As most of you probably already know, Northern Voice is just around the corner - it’s kicking off on Thursday night with an evening of fun and dancing at Fredrico’s Supper Club, followed by two days of what - in my opinion - is set to be one of the best blogging/ social media conferences in Canada this year.

What you may not know is that this year I’ve been involved with the organizing committee and I will be speaking on a panel. Prior to this year, I’d not been on an organizing committee for a conference and I had no idea exactly how much work was involved to put on an event this size. Added to this is the communities passionate and vocal interest in the conference - which is absolutely amazing. The team behind the conference are all passionate, busy, and ultimately dedicated to making Northern Voice a smashing success for the 5th year in a row. The other organizers behind Northern Voice this year are Alexa Booth, Brian Lamb, Cyprien Lomas, Dale McGladdery, James Sherrett,  Julie Szabo, Kris Krug, Lauren Wood, Lori Pike, Roland Talango, Shane Birley, and Travis Smith.

The panel I’m on is Who Are You? Defining Yourself in the Online World. I’m really excited about this panel, as I will be joined by some of my favorite Vancouver social media ladies - Nadia Nascimento, Rebecca Bollwitt, and Linda Bustos with Monica Hamburg moderating - which will be a full time job as the four of us can really get going.

The panel will discuss the various social networking sites that can be utilized to build your brand online, and identify advantages and pitfalls of these sites, their usage, and their relationship to one another. During the discussion, they will provide context for the growing significance of social networking for personal brands, as we discuss the paths each of us took in order to build our personal online reputations.

As well, we will go through the paths that we each took build our personal online reputations. Along with the steps that we would do differently if we were to do it over again. In the spirit of social media, we will end the panel by opening the floor for a group conversation.

Immediately following Northern Voice is Illuminate Yaletown - this event is unrelated to Northern Voice but looks like it will be a great way to end the conference. This event will be a great opportunity for everyone who attended PhotoCamp at Northern Voice to put their new skills to use.

Miss604 - who also happens to be on my Northern Voice panel has done a great review of the event. The event takes place from 5:29pm to 9:29pm in Yaletown’s heritage district (Hamilton and Mainland between Davie and Nelson) everyone is invited to come and enjoy light installations, music, colour-changing helium orbs, light graffiti, fire breathing and many other dazzling displays.

As the only outdoor event to take place in Vancouver at this time of year, this event will bring light to a gloomy night. Featuring light installations developed by artists and architects, cutting edge music and interactive activities, illuminate yaletown will allow attendees to see Vancouver as it has never been experienced before. [Yaletown]

6S Marketing is a sponsor of the event and we will be putting on a light show from our office. We’re located at 402-1120 Hamilton Street, near the intersection at Helmcken Street. So if you make it out to Illuminate Yaletown, make sure you keep an eye out for our display. We’re helping to put together the 2009 Illuminate Yaletown Photo Contest that is being hosted on Flickr. More than $500 in cash and Yaletown restaurant gift certificates are available to be won for online photo entries including best photos by popular vote, best photos by judges selection, as well as “best collection” “fastest uploads.” So make sure you bring your cameras and add your pics to the flickr group.

Along with all of the other fun and exciting things that have been happening in my life, I’m now a contributer to the Georgia Straight Tech section.  I’ll be writing a post every two weeks for the Straight - some of which will live online and some of which will make it into the print paper.  This week, I wrote about trends in social media, I’m not sure what my next post will be on, but it will have a bent towards social media and tech.

This is a really fun addition to everything that’s been happening - starting a new job, helping organize Northern Voice, getting ready for my panel at Northern Voice (a post on this will be coming soon!), and starting bootcamp again in the morning (brr it’s cold out in the morning right now). I may also have another big announcement coming soon, but I’ll wait till it’s confirmed before I let you know about it.

For those of you who haven’t heard, today was my first day at 6S Marketing - I think I’ve done a somewhat poor job of keeping this quiet over the past month and a half. This morning I was filled with both excitement and nervousness, but today was amazing - getting to know the people that I’d not met yet at the company and getting settled into the new office (check out my new office set up below, it’s pretty sweet!).

The opportunity that I have at 6S is an amazing step for me in my career. They have brought me on as the Director of Social Media and they’ve tasked me with building a social media department within the company and creating strategic relationships with other Vancouver technology firms. I think that this is a great fit for me, as they’ve done an amazing job over the past few years of building one of the most well known and respected Internet Marketing companies in Vancouver and Canada.

Over the past year particularly, I have really started to take notice of 6S with the steps they’ve taken within the Vancouver technology and social media scene.  As many of you know, they have really stepped up to the plate with participating in, learning about, and sponsoring events. Recently, 6S has become a sponsor for WordCamp Whistler, Northern Voice - which I am on the organizing committee of and will be speaking at, and Twestival. This demonstration of interest in and desire to help through their sponsorship of events - these great events really aren’t possible without sponsors - really helped me to solidify my desire for working with this company.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet with many of people who work at 6S over the past month, including spending this past weekend with them in Whistler for WordCamp and have been overwhelmed with how friendly and accepting they have been with both myself and the changes that are happening within the company with the creation of a new Social Media division.  6S has built an great crew and I am proud to say that I am now a part of.

You can expect to hear a lot more things coming from 6S about social media and my involvement with the company, including me joining the organizing committee for Ideas on Tap.

Photo Credit: Rebecca Bollwitt

Jenn Lowther
Originally uploaded by FearlessCity

Yesterday, I dropped off a couple of old cell phones that I had lying around in my drawers to the Fearless City phone drive. They are asking Vancouver residents to donate their old mobile phones to help Downtown Eastside artists share stories, and tap into life, jobs and family. I think that this is an amazing intitative and with very little effort, you can help someone less fortunate with an item that would never have seen the light of day.

I’ve just sent off an email to my family that I’ll be seeing over the Christmas holidays, asking them to bring their old phones with them to Christmas dinner so that I can drop them off once I get back to the city. If we all do this, the Fearless City phone drive will be a phenomenal success and we will have played a small part in helping out.

From the Fearless City website:

Action Plan:

First, Gather phones!

Collect all the unused mobile phones at your office and home - dig into your boxes of stuff, ask you friends! Digital cameras gratefully accepted too.

Next, Arrange Pick-up:

Let us know via Twitter: Fearless City, email: info (at) fearlessmedia (dot) ca, Phone/SMS: 604.644.4349, Voice mail: 604.682.3269 xt 8320
We’ll come by on  purple Yahoo bikes on Tues. Dec. 23rd & 30th to collect your devices
We’ll take your photo, bring treats, and thank you publicly with a link

Or, Drop-off (after Tuesday, 23rd) at:

• Roundhouse Community Centre - 181 Roundhouse Mews
• Pathways - 390 Main Street (kitty corner from the Canegie)
• Raincity Studios - 1 Alexander St. @ Water st.

Even send by Postal Mail to:

Fearless City
c/o DTES CAN
PO Box 88023
418 Main St
Vancouver, BC V6A 4A4

Notes:

• Remove your chip, and clear your contacts before donating (all phones will be completely cleared before released).
• Please include chargers and accessories - used digital cameras also welcome
• Unusable phones will be donated to FreeGeek for reuse and recycling

Who is Fearless?

Fearless is a Vancouver Non-Profit group providing tools, resources, and cultural outreach to artists and residents in the improverished Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Fearless is a project of the DTES Community Arts Network (CAN)

The 2010 Olympics are fast approaching and final preparations to get game-ready are taking place. Part of this effort is prepping the various media outlets from across the world to cover the games.  As part of this process, last week VANOC held their worldwide press briefing. Vancouver has a vibrant Social Media, Online Journalism, and Technology scene and it makes sense that this community is interested in covering the largest event to ever come to Vancouver.

Kris Krug and Dave Olsen of Raincity Studios - leaders in Vancouver’s Social Media, Citizen Journalism and Technology scene - had applied to VANOC to attend the event, but did not receive a reply regarding their attendance and they were not granted access to the press briefing. Rather, they were greeted by security, escorted out of the building, and instructed to join the protesters across the street. If this happened to any representative of a mainstream media outlet, the public outcry would be immediate and monumental.

Raincity Studios wanted to leverage their past  experience reporting previous Olympic Games “to discuss how social media can enhance the accredited media’s coverage and also provide deep documentary into the fan experience and lesser-known athlete’s stories”. Kris and Dave were there not only as representatives of Raincity Studios, but as ambassadors for Vancouver’s entire Social Media and Citizen Journalism community - their exclusion from the briefing sends a message that social media is not a welcome commentator when it comes to the 2010 Olympics.

In response to being shut out from the official press briefing, Raincity issued an Open Letter to VANOC.

I am writing today on behalf of Raincity Studios, a Vancouver-based social media company who owns and publishes a suite of media properties. We had hoped to talk about social media (blogs, podcasts, twitter, wikis etc.) at the World Press Briefing this week, however we did not receive any response from the applications we submitted to participate in the event. So, as per Mr. Furlong’s suggestion at the Vancouver Board of Trade meeting last week, we are liaising with VANOC.

In brief, we’d like to have a conversation about how to allow fans and amateur media makers to document their Olympic experience while keeping out of the way of the IOC IP lawyers. As a company and as individuals, we’ve produced extensive, non-accredited coverage of Beijing 2008, Torino 2006, SLC 2002, and Nagano 1998. With the next games literally in our neighborhood, we’ll be hosting an independent, international media centre at our Gastown loft office. As part of this, we’ll organize events like photo walks and aggregate fan-made content for the enjoyment of a worldwide audience. We’d like to work with you to do this for mutual benefit.

As you likely know, Vancouver is a hub of innovative journalism with companies like ourselves, Now Public, and others plus renowned conferences like Northern Voice. Raincity Studios/Bryght is also an “official weblog service provider.” My colleagues Robert Scales and Kris Krug were published in the academic paper “Pathway: Critiques and Discourse In Olympic Research,” participated in the 9th International Symposium on Olympic Studies in Beijing and will be presenting about the experiences at the noted SXSW Interactive conference in 2009. [Read More]

As you can tell from the tenor of the letter, they are cognizant of the issues that face VANOC with regard to press coverage of the Olympics and are open to finding a solution that is amenable to all of the parties involved. As well, it makes it clear that this is not a new venture for them, and they’ve actively participated in covering previous Olympic games and have done so through both citizen journalist and mainstream media avenues.

I fully realize that VANOC has responsibilities to their broadcast sponsors, as corporate sponsorship is one of the primary drivers of funding that allows host cities to hold the Olympics, but Social Media and Citizen Journalism are realities of today’s media world. Regardless of how VANOC feels about Social Media and Citizen Journalism, it needs to realize that we will be covering the Olympics for our various media properties. Ideally, we would like to work with VANOC, ensuring that we are aware of the basic guidelines that it has regarding our coverage, i.e. not showing a Telus ad when Bell is a sponsor.  By excluding us from the VANOC media briefing, the organization is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy - by not including members of the Social Media community for fear that we will not follow the rules, it is ensuring that we do not know what rules need to be followed.

According to Kris, “Raincity has grown grassroots organizations in Vancouver’s Technology and Social Media communities through the organization of events like Northern Voice and BarCamp. We want to do this for the Olympics, we are trying to bring things together in a positive way.” In this tradition, Raincity Studios is organizing a Social Media and Independent Media Center for online journalists who are not able to participate in the Official and Unofficial Media Centers. They are trying to create positive opportunities for Vancouver organizations and show the world the caliber of the technology and social media community in the city as well as deliver an awesome online presence for 2010.

The initial response to their quick twitter post asking if anyone in the industry was interested in meeting to discuss the logistics of and interest in hosting the media center was immense. On my twitter feed alone, I counted at least 20 individuals - including Vancouver’s most prominent bloggers and social media elite - immediately reply back to Dave indicating that they will be participating in the meeting. The initial meeting is to be held on Thursday, December 4th at 4:30 at the Raincity Studios office. If you’re interested in attending, contact Dave Olsen and let him know that you’d like to stop by.

The immediate and overwhelming response - within a small geographical location - that this cold VANOC reception and subsequent open letter from Raincity Studios has received, shows the power and reach that Social Media holds. Yes, currently we do not measure our readership levels at those of mainstream media, but in aggregate we do receive significant viewership. In my opinion, VANOC is being extremely myopic in their exclusion of Social Media and Citizen Journalism, when it has a perfect opportunity put in their laps - being the first Olympics to fully capitalize on the power of Social Media that is present in Vancouver’s thriving tech community. When the Olympics are over and the MSM’s coverage of the Olympics is relegated to a disk or hard drive in some storage area collecting dust, the coverage from Citizen Journalists will be alive online, gaining views daily, reminding people how truly awesome the Vancouver 2010 Olympics really were.

Press Coverage of the Open Letter:

Vancouver Sun

Vancouver Sun

Now Public

Daily Vancouver

Tech Vibes

Tris Hussey

Outsmarts Marketing

Will Pate

Darren Barefoot

Olympic Media Coverage from Raincity Studios:

* Raincity Studios Olympics posts: http://raincitystudios.com/search/node/olympics
* Olympic overage at Daily Vancouver: http://2010.dailyvancouver.com
* Beijing kick off post: http://raincitystudios.com/blogs-and-pods/daveo/beijing-2008-social-medi…
* Krug’s Flickr Olympics photos: http://flickr.com/photos/kk/tags/olympics
* Scales’ Flickr Olympics photos: http://flickr.com/photos/raincitystudios/tags/olympics
* Olson’s Flickr Olympics photos: http://flickr.com/photos/uncleweed/tags/olympics
* You Tube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/robertscales
* Olympic Outsider podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/olympicoutsider
* Scales’ Olympic coverage on Now Public: http://my.nowpublic.com/user/6247/assignments
* SLC 2002 photo/video essay: http://olsonboys.org/galleries/olympic-gallery.html
* Torino/Vancouver Symposium: http://2010.dailyvancouver.com/torino/symposium

China

LA Times Photo Essay: Faces of Beijing

LA Times Photo Essay: Streets of Beijing

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