OurTraction

One of the fun things about with working with a team of really great people is finding new ways to keep them challenged.

We tinker with new things all the time but we were looking to do something different this week. After a bit of discussion and brainstorming we decided to do a code blitz. The idea is to take the whole development team and throw them into something for a single day with a single purpose. Ideally we would come up with a project that would strengthen their teamwork, develop their skills, give something back to the community and deliver a working product at the end of a single working day.

We discussed a number of cool projects (some of which we’ll come back to at a later date) and in the end all agreed on a cool little app that we’d all like to have available for London. When we’re out with our friends and family and want to know what’s going on right now what would come in handy?

We’ve worked with Thomas Czermak over at LondonFuse on a couple of small changes to the site in the past so we called him up and pitched development of an iPhone application for the site.

After a quick meeting to discuss the possibilities (and there are a lot of very cool ones) we narrowed things down to a narrow v1.0 feature set. The next morning we jumped in. We’ve done a few little things on the iPhone (including developing an interface for our open source Compost package) but this was going to be new for a couple of our guys.

The day was very productive and we learned a lot of great things but more importantly we came together as a team like never before.

We’re still polishing but we have a functional v1.0 app. We’ll be tacking on a few new features before it hits the App Store but we’ll have something ready to go in the next few weeks.

We’ll have an announcement on this blog and on Twitter (http://twitter.com/rtraction) when it hits the store.

Here’s a little eye candy for you in the meantime:

Yesterday Twitter CEO Evan Williams gave a keynote interview at South By Southwest Interactive and as expected released a new feature on their already wildly successful platform; Twitter Anywhere. This feature is very similar to Facebook Connect, it allows you to pull info from a Web site to Twitter but also use your Twitter credentials to sign in to various places around the web. Now the connections that we make on Twitter can now be extended to many other online properties.

While it is still early and all the details have not been released there are a number of positives to look forward to:

• For new users the barrier of entry has been lowered; it will become easier to discover people and interests.
• Relationships are strengthened as users find more people and businesses to interact with.
• However there is a lower signal to noise ratio as you only connect with people relevant to your interests.
• Contextual data can be easily added to websites, applications and online services to facilitate these connections.

With this release Twitter is working to position the service as an information network where people can easily share content and learn from each other across a variety of different websites.

Recently events have illustrated Twitter’s ability to easily and safely bring people together; Iranian elections, the Chilean earthquake and conferences around the world. With today’s announcement they have extended this functionality to everyone and both users and businesses of all sizes will benefit.

I had the benefit of being able to attend the e-marketing conference at Fanshawe College last Monday. It was a great day to connect with other Londoners who are all striving to understand social media and apply it to their business.

The day started with the keynote presentation by Mitch Joel of Twist Image in Montreal. He delivered his Six Pixels presentation in which he reiterated the need to understand that we are facing a radical shift in the way we communicate. One of the great things I took away was that with social media, customers still have the same amount of control as they always have. However now there is a greater amplification of their voices. Its easy now for anyone to become a competitor of a traditional business and to succeed.

Mitch delivers a rich and engaging presentation and it was a great way to start the day because it got the attendees all riled up and excited. He provided the groundwork to the day that allowed many people to start on an equal footing.

Following the keynote there were a number of breakout sessions. I attended Brady Murphy of Vortex Mobile’s session on mobile marketing and was able to connect with him about a few interesting things I’d experienced in the space. Brady talked about many of the challenges that mobile developers face when dealing with multiple platforms and service providers. I’ve mentioned before that I believe mobile to be the future of social media and 2010 will be an important year towards that development. This session reiterated that belief, and introduced a lot of new people to the concept.

However, the highlight of the day was the release of PolicyTool. David Canton presented on the legal issues surrounding social media and at the end unveiled the free social media policy generator. David was also asked to present PolicyTool at the final wrap up, so all the attendees were introduced  to it. We’ve written about this already, including the resounding success that it has been.

I enjoyed my time at the conference and was glad to connect with lots of other people over the course of the day. Hopefully this is just the start to many more social media conferences in London.

In the week since we have released our free social media policy generator and the PolicyTool website, we have been blown away by the excitement and interest thousands of people have shown. Since March 5th, over 10,000 people have visited the sites and 1500 different companies have taken the first steps in creating a social media policy.

We never would have gotten the traffic and the interest we did without the help of our social media friends. Mitch Joel sent several tweets out to his network and we are thankful for his interest in the tool and the role he’s played in promoting it. PolicyTool has also been mentioned at numerous conferences including the Great Ideas Conference and the NL Conference in Amsterdam.

From there hundreds of people have re-tweeted messages and shared the tool with their friends and coworkers. In fact as of today our PolicyTool was mentioned every 14 minutes on average. It also looks like people will be continuing to refer back to the site since hundreds of people bookmarked it on delicious.

But it wasn’t limited to Twitter. Lots of people have written blog posts reviewing the tool, sharing their policies, and discussing the overall need for a social media policy within any organization. Simon Fodden wrote a post for the legal blog Slaw.ca reviewing the policy generator.  Beth Kanter used PolicyTool as a springboard for discussion around Not-For-Profits and Aaron Robb for wrote about our incentive for releasing the Social Media policy tool for free.

A big thank-you to everyone who has taken the time to share their thoughts through various social media channels. We’ve heard your comments and are working to make the changes you’ve proposed.

As more and more companies have started to build their online presence using social media tools, it has become important to have a policy to guide employees on what they can and cannot do online.

So in order to fill this need rtraction and technology lawyer David Canton are pleased to announce the release of our first PolicyTool, a free social media policy generator.

After answering a few short questions about your business and your employees roles online, you are provided with a full social media policy. We have worked with David Canton to review other social media policies, and relied on his legal perspective to build a strong and reliable tool that we are excited to share with the community.

This is being released as a free resource because we hope that it will encourage businesses of all sizes to start engaging in online conversations and feel safe doing so.

If you would like to see other policy tool modules, or have suggestions for improvements to the Social Media Policy Generator, then please submit them to our feedback form.

To learn more about social media, and how your company can take advantage of the many different technologies available, please check out services or contact us with specific questions.

The team at Tweetdeck just released an update to their social media monitoring application. If you’re not familiar with Tweetdeck I urge you to check it out now. It allows you to engage with a number of  platforms, and update you status across services like Twitter and Facebook and to monitor online conversations easily.

With this most recent update, the Tweetdeck has added YouTube and Flickr to their list of supported sites. You can now watch YouTube clips and view Flickr photos all within Tweetdeck. Now if one of your friend links to one of these site, you don’t have to leave the application.

One very neat update is column navigation. Now you can quickly jump to any column by hovering over a link a the bottom of the window. You no longer have to scroll horizontally across a screen.

There are also a couple of back end improvements. The Twitter API rate limit was increased and Tweetdeck now makes 350 calls per hour. This is great for anyone managing multiple accounts, or interacting with a high number of followers. We have also been given the option to edit search terms without having to delete the query and start over.

Its great to see the group at Tweetdeck constantly improving their application. Tweetdeck is quickly becoming the one program to easily manage your social media activities.

On Wednesday, Gavin and I had the pleasure of attending DemoCampGuelph at The eBar in downtown Guelph. This was the first time either of us had been to this type of event, which was of the BarCamp variety. A BarCamp is an informal gathering in a public space, usually a bar, where demos, discussion and general socializing take place.

The event in Guelph is organized primarily by Brydon Gilliss (twitter: @Brydon). There were a limited number of presenters and we were among the privileged few who were chosen to show off what we’ve been working on. There was a variety in the types of projects: some, like ours, were pure software and others combined software and hardware.

Tara Hunt (twitter: @missrogue)
First up was the special guest speaker, Tara Hunt. Tara is the author of The Whuffie Factor, and had many interesting things to say about social media as it applies to individuals and companies. Regarding individuals branding themselves, she said “Who needs a personal brand? Get a personality!” To business, the comment was simpler but along the same line “Stop being robots”. Basically what she was saying to everyone is to be authentic. Whether we work for a small company, large corporation or are self-employed, we are still human beings with our own interests, passions and even flaws. She used the example of karaoke and how it allows people to relate to her better. Social media does more than just connect people, it embraces the human factor in everything we do.

Tiny Hippos (twitter: @tinyHippos)
This group built a browser plugin for mobile website and widget developers to aid in the laborious process of testing with multiple devices. This saves the time and effort of running multiple emulators. This project was still in its early stages and we were among some of the first to see it in action.

BerryBlab (twitter: @berryblab)
BerryBlab is a clean easy-to-use BlackBerry application to read vBulletin forums. This program has a clear purpose and achieves it well.

Compost (twitter: @compostr)
This was our presentation of our new opensource web design feedback tool. The hardest part was demoing in under 15 minutes, including setup and questions. After taking a quick tour through the demo website, we fielded several questions from the audience.
My two favourite questions were (paraphrasing a bit):
Q: What distinguishes Compost from similar software, such as ConceptShare or others?
A: Ours is free.
Q: How do you plan to make money off this product?
A: We don’t. The time savings of using the program translate to money indirectly, but the code itself is opensource under GPL3 and free for anyone to use.

JaxCore (twitter: @jaxcore)
JaxCore is looking to change the way web development is done by introducing a new language. The biggest challenge we can see is getting programmers to let go of their favourite programming languages.

SnapSort (twitter: @snapsort)
This is a camera comparison website with a bit different spin than many others. The application looks at the specs and compares them weighted by what’s actually important to consumers. If you’ve ever tried to compare cameras online, you’ve experienced the frustration of trying to figure out what any of the stats actually mean. This site might help me in finally deciding which digital SLR to buy.

Little Robots (twitter: @tonious)
This was a very interesting demo, though very hard to see in the packed room. He addressed the basic issue of subtle communication between individuals. The developer built two little robots, one for his fiancé and another for himself. By pushing the belly-button on his robot, his fiancé’s robot waves at her, and vice-versa. Very cool. But since I know little about hardware, I’ll stick with text messaging my girlfriend for now.

All around, it was a great event and I would love to see a DemoCampLondon. We have a number of specialized user groups: one for Drupal, another for .NET, and of course many great networking groups such as the GeekDinner, but nothing quite along these lines. Seeing a variety of cool products in development in a casual grassroots manner was a different experience and one I look forward to next time.

While it is still early, 2010 is definitely shaping up to be the year of the mobile device.

There are a number of applications that allow you to share your location with your friends. Gowalla, Foursquare are two that have made this into a game, allowing users to collect points and “dropped items“.

Metro’s recent announcement that they have partnered with Foursquare has taken these applications from permissible non creepy stalking to useful tools.

Metro newspaper is a free daily that is handed out at transit stations in major Canadian cities. They have also been active participants in new media, with numerous Twitter accounts and casually written blogs. They claim a circulation of over 800,000.

When a user checks into a location near a site that Metro has a reviewed, a Foursquare tip will be displayed on their phone with the option to read a full review.

There are other applications like AroundMe or CanPages that use you GPS location to return search results related to your location. However Foursquare has the benefit over these application of being crowd sourced and therefore updated more frequently.

While this announcement only speaks about reviews, there is also the potential for breaking news to be shared in the same way, a featuring lacking in other proximity applications.

While augmented reality could arguably be considered more interesting, there is still a barrier of entry (for example the need to install applications to your device). Foursquare and similar services are web based and are easy to use, therefore encouraging more users.

What Is Your Business Doing?

Social media gives businesses of all types the ability connect with their customers. And potential clients are asking to be connected with you. So what are you doing to converse with them? The tools are available and just waiting to be used in news and interesting ways.

As posted yesterday, Chris is leaving our organization. That has created a challenge – how do we fill the position of Client Relations Manager that he is vacating?

In conversations around replacement postings, we’ve discussed titles like Account Manager, Inside Sales Rep, Sales Support, Communication Manager, Client Manager, Stank Funk Enforcement Officer (ask Josh) etc, etc. The list goes on and on. In an organization as multifaceted as ours, it’s difficult to pin any one title to the role.

And so we thought: let’s take a different approach. Rather than an iron-clad job description and title, here is a list of the skills we’ve determined are ideal for this position:

Required:

1. Loves working with a variety of clients in different industries
2. Strong Writing Skills
3. Strong Oral Communication Skills
4. Great Problem Solving / Creative Thinking Skills
5. High Energy / Positive Mojo
6. Analytical Thinking
7. Good Negotiation Skills
8. Ability to Edit/Proof Read (Attention to Detail)
9. Ability to create and deliver killer presentations
10. Nothing gets you more excited than writing up a solid pitch/proposal to a new prospect
11. A desire to work with our community to make it a better place to live

Would-be-Great-To-Have:

1. Technical Aptitude (not programming, but not afraid of technology either)
2. Marketing Aptitude
3. Experience with Non-Profits
4. Experience with High Tech/Medical Agencies
5. Graphic Design Skills (for presentations, documentation)
6. Understanding of Financials / Budgeting / Business Lifecycles
7. Have your own Blog / Twitter Account / Website / Facebook Fan Page
8. Know how to spell HTML

Why would you want to work with us? Several reasons, really. A chance to work on exciting, dynamic projects. Perhaps you want to help us build a stronger community by doing good. You like the challenge of working in new, emerging media technologies. You (or your family) is a big fan of international standards in web development. You like robots. Maybe, just maybe you have a healthy hatred of all things undead. You like to rock out. And last but not least, you like to work hard AND  play hard with your peers.

If you have these skills and a desire to work in online marketing with our team, drop me a line and maybe we can create an opportunity together. Alternatively, if you know someone that is ideal – please pass them along.

And last but not least, if you’re happily situated in your job and don’t know anyone looking, please leave some comments about any thoughts you have for any important attributes for individuals working with clients in the digital media / online marketing space – your feedback is welcome and appreciated!

UPDATE 01/25/2010: A few people have commented/wrote/called, etc asking how they can contact us if interested (and specifically what to send). I’ve been asking interested individuals to send a note describing what about this blog post resonates with them and sparks interest, identifying the skills in which they excel at and perhaps the ones that need work. And, of course, a traditional C.V. is always a good idea! You may send it directly to me at david.billson@rtraction.com

Thanks to all our community members that have passed this on!

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.