ITster!

Since joining rtraction in 2008, I’ve been fortunate to work with a fantastic team, great clients, and to help launch some amazing projects. It’s been a wild ride, with learning and laughter accompanying every project. I’m very proud to have been involved with campaigns like 1000 Acts of Kindness and the Amazing Tree Quest. Given all that, another career opportunity would have to be pretty special to tempt me away.

Next week, I’ll be joining the Sunshine Foundation as their National Media and Communications Coordinator. Sunshine is dedicated to fulfilling dreams for children who are challenged by severe physical disabilities or life-threatening illnesses. I’m hugely excited about my new team, about the role itself, and about the prospect of using social media to support our work and our volunteers across Canada .

I’ve met a lot a great people in the past 15 months, and I hope you will stay in touch.

We’re proud to announce the addition of Titus Ferguson, Social Media Strategist, to the rtraction team!

Over the past year, we have seen a rapid increase in the number of clients (existing, new and prospective) who are looking not only for the skills and strategies to build a great website, but also to build a network for themselves within the social media sphere.

In his new role, Titus will extend our capacity and let us continue providing our clients with the services and strategies they need to stay “ahead of the curve” and benefit from social media. Titus brings with him a wealth of experience with successful events and campaigns including LOLA Fest and PodCamp London.

Or “Did I actually just learn a business lesson from David Lee Roth?”

Thanks to Twitter, I recently stumbled across an article on Snopes.com about Van Halen’s infamous “brown M&M clause” in their concert contracts. For decades, the story has circulated about the band’s insistence on having a bowl of M&Ms in the dressing room at every show, with “absolutely no brown ones.” The tale became a cliché – a textbook case of prima donna behaviour, or pointless extravagance.

I was familiar with the story and when I found it featured on Snopes with all the other urban legends, I expected to learn why it was untrue. Surprisingly, not only was the M&M clause real, it had a very specific purpose.

For a band that employed massive, technically complex stage shows, the brown M&M clause gave Van Halen and their management an instant spot-check on the level to which the show’s organizers had followed instructions. A single brown M&M could be a portent of sloppy wiring or other more serious problems with the show’s setup.

When I read this, it struck me as pure genius. Why?

At the time, I was up to my eyeballs in the minutiae of preparing a response to an RFP for a potential client. I was not feeling particularly charitable towards the authors of this RFP. The details, the complexity, the inconsistency! Where was it coming from? Were these convoluted requirements the product of sadism or incompetence?

Refreshed by a good laugh and a with a new favorite story tucked away, I found it a lot easier to dive back in to the writing process and pick out all the Brown M&Ms. Oh, it’s possible that the authors of the RFP were being prima donnas, but it’s more likely they were providing themselves with some easy spot checks.

Besides, who wants to lose a good gig just because of a technicality?

Thanks to City Lights Bookshop for providing me inspiration through distraction with their prolific and varied tweets!

This week, we presented a workshop “How to Make the Web Work for Your Business” for a group of 45 entrepreneurs. When we asked the group to rate their own knowledge of and comfort with the web on a scale of one to ten, they rated themselves from zero to eight. Crafting a message that appeals to a diverse audience is a challenge in any form of communication, but sharing a common vocabulary is critical.

We chose to use a number of commoncraft’s “Plain English” videos. They are know as fantastic tools for simplifying content, but I am even more impressed with how much they cover.  The shorts, which range from 90 seconds to three minutes, serve as fantastic checklists of “what should I remember if I’m ever trying to explain this to someone.

The “Plain English” videos are not only a good resource for the uninitiated, they are a fantastic resource for anyone who finds themselves in a position of  explaining web concepts to clients or colleagues. They are thorough, simple to understand, and amazingly succinct. If you’ve never seen one, go take a look. If you have seen them and dismissed them as “too basic”, take another look. If put on the spot, could you explain one of these concepts as clearly and quickly as Lee LeFever?