Like more and more people, you’ve made the switch to the Chrome browser. But you quickly discover a glaring absence: the basic install does not display the orange RSS icon in the address bar when you are on a site that offers a feed.

Dave Winer reminds us that we don’t have to live without RSS when we use the Chrome Browser. In fact, Google itself publishes an extension that restores the orange RSS button to your browser address bar.

Get the RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) in the Chrome web store. Install it. Subscribe to the content sources that you don’t want to miss.

Are you chafing at the constraints of the closed app world? Are you still waiting for the potential of HTML5 to be fulfilled? So, what’s the hold up?

Jenn Webb offers a an excellent overview of the current discussions about HTML5, apps, publishing and the way forward, with links to the original articles. Well worth your time to read.

Today is a big day for me and the team at Thornley Fallis. We announced a partnership with Gini Dietrich and her team at Arment Dietrich.

I’ve known and collaborated with Gini Dietrich for over two years. Every week, we’ve come together to co-host the Inside PR podcast with Martin Waxman (Martin joined Thornley Fallis in 2011). We’ve attended conferences together. Developed ideas together. Shared insight into the direction and opportunities for each of our businesses. We’ve talked extensively about the changes in the communications business brought about by the social media revolution. And we’ve discovered that we share a similar vision for the future of communications: the continuing revolution of the relationship between consumers and companies, citizens and governments, you and me.

During that time, we’ve transformed our companies from traditional communications consulting organizations to focus on the expertise that is most important in the connected era, the time when we all have voices, can find and share with our communities of interest, and in which we become both the media and the trusted advisors to one another.

Gini has positioned Arment Dietrich as a thought leader in social and digital media. She has built an industry leading platform for these views in Spin Sucks, her widely-read blog. And she adding to that Spin Sucks Pro (in Beta), a resource for senior business executives who want to understand and participate in the new media. In the process, Gini has become an acknowledged expert in content marketing. She’s used it to build her own company and she uses that same expertise for her clients. She also found the time to capture her ideas in Marketing in the Round, the just-published book she co-authored with Geoff Livingston.

Thornley Fallis also has come a long way since its founding in 1995 as a traditional corporate PR company. Today, we are focused on the expertise necessary to engage with the public through traditional and digital media. We offer design to deliver remarkable experiences, produce video to create the ultimate social objects, build audiences and communities through content marketing, earn media through public relations, and build relationships and trust through social media. But these tactics must work together. So we develop strategies to marshall them into a coherent whole and then constantly measure and refine.

Given all this, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we’ve decided to bring our firms together so that we can offer our collective expertise to our clients.

That’s a big move. And it promises a much brighter future for our teams. New combinations of expertise. New clients. New opportunities. I’ll continue to write about my journey and experiences on this blog and we’ll also share our collective insight on the Thornley Fallis Blog and Spin Sucks. I hope you’ll join us for the journey.

Jeremiah Owyang is a true thought leader on social media and its impact on the relationship between corporations and their employees and customers. And Jeremiah Owyang will be the speaker at the next Third Tuesday Toronto.

Jeremiah is an Analyst at the Altimeter Group, whose other principals include founder Charlene Li and Brian Solis. You won’t find a smarter, more social media-savvy group of people anywhere. Altimeter undertakes and publishes open research – they make their research freely available to the world and then count on being engaged by corporations and others interested in taking advantage of their understanding and insight. That’s a bold business model. A model that Altimeter appears to be making work well.

Altimeter’s research is widely read and frequently cited as a source of actionable insight into how social media is being integrated into the enterprise and the best practices that are emerging. Jeremiah regularly posts about the research on his Web Strategy blog, speaks at conferences and publishes his presentations on SlideShare. A sample of his writing and presentations gives a sense of the range and depth of Jeremiah’s thinking:

• Social Business Readiness
• A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation
• Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally
• How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Budgets
• An Investment Roadmap for Social Business Buyers
• When the Corporate Social Strategist Role Goes Away

That’s deep knowledge – shared generously with others who share Jeremiah’s interests.

And now Jeremiah is coming to Toronto share his most recent insights with the Third Tuesday community. And that can include you. If you’re interested in hearing and talking with Jeremiah Owyang, register online to attend the next Third Tuesday Toronto. I hope to see you there.

A taste of Jeremiah: Le Web 2011

Jeremiah is a great speaker. His 2011 Le Web presentation will give you a sense of what to expect when he joins us at Third Tuesday.

Thank you to our sponsors

As you know, Third Tuesday is a community-oriented, volunteer-driven event. And we wouldn’t be able to bring great speakers like Jeremiah Owyang to Third Tuesdays across the country without the support of some like-minded sponsors. We’ve been lucky to have some great companies step up over the past several years to help us make Third Tuesday happen. Big thanks are due to CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Cision Canada for making the 2011/12 Third Tuesday season possible.

We want students to be able to attend

Third Tuesday is a great opportunity to hear about the latest developments in social media and to network with business and thought leaders. And we don’t want students to miss out on this opportunity. So, if you are a student and would like to attend, don’t let the admission fee stop you. Simply present your student ID card at the time you sign into Third Tuesday and we’ll refund your admission fee, courtesy of Thornley Fallis.

Privacy is an issue that has caught many users of social media and social networks unawares. Heck, it’s probably an active issue for 99% of us, whether we’re aware of it or not.

The challenge of online privacy starts with the terms of reference that we “read” when we’re signing up for a new service. How many of us actually read through the pages of legalese that stand between us and the shiny new service or app that we want to try out? Very few, I’d say.

The problem is compounded by changes to privacy policies we didn’t understand in the first place.

Remember, if you are not paying for a service, then you yourself are probably the product. And some advertiser or other third party is probably paying to access the data you’ve willingly and perhaps unwittingly provided to the shiny new app/service. It’s a case of User Beware.

Thankfully, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner have both taken an active, intelligent interest in online privacy. For several years, they’ve researched issues related to our online privacy and shared their findings and observations in real life events and online. They’ve been effective advocates for our personal privacy even when we’ve given into the temptation to skip reading the privacy notices or not spent enough time considering the issues surrounding privacy. (Few of us do, including me. They are complex and layered. Tougher to get our minds around than the simple joy of “liking” or “friending”.)

So, I’m looking forward to an upcoming event staged by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. On May 2, they are convening a day-long research symposium: Pathways to Privacy: Privacy for Everyone with a top-notch line up of speakers from academe, government, and civil society. Topics and speakers include:

• Ms. Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada
• Ms. Patricia Kosseim, Senior General Counsel and Director General, Legal Services, Policy and Research Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

8:50 – 9:15 amOpening Keynote

• Ms. Valerie Steeves, Associate Professor, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa on the “eGirls” project

9:15 – 10:30 amPanel 1: The Changing Landscape for Youth

• Ms. Daphne Guerrero, Head, Public Education and Outreach, Office of the  Privacy Commissioner of Canada (moderator)
• Jane Tallim, Media Awareness Network on “Young Canadians in a Wired World”
• Ms. Sara Grimes, PhD Candidate with the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University on “Deconstructing the Cyberchild: children’s online play at the intersection of policy, technology and cultural industries”
• John Lawford, Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre on “All in the Data Family? Databases, Children and Profiling”

10:45 – 12:00 pmPanel 2: Reaching Diverse Populations

• Mr. Michael Jenkin, Director General, Office of Consumer Affairs, Industry Canada(moderator)
• Linda Girard, Director General, Association sur l’Accès et la Protection de l’Information (AAPI) on various funded projects
• James Roots, Executive Director, Canadian Association for the Deaf on “Understanding Your Privacy Rights: The PIPEDA in Signs”
• Claire Harvey, Head of Media Relations, Options Consommateurs on credit rating and identify theft issues

1:00 – 1:25 pmAfternoon Keynote

• Dr. Lesley Jacobs, Director, York Centre for Public Policy and Law, York University, on “Privacy Rights Mobilization among Marginalized Groups: Fulfilling the Mandate of PIPEDA” and “Protecting Privacy Rights in the Emerging Digital Economy: Canada’s Regulatory Scheme, Its Adaptability, and Its Future”

1:25 – 2:45 pmPanel 3: Cultural Perspectives on Privacy

• Gisèle Yasmeen, Vice-President, Research, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (moderator)
• Dr. Jens Weber, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Adjunct Professor, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria on “First Nations Privacy and EHR systems”
• Tonia Mori, Director General, CHOQ-FM on French Awareness Campaign on the Protection of Personal Information and Privacy.
• Mirjana Mandaric, Master of Arts Immigration and Settlement Studies, Ryerson University, Ryerson University on “Biometrics: Constructing ‘Ideal’ Subjects and ‘Aliens’ at the Canada-U.S. Border”

3:00 – 4:20 pmPanel 4: Frontiers of Surveillance and Identification among Different Populations

• Sue O’Sullivan, Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime (moderator)
• Dr. Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, (“Building Better Humans: Health, enhancements and human rights”)
• Dr. David Lyon, Queen’s Research Chair in Surveillance Studies on the New Transparency Project
• Cynthia Fraser, Consultant on International Technology Safety,  National Network to End Domestic Violence on “The Impacts of Surveillance and Identification on Victims of Abuse”

4:20 – 4:30 pmClosing remarks

• Ms. Chantal Bernier, Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada

I’m planning to attend this symposium. And if I’m able, I’ll record interviews with the speakers who have the most impact and make the greatest contribution to thinking on privacy issues.

We live in an era in which our health care system must change. Diminishing resources, an aging population, extended life expectancies, enhanced treatment for illness. They all put pressure on our health care system.

The next Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW will tackle the question of whether social media help hospitals to do more with less. Ann Fuller, the Director of Public Relations at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), will present a perspective from inside the health care system on the important role social media can play in patient care, patient support, health research, education, training, advocacy, and more.

Third Tuesday is a great opportunity to hear about the latest developments in social media and to network with business and thought leaders. If you’d like to participate, click on this link to register online to attend Third Tuesday with Anne Fuller.

Thank you to our Third Tuesday sponsors

Third Tuesday is a community-oriented, volunteer-driven event. And we wouldn’t be able to bring great speakers like William Mougayar to Third Tuesdays across the country without the support of some like-minded sponsors. We’ve been lucky to have some great companies step up over the past several years to help us make Third Tuesday happen. Big thanks are due to CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Cision Canada for making the 2011/12 Third Tuesday season possible.

We want students to be able to attend

I know that students live on tight budgets. If you are a student and would like to attend Third Tuesday, don’t let the admission fee stop you. Simply present your student ID card at the time you sign into Third Tuesday and we’ll refund your admission fee, courtesy of Thornley Fallis.

William Mougayar shared the story of the founding and development of Engagio with the participants of Third Tuesday Toronto. I’ve storify-ed the highlights of the twitter stream during the event. (This was the second of two presentations William made this week. I also storify-ed the previous night’s presentation at Third Tuesday Ottawa.)

I think you’ll find many quotable nuggets here in both of these streams.

William Mougayar at Third Tuesday Toronto

William Mougayar, the founder of Engagio, spoke at Third Tuesday Toronto about how he came up with the idea for Engagio and how it is being developed as a startup. This storify captures the highlights of the tweet stream from attendees at William’s Third Tuesday presentation.

Storified by Joseph Thornley · Thu, Mar 29 2012 08:27:51

My favourite phase of a startup: Wiggles of hope #3TYYZKing Siu

William Mougayar is a serial entrepreneur, the founder of two social media startups, eqentia and engag.io. William appeared at Third Tuesday Ottawa #3 TYOW last night to share what he has learned in the process of developing these services.

I’ve known William for a couple years. And I’ve always been struck by his focus, optimism and perseverance – essential qualities for any entrepreneur. So, it was a truly nice experience to hear him talk about Engag.io – which I think is the right idea at the right time – a universal inbox for our social media conversations.

I Story-fied the highlights of the Twitter stream during the event. Enjoy.

On this week’s Inside PR podcast, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I talk about new social management tool Jugnoo, tablet computers, Facebook timelines for pages and a new feature in social media measurement tool Sysomos.

Jugnoo – and the importance of courting before marriange

Last week we reported that Jugnoo, a new social media management console service had launched in open beta. Martin and I both were impressed with its feature set. (Disclosure: Gini Dietrich is an adviser to Jugnoo. However, Martin and I weren’t aware of this when we raised it as a topic of discussion for the podcast. Discreet Gini.) I was so impressed that I requested access to the beta so that I could test it. And then I hit a hard stop. As one of the first steps in using the service, Jugnoo asked me to install some code on my website so that Jugnoo could access data from my site. For me, this is a show stopper. Installing code and sharing data is a big step, one that I am willing to take only with services that I trust and that I have some degree of comfort I’ll use for some time. Gini thinks that I’m being overcautious. She believes that most small businesses won’t hesitate to provide access to their data because they will perceive that in return the service will “hold their hands,” providing them with insight into what they should be doing and whether it is working. Do you have the same reaction to being asked for access to the backend of your Website as a first step in testing a service.

Tablets and the content creation challenge

We also talk about the rapid adoption of tablets in the workplace. Two years ago, we considered our notebook computers to be the go-to mobile devices. Today, we each use a tablet computer. Initially, tablets were billed as media consumption devices. However, all three of us now use our tablets to create content – blog posts, documents, etc. Gini and I have found that this has driven us to switch from Microsoft Office to other applications that exist in the cloud – Evernote, DropBox, Google Docs. We use these apps to have access to our data and content across devices. This enables us to move smoothly between our desktop computers, notebooks (yes, we still use them), tablets and cellphones. And we see this trend accelerating with the newest generation of tablets. We wonder how long it will be before we will be able to reduce the number of devices. The limiting factor on this is the evolution of tablets to include both the hardware and software to support all the content creation we want to do.

Timelines – too much commitment for small businesses?

Timelines for pages is being rolled out to all users at the end of the month. Gini is keen on timelines. She’s watched as content that she had long ago posted to the Arment Dietrich page has resurfaced. Old content becomes more accessible. I’m skeptical of the value of timelines for small businesses. Many small businesses have limited resources to devote to social media. And it seems to me that corporate page owners will have to devote considerable energy and resources to keep their content fresh. And this may not be a priority for may businesses.

Sysomos Heartbeat integrates Google Analytics

Finally, we talk about the integration of Google Analytics into Sysomos’ Heartbeat social media monitoring service. A nice addition that makes a good service better.

What do you think?

Listen to the podcast and tell us what you think. Are we on the right track? Missing something? Do you have a different view?

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In this week’s Inside PR, Martin Waxman and I shared our takeaways from last week’s appearance of Canada’s Treasury Board President, Tony Clement at Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto.

Social Media in Government: Treat them like we would want to be treated

I came away with a sense of respect for a politician who is making a sincere attempt to introduce social media to government in a manner consistent with his conservative principles. Martin was struck by the vulnerable position a politician like Tony Clement puts himself in by engaging in the social media flow. His takeaway: If we want to encourage our government leaders to engage with us in social media, we must be prepared to allow for the fact that they make mistakes and refrain from “piling on” every time  a politician makes a mistake on social media.

The discussion about social media in government starts at 1 minute 25 seconds into the show.

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Gini Dietrich LOVES Pinterest (You have to listen to this week’s Inside PR to hear her enthusiasm.)

Gini has been testing the reach and impact of Pinterest. She pinned some pictures of items from a friend’s ecommerce store on her pinboard. Then, she and her friend watched her Google Analytics. Pinterest generated lots of traffic to her friend’s ecommerce site- it was the number three traffic source for the four hours after Gini pinned the pictures. That’s pretty impressive, especially given the ease with which content can be posted to Pinterest. But it goes beyond that. The conversion rate for people who arrived at the site via Pinterest was higher than the conversion rate from any other source of referrals. Pinterest drives traffic and the traffic it drives is engaged.

Martin Waxman has been experimenting with Pinterest as well. He’s found that the tags he attaches to Pins are important. Clearly, in his view, people are following tags that reflect their interests and they will look at new content that is tagged into one of those categories. (This raises a whole other question about “tag SPAM” on Pinterest.)

I’m interested in Pinterest’s impact on other existing services. I’ve moved my photo-taking from Instagram to Pinterest because I like the ease with which I can tag, organize and then browse my photos on Pinterest. I’m also drawn to move some of my social bookmarking – at least for the highly visual items – away from the two services I have been uising, Diigo and Delicious.

I find the simplicity of Pinterest makes it a tool with many possibilities – much like Twitter was at its outset. A basic concept that appeals to a common urge – to express ourselves – and because of its simplicity allows people to use it in the way that makes sense to them.

Pinterest may not work for all companies and products. It may be best for highly visual products. But if you sell items that you can showcase visually, you should explore whether Pinterest is for you.

Our discussion about Pinterest starts at 7 minutes 15 seconds into this week’s episode of Inside PR.

We are: Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley on Pinterest.

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Social media has changed the way that we connect with our friends, with news and with organizations. It has opened up possibilities that we hadn’t even dreamed of 10 years ago.

Social media has also proven fertile ground for entrepreneurs with ideas. Canada has spawned some great social media companies – Radian6, HootSuite, PostRank,StumbleUpon, Tungle, and more.

Behind every one of these success stories is an entrepreneur who had an idea and the persistence, energy and sheer determination to make it happen.

William Mougayar is the entrepreneur behind not just one, but two social media startups:Eqentia and Engagio. The first of these two startups, Eqentia, is billed as a “vertical news environment.”   It enables you to curate the content you care about from a variety of sources across the social Web. The newer company, Engagio, enables you to draw together all of your conversations from different social media into one place.

Less than two months after launch, Engagio has earned positive word of mouth and prominent backers such as Fred Wilson thanks to its simple but compelling proposition.

Developing a successful startup isn’t easy. If it were, we’d all be heading up successful companies. It takes a lot of luck and some smart decisions. But in the era of social, we see more and more of the people around us pursuing their dream, trying their hand at starting up a new business, at making their idea become reality.

So how did William Mougayar do it? You can find out at the next Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ and Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW meetups. William will share his personal journey from idea to beta to seed funding. He’ll tell us about the dark nights of doubt, the highs of the Eureka moments and the grinding work that goes into that success.

This Third Tuesday will be for you whether you are a budding entrepreneur yourself, know some people involved in startups or just wonder as you use your favourite social app, “How did they do that?”

I hope you be able to join us that evening to hear from one of Canada’s true social media entrepreneurs, William Mougayar.

You can register to attend either on the Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ or Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW websites

Thank you to our sponsors

As you know, Third Tuesday is a community-oriented, volunteer-driven event. And we wouldn’t be able to bring great speakers like William Mougayar to Third Tuesdays across the country without the support of some like-minded sponsors. We’ve been lucky to have some great companies step up over the past several years to help us make Third Tuesday happen. Big thanks are due to CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Cision Canada for making the 2011/12 Third Tuesday season possible.

Want to know more about William Mougayar and Engagio?

Engagio is the 1 Inbox to rule them all, ReadWriteWeb

Engagio goes from the Comment Section to $540K seed investment, Venture Beat

Engagio wants to be your one stop social inbox, Mathew Ingram in GigaOm

Toronto’s Engagio raises $540K and heads to New York, TechVibes

You and I probably share something in common. We probably use more than one social network. And if we do, we’re probably always considering what we get out of each network and wondering whether the time we invest in each is worthwhile.

I use four social networks on a regular basis: Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn. Each seems to be do different things better than the others.

Twitter is my real time news flow. I follow people who care about, think about and speak about the things I also care about. So, if I’m likely to hear first about something important to me on Twitter (Sorry mainstream news sites. You no longer are a destination for me.)

Google+ gives me the best conversations with the smartest people. There’s no apparent limit on post or comment length. And people routinely go back and forth and discuss topics in depth. It’s really a satisfying discussion.

Facebook is where the most people are. And it’s hard to ignore a place where most of my friends hang out. Still, it seems like the cotton candy of social networks. All show. But empty calories. There’s really nothing of substance happening there.

LinkedIn is the “business network”. I get the least out of LinkedIn. It seems to be a place for people to make useful business connections. And it feels a bit tawdry, a place for users and people who want to be used.

So, that’s the way that I see my social networks.

What about you? Do you agree with my assessments of the different networks? Which do you use? What do you think each one is best for?

I’ve posted video of Tony Clement‘s Feb. 17 presentation at Third Tuesday Toronto about open government and the use of social media by employees of the Government of Canada. You can see the full video of the substantive part of his presentation below. I’ll post the highlights of the questions and answers separately when I have the time to process and edit the video.

In the meantime, here are the main body of the Minister’s remarks. Enjoy.

Related Posts

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Springtime for Gov 2.0 in Ottawa

Tony Clement’s TweetChat about Open Government

Are you the master of your email inbox or is it the master of you?

For me, it’s definitely the latter. Email no longer serves my needs. In fact, I find myself scrambling daily to keep up with the demands of an overflowing email inbox. And this sucks productive time away from me.

The simple fact is that I no longer can keep up with all the email I receive – unless I want to make reading and responding to email a full time job. And I can’t. So, what have I done? I’ve resolved to budget the time I spend looking at my inbox in the same way I budget the time I will allocate to meetings and other tasks. I do what I can in the available time. And then I move on to my next priority.

And the upshot of this approach? As I write this post, I have over a thousand unopened emails. That’s not email I’ve read and put aside. That’s email I haven’t even had the time to open.

Every email in my inbox draws on my time. Even to read enough of an email to decide that I can safely delete it without response or action takes time. Time away from more productive work.

So, where does that leave me? What am I doing to try to deal with this problem?

Well, more than anything else, I’m trying to move much of my communication back to face to face meetings or over to video: I encourage people I work with to divert issues that might be contentious or require discussion to face to face meetings or Skype video calls and Google+ hangouts. If something needs to be tossed back and forth or common understanding created, seeing the other person’s face, being able to read their emotions and converse face to face can’t be beat. This leaves email only for those issues that can be dealt with by a simple yes or no response. And it removes much of the back and forth of long email strings in which people try to argue complex issues. If it’s complex or contentious, take it face to face either in the real world or via video call.

Another huge email problem is email’s impact on work-life balance. Rarely does a colleague phone me outside of working hours. A phone call makes them work too hard. If I answer, then they have to work through the discussion with me in real time. And the telling thing is that most will leave this until the next day, during working hours. But that’s not the case with email. It’s all too easy to “dump and run,” to send an email with a problem or request to someone. At any hour or day of the week. Once you’ve done this, it has become someone else’s problem. You’ve offloaded it. And you’ve violated their private time. It doesn’t matter if they respond when they receive it. The very fact that you’ve sent them a work email outside of working hours has pushed work into their private time. And if it’s a problem or troubling news you’ve sent them, you can be sure they’ll worry about it. That’s just not good.  I try not to be part of this problem. I tell the people I work with to not initiate any emails outside of working hours. Yes, I work at all hours, evenings and weekends. But I routinely save emails I write outside of work hours in my draft folder. Then when I arrive at the office the next morning, I open the draft folder and send all the emails that are sitting there. They’ll be waiting for people when they arrive at work. When they can actually deal with them.

Does every email have to be responded to? In a word, no. We treat email like a phone call. We fell obligated to respond to every email just as we feel obligated to return phone calls. We must change that perception. In a world in which email flow has overmatched the time we have available to deal with it, we have to accept and become comfortable with the norm that many emails will not be responded to. And the sender must realize that if an email is important and unresponded to, they must reach out to the recipient via another medium. A phone call. A personal visit. An IM. A tweet. Whatever works. But simply sending an email saying, “Did you receive my earlier email?” is about the most ineffective thing you can do. Email has become a flow, just like Twitter or RSS feeds. And it’s up to the sender to be sure that they connect with me on the important material.

And that leads to the next rule I observe: Communicate in the medium the person you’re trying to reach prefers. We’ve all been conditioned to expect that email is the default business communications medium. Let’s change that. The best communications medium is the one that works best for the person I want to talk with. So, I should be sensitive to this. Find out what works for the other party and use that medium. Yes, you’ve spotted the contradiction here. Even though I have difficulty keeping up with email, if someone I want to reach prefers to hear from me that way, I’ll bow to their wishes and use email. It’s the other party’s wishes that count, not mine.

(Here’s an idea for a social media update service: A daily update that lets me tell people how I prefer to be communicated with. Something that I can easily change to match my circumstances. Something that is easily found and attached to my personal profile across social networks. If you build it, I’ll use it.)

One topic. One email. I just don’t understand why people believe that they should write emails that cover every possible topic – and then ask me to comment. I may find that I can easily agree with half of what they write. But I may need to give more consideration to one point. And so, I’ll put the email aside to be responded to later – which may be never. One topic. One email. That’s the best way to ensure you get a response.

Finally, I turn off push notifications from email - on my PC, on my handheld, on my tablet. Those constant niggling alerts are a good idea only for the people who design the email programs. But for the user, they kill productivity. Having them turned on is just like having a group of people sitting behind you, each tapping you on the shoulder at random times. Every time you’re interrupted, it takes time to get back in the flow of what you’re trying to do. So, I just eliminate those interruptions by turning off the darned alerts.

I’m not alone in struggling with this problem.

I know I’m not alone in struggling with email. Fred Wilson recently wrote about The Black Hole of Email and MG Siegler ranted that he Still F***ing Hate[s] Email.  And in this week’s Inside PR, Martin Waxman and Gini Dietrich share their frustrations with email and also what they do to try to manage it.  Gini also has written her own take on the ever-looming inbox.

Do you have email under control or does your email inbox control you? What practical strategies do you employ to make email work for you?

Canada’s Treasury Board President Tony Clement @tonyclementcpc appeared at Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW last night. He discussed the potential of open government, bringing citizens closer to government and the new guidelines he introduced to guide public servants in their use of social media. He also took and responded to questions from the participants.

I’ve captured the highlights of the event through Storify. Enjoy.

Third Tuesday is back with another blockbuster speaker: Canada’s President of the Treasury Board, Tony Clement.

Tony Clement is well-known as a politician who maintains an active Twitter presence, sharing what is on his mind and what he’s doing, and engaging in conversations with Canadians. Anyone who follows Tony Clement knows that his Twitter conversations are sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes combative, but always genuine.

Tony Clement is also the President of the Treasury Board of Canada. That puts him in charge of Canada’s public service and makes him responsible for setting the standards and rules by which social media is being introduced into the Government of Canada.

As a Minister, Clement has pushed forward with initiatives to enable Canada’s public servants to use social media in the workplace and a broader initiative to introduce open government standards to the government of Canada.

In November, Mr. Clement

- unveiled the Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0, the reference document that will be used by Canadian Public Servants in determining whether and how they should use social media in the workplace.

- announced that completed access to information requests now will be posted online.

In December, Clement

- announced the addition of 4,000 data sets to the Open Data Portal.

- initiated a public consultation on Open Government. (The consultation closed in mid-January and the Treasury Board site promises that a final report on the findings will be posted in March 2012.)

- participated in a Twitter Chat on Open Government to give people a chance to raise issues, ask questions and engage with him online.

That’s a lot of action in a short period of time. But, what’s been happening now? How are the Web 2.0 Guidelines being applied by Canadian public servants? What did Canadians tell the Minister during the consultation? What’s on the agenda for 2012?

Third Tuesday participants will get a chance in February to ask these questions and talk directly to the Minister when he appears as our featured guest Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto. Follow these links to find the details and sign up to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa or to attend Third Tuesday Toronto.

If you’re interested in open government and the use of social media by government, this session will be of real interest to you. I’m looking forward to a great evening of discussion with a man who has matched his actions to his convictions. I hope to see you there.

International Association of Business Communicators

Professional communicators who want to extend and deepen their knowledge of  social media will be interested in a new online social media workshop being offered for the first time this month by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

The course, Develop and implement an integrative approach to social media, will be delivered through online training modules that participants can review at a time convenient to themselves combined with live sessions with the instructors. The program material has been prepared by Shel Holtz and me – and we will be the live instructors for the first set of sessions.

We’ll start with an orientation session on January 9 during which Shel and I will outline the course content and answer questions from participants. Following this orientation, the first two of eight learning modules will be available to participants to review at their convenience. Then we begin the weekly live sessions on January 19 and they will run through February 23.

Each module will focus on a different aspect of social media:

• Module 1: Social media’s role in communications and PR
• Module 2: The key categories of social media
• Module 3: Monitoring social media
• Module 4: Strategizing and measuring social media
• Module 5: The core skills communicators need to acquire
• Module 6: Social media behind the firewall
• Module 7: Adapting corporate culture to embrace social media
• Module 8: Social media during a crisis

So, in just eight weeks, you will acquire up to date knowledge on how social media is being integrated into corporate communications and the best practices you can apply in your organization.

Does this sound like something you can use? If so, click over to the IABC site to register for the IABC’s social media online workshop.

This will be only my second experience offering online training. So, I’m very much looking forward to sharing what I know with the participants and learning from their feedback.

Spontaneous creativity is the beating heart of jazz music. Fans of jazz delight even more in the live performance than they do the studio recording. Why? Because no two jazz performances are alike. Jazz musicians are constantly improvising, building new ideas into what they play, finding inspiration in the moment.

How do great jazz musicians create something coherent and fresh each and every time they step onstage? In a recent TedTalk, Jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris illustrates how attentive listening by individual players can spark creativity in an ensemble.

Business can learn a great deal from the spontaneous improvisation of jazz. All too often, we pay lip service to listening. In fact, many apparently skilled managers have made a fine art of the seemingly sincere, but ultimately empty acknowledgment of  others’ ideas. Harris and his group drive home that actually acting on the new and different idea can lead to something remarkable.

I’d recommend showing Harris’ TEDTalk to your team at the beginning of a brainstorm. It’s a great message that will surely put an end to the “yes but” mentality that can stifle creativity.

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Also worth reading: Dannielle Blumenthal approaches the importance of being open to listen to different perspectives in her post, Are you secure enough to handle an engaged employee? Good advice for anyone leading an employee meeting.

This afternoon, Tony Clement, the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister responsible for Open Government in Canada held a TweetChat as part of his consultation on Open Government. I captured what to me was the main line of discussion via Storify. Enjoy.