Dec 1, 2016
Many of you know my parents had a fabric and drapery business, and it was often the topic of conversation around the dinner table. I remember my dad saying, more than once, “the customer is always right.” As a young teenager, I took that literally and would often get...
Aug 6, 2016
I was listening to BuzzFeed Canada’s social media editor Elamin Abdelmahmoud give a talk at Social Media Week Toronto. He said about 75% of the content they produce isn’t published on Buzzfeed.com. That surprised me. Here you have a successful digital media outlet...
Jun 30, 2016
Have you ever been called into a brainstorm and thought I’ve got so much on my plate today, I just can’t face being creative. Or when you do come up with an idea, do you feel it’s nitpicked so badly it becomes unrecognizable from what you first...
May 24, 2016
Let’s rewind to the end of the last century. Back then, you’d find user-generated content in home videos or on community access TV. And the quality was…um…why don’t we say it was local-in-the-extreme. Sometimes you might discover a...
Apr 6, 2016
I remember when I first set up my twitter account in March 2007 just after the company turned one and was all the rage at SXSW. I don’t mind saying how nervous I felt. At the time, Twitter seemed like the great big unknown to me. And while I was fascinated, I...
Feb 16, 2016
Big data is all around us. You can sense it – or rather, it senses you. We may even be heading toward a data singularity, a time in the not so distant future when sensors all around us will send vast amounts of information to a centralized source to learn and adapt in...
Jan 12, 2016
Whenever someone mentions multimedia, I automatically think of those nondescript grey metal A/V carts of my high school and university days. (I know I’m dating myself here.) They’d always hold a messy assortment of what was then hi-tech: 16MM film...
Dec 30, 2015
I’ve always been a major consumer of content. Like most PR pros, I’m a media junkie, that is, passionate about news. I used to start my days poring over five papers, listening to radio and watching TV. In recent years, that’s been turned into more of...
Nov 20, 2015
Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of attending a Google-sponsored breakfast on micro-moments – those ‘I want to know/go/do/buy’ impulses we all experience when we have a question and impulsively reach for our smartphones to find what we’re looking for. For many of...
Sep 3, 2015
Does this sound familiar? You’re reading, working, talking to a colleague or friend, sitting in a restaurant, waiting for a bus. All of a sudden you’re seized by an overwhelming impulse to find something out. NOW! You’re having a micro-moment. Maybe...
