Marketing Director

Showing posts with label BCIT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BCIT. Show all posts

Why I don't blog here these days


I am sure that everyone reading this is on edge ;) wondering if I've disappeared into the wilderness of the internet. Well the truth is I have. Most of my time is spent developing curriculum for courses and workshops at BCIT. I am currently teaching two classes and a workshop that runs two Mondays November 1st and 8th at BCIT's Downtown campus from 1pm to 5pm. There are still a few seats available and it's an incredible value. If your curious about the classes I am teaching here they are:

MDIA1045 - Intro to Social Networking - Course Blog - Starts again in January
MDIA2045 - Social Media for Web Dev - Course Blog - Currently available in the full-time program


I am volunteering with the The Violence Stops Here, a campaign engaging men to help stop violence. We need your help as we are currently attempting to secure funding from the Aviva Fund. We need you to vote today so please take a few moments to VOTE. Please know that you can vote each day so we need you to return daily after 9:01 PST and vote again. Together we CAN make things better.


Check back in November for some new content. Also watch for a new blog about Social Media Education I am writing with Capilano University's Jess Sloss: @thattallguy. I am also developing a podcast and radio show with @SmuttySteff of Blog fame for UBC's CiTR radio!

Now for a treat... This is my American Television debut! Can you spot me? HINT: It's early on.


New Beginnings: How Social Media Changed my Life

@GuyKawasaki and @KempEdmonds at an Olympic Hockey Tweetup thanks to @Jason_Baker
I've had many jobs in my life, almost 50. Today I started my first job that I consider something of a dream job. It all started in 1998 when I made a geocities page and learned about animated GIFs and a href. I knew right then and there that I didn't want to code so I stayed away from the web and computer technology as a vocation for more than a decade

When I traveled years ago I began to see the value in social networks like Hi5, Friendster and the other six I signed up for as I traveled across Canada and throughout Europe. When I returned home I began to see the way that these technologies were transforming our civilization for the better. I was always a wanderer never sure of what I should be doing. All I knew was that it involved people, I love people. While I was on one of these trips that doubled as a job as a "Community Marketing Ambassador" for Bell Canada I met Trevor O'Boyle (that's him eating the sandwich at one of our favourite spots on the tour: Ric's Grill in Lethbridge's old Water Tower).
Trevor was a driven, goal-oriented, high achiever from Mount Royal College in Calgary. He joined our tour after presenting at the Nationals for SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) formerly ACE. That Summer we built a friendship and I knew that when I returned to school I would have to join this ACE thing he kept talking about. So a few years later upon returning to BCIT the first thing I did was join ACE BCIT (SIFE BCIT) an organization of volunteer students working to advance entrepreneurship in Canada. One day I decided to make a short video profiling the organization to tell other students what makes SIFE BCIT the place they want to be. The video (shown below) was then picked up and featured by YouTube on their non-profit and activism sections garnering nearly 7000 views in 48 hours. That was the moment I understood the possibilities of this new medium. YouTube even let me see which countries the viewers had come from it was amazing.



The next thing I did was create a series of business video lessons. One of those videos has an amazing long tail (lots of traffic over time) as it is titled "5 ways to find new business ideas" and now receives more than 40 views a day from people all over the world looking for new business ideas. I knew at that point that something amazing was possible, we now all possess the ability to publish, to create and to share. The exclusivity on creating content is gone. We can all publish now it's as easy as getting started.





That was the beginning of the journey to my current position with BCIT's School of Business as the leader of a new Centre for Social Media Education in Business. This is a dream job. A year ago I never would have thought as I sat in classrooms and lecture halls concentrating on the evolving social media space via Twitter and Mashable that I would make it here, thank you to everyone. My interest has only increased over time as I share and discuss the knowledge and examples I have collected. I now see that all of us are curious and interested in the evolving role of evolving communications in our lives.
Paul Shorthouse @pshorthouse and @KempEdmonds (1 year after BCIT at Globe 2010)
This is where I hope to make a difference; through education. I have embedded a treat below. It is my number one tip for using Google, social media and Twitter in particular for real-time search. I hope that I will have a new 'number one tip' soon and then another, what would you want to learn about? The more specific the better, please leave it in the comments. Enjoy and please view in full screen 720P HD.




Mini Documentaries I made 2 years ago

6 Steps to Launch your Digital Identity

This course will lay out from the start what is required to be successful in your own right using 'new tools' (social networking and social media) to fulfill your own goals. This course is about helping students to achieve what they are looking for from social networking and media. The course will be held at BCIT's Burnaby campus just east of Vancouver. See the course outline here. If you have any questions about the course contact me directly by email here.

This course will not be exclusively focused on business, personal or professional. The purpose is to lay out the benefits and uses of the tools and let students pursue their own goals with ongoing support and education. Within the class we will be creating a microcosm of what happens on social networks among the larger population and encouraging students to pursue that larger network from the start.

This course has come about as a result of my work in the Social Media realm dating back to 2008. I have been avidly reading everything I can get my hands on including more than a dozen books on the subject and it's related trends. Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody is a great general look at 'the movement' and what it can achieve, for a more Twitter focused book pick up Shel Israel's Twitterville.

When deciding on a single book to use as a supplement to the course I wanted to find something that taught me things and made the path to achieve a strong presence in the new social media realm easy for anyone. For those reasons I have chosen Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's 'guidebook' Trust Agents.The book speaks to the business or professional user but it's lessons and tasks will help anyone looking to establish their digital identity.

A few weeks back I was speaking with a collegue who wanted to start building their professional presence online and these were the first 6 steps I gave him. These steps can be used or substituted for things you have already completed.

6 Steps to launch your digital identity
  1. Choose a name for your new digital identity. For the most success in a professional or business sense use your real name if possible (See Glenn Hilton). If you wish to remain anonymous use a nickname that describes in some way what you are trying to achieve (See Atomic Poet).
  2. Register for a Gmail account with "YourDigitalIdentity@gmail.com" if available. This will be the email you will use to sign up for everything else.
  3. Go to Twitter and sign up with the username "YourDigitalIdentity".
  4. Go to LinkedIn and start your LinkedIn Account. Use your real name. (See mine)
  5. Go to Go Daddy or any other low cost domain registrar and register the domain www.YourDigitalIdentity.com
  6. Go to Blogger or Wordpress and setup a blog. Make a few simple posts or even just titles. No one will find your blog until you want them to.
Do these things when you have time, a Saturday morning or need a short break from your work (not while at work though). Don't feel like you have to do them all at once. "Baby steps" as Richard Dreyfus' character famously explained to Bill Murray's in What about Bob?.
It's not a mountain if you climb it one step at a time. -Kemp Edmonds

BCIT's ARLO Commercialization Bootcamp [VIDEO]

I was lucky enough to get inside BCIT's Applied Research Liaison Office for their Commercialization Bootcamp on Wednesday. The event hosted 10 entrepreneurs and inventors.

More from the Commercialization Bootcamp here:
In the afternoon participants took part in a speed networking event with 8 different experts. Below is a video shot during that intense session.




To get an idea of how intense things were in the room I shot this video live from my iPhone. Interested in attending the BCIT ARLO Commercialization session? drop us a line.