information based economy in our region.  This can be achieved by giving people a reason to move here, investing in innovation and the arts instead of shuttering projects like the Drayton Theatre.  Stimulating the arts helps make our city a more vibrant and desirable destination for newcomers.

I think people of this community will forever feel second fiddle to cities like Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph because we’re doing so little to attract new thinking and ideas to our area.  I’m a local web designer and frequently go to get togethers and meetups in Waterloo to interact with like minded people looking to enrich their skills and make new contacts.  I know of many other people from Cambridge making that same trek into Waterloo, since there isn’t any similar type of community available here.

We need to encourage the arts, not crush them in the name of shortsightedness.

Writing a letter to the editor definitely makes me feel like an old man. It’s the first time I’ve ever done it, so hopefully it gets into the paper.

Hello,
I was curious as to why there is no free wifi available at City Hall?  I went there today to the Small Business Centre and found it to be closed for another hour because of a meeting.  I tried to access the internet through my phone, but found that the big stone walls of city hall allowed for little to no connectivity through my Rogers iPhone.  I know myself as a small business owner I would appreciate that I would be able to send and receive emails while conducting my business at City Hall.

For a public space claiming to that “the future is high tech“, I would anticipate something that every coffee cafe in Cambridge can offer would be able to manage what has essentially become a common courtesy to offer patrons.

Is there currently a plan to implement wifi in Cambridge City Hall, and if so when?

In building a beautiful new facility like the one Cambridge has I would figure it would be the goal to want to bring people to use and spend time within the facility.  Guelph is in the process of offering free wifi at their new city hall.  Burlington already does.  Cambridge needs to cater to their local technology community as the city looks to transition away from being a manufacturing based economy.  Offering simple things like wifi in public places helps keep smart, technologically engaged people living in the area instead of losing them to more progressive municipalities.

Thanks for your time,

jamEs harris

I’ll update this post if and when I get a response.

Update from February 2nd, 2010

Dear James,
Mayor Craig asked me to follow up with you regarding your note.  We appreciate your feedback.  As you can image, there are a number of services we provide through the Small Business Centre and most recently we upgraded the internet connections and provide a separate line, outside the city network firewalls so that entrepreneurs can access sites that are traditionally blocked by our network.  I was advised by the centre that there was a sign on the door which would have directed you to the second floor to Economic Development division as there is only one staff member who works at the centre.  Should you have needed the resources of the centre, it would have been opened for you where possible.

City Hall is a Wifi hot spot for Atria, however, access is not free and you would require a stick to utilize the service. There are no plans to provide this service free of charge at this point because of budget impacts but I have passed along your suggestion to our technology services team.  In terms of sending emails and using Roger’s service, I am not sure what might have happened for your system to fail.  The City uses mobile devices from City Hall without issue and in fact, service throughout Civic Square has been tested on several occasions.

Thanks for pointing out the old questions email.  The front page of our website and other areas within the site have been updated, however, the section you reference is a separate website and I will be sure to connect with the team that manages this content – it’s an older site but still part of our online materials to give the history of the project.  I really appreciate you taking the time to point this out.

I hope I have answered your questions and would be happy to reconnect should you require anything further.

Regards,

Lin

As far as I’m concerned an Atria pay solution simply does not cut it. I understand that there is cost involved, but setting up a wireless router on the main floor of the building doesn’t seem like rocket science. Even restricted network service that blocks content is better then nothing at all.

For those not familiar with the concept of a coworking space, I’ll try to give a brief rundown. The idea is to create a working space for small business owners, sole proprietors, freelancers and non-profit organizations to have a place to meet and work. Office space is costly, running from $300 to $1000+ a month to rent your own business space. So many small businesses are like myself, they do their business working alone from their home and meet clients outside their homes at public places like restaurants or coffee shops. The problem with this kind of arrangement is it can tend to be rather isolating. I know myself sometimes you just get bored of your surroundings and want to get out of the house.

This is where a cowork comes in. It allows for a collaborative workspace where entrepreneurs can get outside of their regular work confines and get the opportunity to do some valuable business networking. I’ve been working on my own for roughly 8 months and sometimes you just wish you had somewhere to go to work, enabling you to separate your home and work life a bit.

Over the last 2 months a group of locals, mainly having been connected through Twitter are hashing out the groundwork for a coworking space to be located in downtown Galt. Colin has rather smartly setup a shared, public cowork Google doc for collecting Cambridge cowork ideas. If you feel like getting involved, feel free to get in touch and I’ll help you get in the loop.  I also created a Twitter list of Cambridge Cowork contributors.