Sociologist Sam Ladner was direct when she opened her session on reputation management and monitoring. “We won’t talking about reputation systems”, she said. “eBay reputations will not be part of our discussion. Read Bryce Glass’ blog if want to know more. He also has a Slideshare called Designing your Reputation System“.

In fact, Dr. Ladner led an amazing session in which she explored the meaning of reputation, attributes of reputation and the impacts and contexts of brand conversations that could be reputation impacting.

Despite the response of McNeil and the amazing brand-recovery case study that is the Tylenol cyanide poisoning incident of the 80’s, the company still took six days to respond. Can you imagine a six-day response time today? How would a six-day delay convert in a twenty-year span?

To setup the discussion, Dr. Ladner presented the three elements of the Looking Glass Self:

• We imagine how we appears to others
• We imagine how others judge that appearance
• We react to that imagined judgment

Consider that reputations cannot be managed. To help understand why, Dr. Ladner outlined the three key attributes of the Online Self:

• Hidden (online sources lack contextual cues)
• Digital (easily broken down, re-arranged, mashed-up and rearranged)
• Proliferating and Permanent-ish

What’s most interesting is where brand discussions are taking place and how that context affects the brand reputation and the opportunity of individuals and corporations to participate in that discussion (Forester Research and Statistics Canada):

• 48% of North Americans participate in social computing
• 30% of Americans have posted online ratings
• The average Canadian spent 35% more minutes talking on the phone in 2003 than in 1997

Dr. Ladner walked through a number of online tools and services that allow individuals and companies to monitor reputation.  There are several classes of tools available:

• Social Media analytics (Technorati, Google Trends, ePinions, etc…)
• Social Media observation tools (Neilsen Buzz Metrics, Cymfony)
• Social Media Response Tools (Umbria, TruCast)

Using examples that involved these tools, we learned of a number of studies in which included brand reputation of breakfast cereal based on health and nostalgic references, and brand reputation based on online attitudes on sustainability.  The examples were incredibly interesting and I would have been grateful for an extra hour to explore these examples in more depth.

Before leading a more interactive discussion, Dr. Ladner proposed some reputation monitoring best practices:

• Systematic (develop standard metrics, stick to them)
• Regular (measure at consistent intervals)
• Governed (assign accountability for metrics, create a task force)

We were all encouraged to use Google Labs to do our own research on reputation conversations, offering that we research Dell and Best Buy together over a period of time and look for when the Dell announcement on selling their computers at Best Buy.

We were able to wrap up with a more lighthearted discussion on the doppelganger effect.  I guess there are some advantages to having a one-of-a-kind name.

Note: this session will be available in slideshare.

In case you hadn’t heard, GM announced in March that they are moving half of their $3 billion marketing budget, to third largest in the United States, to digital and one-to-one initiatives (GM Changes Game, Puts $1.5 Billion Online). That’s a full $1.5 billion dollars, a sizable portion of which will likely end up on the web.

It’s my curiosity on how enterprise money is being spent that led me to attend a discussion on Social Media and the Enterprise with panelists Natalie Johnson of General Motors, Chris Reid of Yamaha Motor Canada and Jenny Bullough of Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., and moderated by Michael O’Connor Clarke. Michael’s mere appearance on the stage resulted in a dramatic hush coming over the room.

Following pleasantries and introductions, Michael kicked off the discussion with a quote from The Cluetrain Manifesto:

“…companies so lobotomized that they can’t speak in a recognizably human voice build sites that smell like death.”

Harlequin enjoys strong brand reputation. This means that there’s a community built on decades of publishing books that appeal to a specific and demanding niche. In fact, Harlequin publishes 120 new books each month including electronic selections of their back catalog based on user demand through their website. Also interesting is that Harlequin still accepts unsolicited manuscripts.

One of Harlequin’s greatest successes is a series of meet-the-author podcasts that connected aspiring authors with potential readers and meet-the-editor podcasts which educated aspiring authors on the Harlequin approach.

Nathalie talked up General Motors’ social site imsaturn.com (though her way of saying I M Saturn was confused by the entire room to be I Am Saturn which led us to the website of a hip-hop musician). Another initiative that connects their customers with the organization is IGotShotgun.com which features behind the scenes videos. The greatest challenge to moving to the social web has been securing the support of the upper ranks and steering the corporate culture of 266,000 people in a new direction.

Yamaha brought in an outside expert to educate senior management on the value of social media for brand value and online reputation. Chris described how he could see the lights go on during the session and that having an outside expert added credibility to the campaign, that he alone would not have had the same impact despite the fact that he is the in-house expert.

While each organization has corporate blogging policies, each approaches participation in online communities by employees a different way. Harlequin’s multi-page policy comes down to ‘don’t be stupid’; don’t blog about authors, don’t blog secrets, etc… The brand is well defended by a large and passionate community. This means that Harlequin watches as the community responds to negative comments. GM allows employees to participate in online communities provided they are transparent about their employment. They moderate comments for foul language and offensive remarks. Otherwise, they allow negative remarks and criticism in order to be transparent and to learn from the community. Yamaha only allows internal blogging and does not permit employees to represent the company online.

When the panel was questioned about their organizations’ commitment to social media, Michael noted that the panel represents a new environment in which companies are dedicating full-time positions to social media engagement.

Today’s second session was a conversation between Mesh organizer Michael McDerment and Garrett Camp. Garrett is a co-founder of StumbleUpon, a social sharing site bought by eBay in 2007 for $75-million.

StumbleUpon’s origins are in Calgary which makes it one of many Canadian web 2.0 success stories; stories that include Flickr and Club Penguin, both of which got their start in Vancouver. At the time of the purchase, StumbleUpon was looking for more venture capital to augment their $1.5-million in working capital.

According to Garrett, StumbleUpon is a tool that best serves visual content and websites. People can share their findings such as a site that a group of us found through StumbleUpon this morning that shows a collection of bad album covers.

eBay allows StumbledUpon to function as a startup within a large organization. This affords Garrett and the team the autonomy to self-direct their development in the best interest of the tool that they built and the spirit in which it has been embraced. It’s refreshing to hear stories about big companies buying startups and letting the founders continue with their vision.

Given my recent experiences with the Ottawa Web Weekend — which was largely about the coming together and collaboration of thirty-six strangers — I find it particularly interesting that Garrett felt he waited too long build the team out.  That’s significant when you consider the size of the eBay purchase.  His focus now is how to build the team, spread the knowledge and try to build the business to be strong in the same was as Facebook.

Garrett suggested that he’d like to explore social advertising which would target ads to individuals based on recommendations by their StumbleUpon friends. This presents a more obvious fit with eBay.

The session was dry and skewed, heavily, to venture capital and corporate purchase. The key takeaway from that discussion is that the money is in the United States.

First off, I want copies of the monologues by The Voice. Like day one, today opened with a great introduction which was both entertaining and shockingly realistic.

The first ‘keynote’ featured a discussion between Mesh organizer Stuart MacDonald and Lane Merrifield, Executive Vice President Walt Disney Internet Group, Co-founder and General Manager Club Penguin. Club Penguin is an online virtual world for children which boasts twelve million users and more than seven-hundred thousand paid subscribers. Where the free service is sustained by advertisements, the subscription service offers an ad-free environment.

There are many critics that claim Club Penguin indoctrinates children into the consumer culture. Lane defends the world by pointing out the lessons that can be learned about currency and the need to save money in order to buy what you want. Lane is quite up front that Club Penguin is not specifically an education experience nor is it meant to be. It’s a place for children to play online.

Safety is a high profile concern of Club Penguin. Personal information is blocked and there is a team of moderators that monitor and sanitize the environment of unacceptable content. Apparently ‘lollipop’ is on the chopping block at the moment. They measure their success by ‘reportable incidents’ and have never had an incident in which a child’s safety was at risk.

A lot of thought has gone into marketing the environment. Lane talked about the struggle that Club Penguin has gone through to describe itself. He rejects the idea that it’s a social network since they block all personal information. I wonder if a social network is defined simply by the presence or exchange of personal information. They ended up deciding to call the online world a virtual playground and established a mantra that drives their marketing decisions “if it doesn’t matter to an eight-year-old, it doesn’t matter”. The result is that they don’t participate in many conferences (Mesh being an exception).

The Disney part of the Club Penguin story is particularly interesting. Lane gave the impression that the purchase was not necessarily an objective and he spent time with John Lassiter to gauge how Disney treats their employees and holdings. More significantly, Disney has given Lane and the Club Penguin team the freedom to decide how their virtual playground will unfold without imposing Disney characters on it. Disney offered characters like Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear if they were wanted. Club Penguin operates without those easy grabs.

Club Penguin is about the personal experience. Personal emails from the community are answered, personally, by real people on the team. That means that when they get a fractured email from a child asking a technical question and describing their character and that their character’s pet says ‘hi’, someone will reply with an answer to the question and will respond to the mention of the character and send regards back to the pet.

Amber MacArthur led a talk about the proliferation of video content on the web called Video is Everywhere. The panelists introduced themselves and their roles within their organizations as follows:

• Dina Kaplan (blip.tv): original episodic content on the web and matching of content with revenue opportunities

• Andre Gaulin (CTV): tasked with bringing online social media craziness to television for CTV

• Guinevere Orvis (CBC): mobile and online strategy production; putting behind the scenes video added value content that doesn’t appear on television online

This panel featured a classic display of the perceived personality stereotypes.

Dina represented the excited and passionate, over-caffinated envangelist of a grassroots community whose passion to create great content is increasingly obscured by the ambition to convert user-generated content into independent wealth. Dina’s near message-track focus was on maximizing revenue opportunities by packing as much advertising into any available corner of a video clip. She also really liked every question (’That’s a great question”, “It’s a really interesting question”…).

In contrast, Andre explained in his calm demeanor how CTV is working with various production companies to bring terrestrial content to the web and web content to our televisions. When posed with the challenge of explaining why some US content is not available in Canada, he spoke at a high level explaining that rights and licensing is an extremely complicated legal are which involves different production houses with different requirements and licensing restrictions.

Guinevere summed up the session’s unique qualities  by eloquently pointing out that the three panelists represent three different approaches that won’t likely converge into a single model, ever. Where CTV is pursuing unique ways of cross-pollinating content from various media, CBC is on the cutting edge of exploiting new technologies to inspire custom content creation and distribution. Among their innovative initiatives (for a public broadcaster) is the distribution of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister using Bittorrent.

Say what you will about the dinosaurs of broadcast media, their primary interest remains the creation and distribution of quality content using innovative and accessible technologies.  They understand the competitive nature of content creation and consumption. Meanwhile, the grassroots are giddy about the idea making a buck. (note: Dave Fleet suggests that a buck might be more than they will actually make)

Last night’s Third Tuesday Toronto had a more relaxed atmosphere than the events I’m familiar with in Ottawa. Perhaps that was because of the size of the crowd (standing room only in a room with a capacity of 160) or maybe because I was sitting with the wild kids at the back of the room (Jay Moonah, Eden Spodek, Doug Walker, Dave Fleet and ring leader Collin Douma).

Michael O’Connor Clarke moderated a discussion on measuring social media with panelists Katie Paine, President of KD Paine and Partners and author of Measuring Public Relationships, Marshall Sponder, Chair of the Web Analytics Association`s Community and Social Media committee, and Marcel Lebrun, President of Radian6.

Most of the discussion centered around the need for metrics and how they should be presented to clients or management as well as some of the elements that can be measured.  Ms. Paine’s direct approach which includes the ‘Suckiness Factor’ boldly displayed on charts and graphs was by far the most interesting and entertaining.  I had hoped for more discussion on methods for collecting metrics and specific case studies on the collection, presentation and influence of metrics in decision making by clients.

The panelists’ parting thoughts on social media and metrics ensured that the evening wrapped up on a high note.

• Katie Paine: ‘measure how much social media traffic you get’
• Marshall Sponder: ‘listen about you’
• Marcel Lebrun: ‘listen about the marketplace’

I’m off to the Mesh Conference.  I hope to have the opportunity to blog during the day.

In this podcast, I continue my Ottawa Web Weekend interviews with team members:

• Chamika Chulaka Ailapperuma
• Rob Caza

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

 

 Ottawa Web Weekend interviews (part 3) [4:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

To keep the momentum going, I recap what the Ottawa Web Weekend team has achieved, what the next 12-hours hold for us and I share my thoughts on what makes the Ottawa Web Weekend a great experience.

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

 

 Walking to Ottawa Web Weekend day two [5:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We’re minutes away from wrapping up a 12-hour day of planning, designing and coding. Business plans, marketing strategies, web-interfaces, back-end databases are all underway and getting stronger as we go.

I took a few minutes to speak with Bruce Nolan — who has taken on the role of Development Coordinator — about the status of development efforts and his approach to coordinating the team.

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

 

 Ottawa Web Weekend Saturday wrap-up [6:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ottawa Web Weekend is taking place at the future home of The Code Factory, a collaborative, co-working space founded by Ian Graham. The facilities are still under construction, heading towards a launch on May 20. Ian was kind enough to give me a tour.

My favourite part of this tour is when we walk into what Ian refers to as ‘the smallest office’ which sounds like a massive cavern in this audio recording.

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

 

 Ian Graham of The Code Factory [11:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download