SpaceRace

I can hardly wait for your free lanyard.

These, my friends, were the days before random winner generators, online entries, and the power of quiet influencers with more followers than the Pied Piper using social tools to share their expertise. Biggest school in Ontario? Pssssssshhhhh. How about the elementary teacher from Armpit, SK, who has built a digital program for her students that gives them reach for their ideas that they’ll benefit from for years to come, and tweets her experience to 5000 like-minded followers? I’d rather learn about the platform that makes that notion of global collaboration possible for kids, as opposed to who’s bought (and wasted the most money on) the biggest gargantua of a conference booth (check out the eco footprint too, yo).

But at SXSWedu, there was no vendor showcase. Companies had to be sneaky and infuse their sessions with clever product pitches, sessionbomb by planting product-focused operatives during question time, or be not so sneaky and incur the deserved wrath (Hi, I’m a #conferencehashtag. People use me.) Teachers are getting much better about standing up to the disruption of their learning. They pay out of pocket to come to these things. It’s not cheap. Don’t invite them to a session about innovations in critical thinking applications and pitch your app.
Amway called. They want their strategy back. Ugh. (more…)

My spry and busy 62 year old Dad had a heart attack in October while playing tennis in the Senior’s Games in St George, Utah. Were it not for the decisive and immediate CRP he received  from another player in the tournament, I’d be writing this through a very different lens. That’s why I loved seeing Ken Jeong (of Hangover fame) pop up in my Facebook feed this week – he’s the face behind an awareness campaign from the American Heart Association. The campaign is nearly a year old – debuting in June 2011, which makes it not new, but new to me, okay? And a year on, are you familiar with the latest best practices in CPR? If not, please share this.

The message is simple: performing CPR is as easy as keeping the beat to Stayin’ Alive…it’s disco, baby. What makes this spot so effective is it’s inherent stickiness – Stayin’ Alive is a powerful earworm if ever there was one, and to link of the action of CPR to the song’s beat is really brilliant.  I probably won’t hear it again without performing involuntary chest compressions. So beware if you invite me over and plan on spinning some BeeGees.   The AHA have created something so memorable in it’s zaniness, familiarity, and sheer simpleness of message- something certainly worth sharing for it’s important content and entertainment factor.
It’s hard to get it right – but when it works, it really works.

Another great thing: (more…)

Geek in Toque

1. Blogchat A rolling stone or Twitter chat gathers no moss, but it certainly gathers smart participants and endless pearls of bloggy wisdom every Sunday evening at 8 pm Central. Hosted by the inimitable Mack Collier and featuring a changing roster of learned pros, Blogchat moves faster than a speeding torrent and is a source of great connections and tips for making the most of your online presence. You can participate through a Twitter client like Tweetdeck or HootSuite by creating a search column for the term ‘#blogchat’. New tweets with the #blogchat hashtag show up in your column. Or if you want to follow #blogchat on another site, you can try TweetChat or WTHashtag – Learn more here.

2. 20ThingsILearned.com – is lovely new HTML5 e-book from the developers of Chrome. It’s a stocking stuffer for the geek in your life. An anonymous tip for your clueless boss. Every “thing” is shareable. Delicious illustrations from Christoph Niemann add to the playful vibe. Love this.

3. Meet Up – Having relied on MeetUp to connect with like-minded peeps and discover helpful IRL events, this week I started a group. Hiding away in a mountain town is a spectacular experience, but I do miss the opportunities to network that living in a tech hub like Toronto afforded me. I’m very keen to connect with other Geeks in Toques, and love the usability, choice, and promotion tools that MeetUp offers. Support is amazing and I loved having to promise to take it offline – because most of us have the online network of our choice all sewn up and we do need to reach out and touch each other (with permission, of course) every once in a while.

4. When Bad Websites Happen to Good People We’ve all seen it. That company with a remarkable product and remarkable people with the GeoCities 1995 web presence. The site you want to use, but can’t, because it’s as prickly as a porcupine’s hiney. That opening autoloading video that makes your teeth gnash every time you drop by. “Nascent blobs of regurgitated brochures” (Tip 2). Involved in a site refresh or critical overview? You should read these 10 little nuggets of plain-spoken sense, and share them, and comment on them, and add to them, and tattoo them on your forehead.

5. My lady friends? You need to read this blog. Often.

Have a week to end all weeks. Be awesome to each other.

Grab your glowstick.

This week’s raves:

GOOD looks at 30 great places to work. This post highlights some of the most rewarding companies to work for, but what really impressed me is their breakdown of the 10 criteria used to create the list. Factors such as a genuinely progressive mission, a culture of love for employees, and a commitment to using smart technology smartly can create an enviable work environment that breeds loyalty and impacts service in every way.

Petra Neiger’s 4P approach to social media engagement pays homage to Kotler, yet repositions the key tenets of marketing for the digital age. Best of all, Petra’s first P is People. She articulates the importance of the marriage between execution and content, and making two-way conversations essential and meaningful.

What’s your bookprint? Scholastic’s You Are What you Read community is a creative and crafty consumer preference tracking platform that functions as place for people to share their emotional connection with great literature. Celebrity contributors provide a high interest factor (imagine a spotty, teenaged Bill Clinton encountering the ghosts of Shakespeare’s Macbeth), while the act of choosing 5 can really take you back to the literature that had an impact on your life. The kid’s version is very cool too.

If you’re an education nut (aren’t we all?), you’ll want to keep an eye on the Education Computing Organization of Ontario’s annual conference on November 11 and 12. This year’s theme is Inspire, Connect, Learn, and this is one ed-tech conference that really practices what it preaches. With workshops and sessions from renowned 21st Century education leaders, an online planner that supports delegates in managing their sessions, and a rousing Tweet Up, ECOO is the place to be. Follow #ecoo2010 on Twitter to connect with some impressively tuned in teachers.

Have you come across something worth raving about? Let us know!