Tag Archives: changeeverything

Changing Everything on ChangeEverything.ca

When we first launched ChangeEverything.ca, it was a hectic and amazing time. Not enough time to get everything done. One of the areas I felt we could do better was site usability and overall design. Kate and I always felt like we wanted to go back and make some improvements.

So this year, we blocked out some budget and started working on fixing some of those areas. Among the areas we focused on were:

  • improving the registration flow
  • improving the workflow for adding changes and blog posts
  • grouping social features together so people discover each other and interact easier
  • putting a sharper focus on the people, and not just on the text
  • making the site, well, just prettier

It was a complete pleasure working with Kirsten Hall, an extraordinary usability consultant here in Vancouver, the amazing Tim McAlpine and his team at Currency Marketing on the front end design, and Affinity Bridge a great Drupal development shop in town.

The process, like the original creation of the site, was charmed. Everyone worked together well, there were no real hiccups, and people had a lot of fun.

The upcoming design changes, including as mock-up of the new look and feel, were announced on ChangeEverything.ca today. We’re looking for Beta testers, so check it out and help out if you want.

Otherwise, I’ll let you know when everything launches in September!

From Mass To Grass is where it’s at.

CMA Word of MouthLet me start this post by stating that I am, in fact, a reasonably proud Canadian. So now I must confess something to you. I’ve never been to Toronto. Ever. Well, other than the airport a few times. Insane, I know.

So I’m very excited to take my first trip there to speak at the Canadian Marketing Association’s extraordinary From Mass To Grass Word of Mouth Marketing conference.

I’m on a not-for-profit panel called Building Buzz for Good, along with Deborah Kaplan, the Executive Director of Zerofootprint, a renewable energy company. The panel is being moderated by Kate Trgovac a very well known and well respected blogger.

It is being described as so:

Not-for-profits have been organizing and activating grassroots influencers since their first inception. Learn from some of Canada’s top and most innovative non-profit organizations and initiatives on how they build community, activate influencers and build support for their causes. If you are a non-profit or CSR-focused organization, this is a must attend segment.

Check out this funny video promoting the event (hat tip to Michael Seaton for the video):

Great time at Convergence.

Convergence 2008I was at Convergence for most of today, and it was an impressively put together and attended event.

The event, which partnered with the overall VIDFEST, is a production of Cossette, one of Canada’s largest communications agencies. They brought together some impressive speakers, with a nice mix of locals and imports.

One thing I don’t get to do enough of is meet peers here in Vancouver. I spend so much of my time on the road at events, I don’t attend that many in town. Today was a welcome change, and I met some amazing people doing some amazing things.

The panel I was on was called Giving Your Brand Away: Brand Communities and featured four of us, all on the client side, who have created online communities to support our brands and companies.

I was delighted to learn from my fellow panelists:

  • George Hradecky from McDonald’s USA launched an enormous community undertaking called StationM, which is an online community for McDonald’s’ 770,000 front line staff across North America.
  • Thierry Hay-Sabourin runs the Future Shop Community Forum a place where gearheads can ask questions and exchange tips on their gear. It was so great to meet another local online community guy.
  • William Bakker runs eBusiness at Tourism BC, including their blogs and social media initiatives. Again, great to meet another local doing interesting things.
  • The panel was moderated by Angele Beausoleil, who is the Director of Strategic Planning at Fjord, Cossette’s interactive wing. She ran a great panel, with enough moderation to give us focus, but a light enough touch to let the panel unfold organically.

It was one of the best panels I’ve ever participated in, and we got lots of great feedback.

One thing I was really struck with was how we ran four totally different communities, with four different business intentions behind them, and yet we all came to remarkably similar conclusions.

We all felt that the community had to be authentic and transparent, that you needed to seed the community with the right kind of people to get it going in the desired direction, that it had to grow organically in its own time, that you had to get buy in from the top to start initiatives like these, that you have to know exactly what you want the community to do for your business regardless of how hard or soft that impact will be.

I was honoured to be a part of it, happy to meet so many amazing people and impressed at how well run the event was.