Paul Peic runs Paddleboard Addict I’ve known Paul a long time. I took that picture of him above by snapping a shot of my own TV screen using an older model digital camera set to record night shots. Paul was on CBC Dragon’s Den at the time, a groundbreaking venture doc series in which he appeared in 2009 alongside three other entrepreneurs in a clever cell phone contract crowd-sourced program engineered to lower rates called MyCellMyTerms, which was years ahead of its time, but ultimately failed to make any money. Today Paul runs stand-up paddleboarding school in Toronto from his floating house in the Brimley Marina on the east lake shore. Paul is a serial entrepreneur with a hard body and a big heart. He made quite a name for himself in the early 2000 as home renovations and house flipping TV star for a couple of different DIY television… Read more »
Posted in: business storytelling, Personal Blog, Social Media, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: fitness training, paddle boarding, Paul Peic, Stand Up Paddleboarding, SUP night classes, SUP yoga, Toronto, Yoga for kids
Sometimes things happen for a reason. When I last visited my parent’s farm, they insisted I remove a stack of glass jars that I’d been warehousing in their garage. Four years earlier, I had purchased 40 cases of 8oz glass jars for packing honey, only to discover they are the wrong size. The eight ounce jar is perfect for olives, pickles, sun dried tomatoes and hot peppers, but not pure Canadian honey. Little did I know when I bought them, this odd size is actually illegal for food producers to use (in Canada) because its not on the list of approved sizes. There are six different sizes for producers to use. This is because consumers get confused and cannot shop for honey in all different size jars with different volumes and prices. So anyone selling honey in Canada has to do so in one of six different sizes, and this… Read more »
Posted in: Charity Event, corporate social responsibility, Friends of Smojoe, Personal Blog, Photography, Social innovation
Taged with: 28 dozen jars, Bleecker Wellesley Activity Network, breaking isolation, BWAN, food safety, glass jars, green living blog, Toronto, Vicky
I feel sorry for Tish Harkus, Manager at Canadian Club Whisky for it’s obvious she has a real passion for this beverage, and a powerful gift for communicating the essence of the Canadian Club experience, but sadly, even her professionalism and compelling stage presence couldn’t cut through the lunacy of the Apr 18 tasting event. On April 18th 2013 Praxis PR invited me to join the Canadian Club Chairman and share his Whisky Whisdoms at the inaugural #CanadianClub national meeting in the Great Hall at Hart House. It was a boondoggle. Honestly, I would like to report nice things, and ‘give back’ to the PR community, but it was like this gathering was organized by people who had never thrown a party before. There were so many rookie mistakes. The huge Twitter wall was impressive, and I liked the Prezi style presentation. Congrats @TheDanLevy who won a nice prize for composing… Read more »
Posted in: Friends of Smojoe, Interactive, Personal Blog, Photography, Toronto, Video
Taged with: #CanadianClub, Canadian Club whisky, Chairman, no common sense, Praxis PR, rookie event mistakes, Tish Harkus, Whisky Whisdom
Post by Robert Campbell on Mar 06, 2013 On Saturday Feb 23rd 2013 I was at Podcamp Toronto. The first familiar face that greeted me as I walked in the door at 9:30am was Karim Kanji co-founder of Third Ocean. “Rob Campbell” Karim announced as he shook my hand. “You showed up early, and you wore a suit!” he said, suddenly suspicious of me. Karim was helping organize Podcamp Toronto 2013 because, like a moth to a flame, he must love the excitement of being an inside man at these things. Taking it all in over two days you can sort the facts out later – identifying new and old trends and most exciting, using new information to conceive new possibilities. Yes I felt a little overdressed right at that moment, but you know, as the day went on I came to believe again that you can’t dress up too… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Friends of Smojoe, Personal Blog, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Clients, Smojoe Events, Web Marketing
Taged with: #PCTO2013, Karim Kanji, Laurie Dillon-Schalk, marketing, Podcamp Toronto, Rob Campbell, search engine optimization, SEO, Smojoe
Earlier this week I reported on the 2012 Say Media Christmas Party on the Distillery District blog. The event was held inside The Fermenting Cellar on Thursday Dec 6th 2012. It started at six pm and carried on until well after midnight, and the walls were indeed red with cheer. Say Media is a digital publishing company that creates cool media brands. Through its technology platform and media services, the company enables content publishers to build passionate communities around key consumer interests such as Food, Technology and Lifestyle. Say Media provides an easily measured means by which the world’s biggest brands are best equipped to engage with influential audiences. Content is social currency. It’s what most brands use to build their identities, and it’s what we all trade and share in social networks – good content gives us a reason to communicate with each other. Follow Paul Coulter on Twitter… Read more »
Ice Cross Downhill is a new sport that has been live-branded by the Red Bull energy drink beverage company as Red Bull Crashed Ice. The sport is simple; its a speedy race downhill on skates between four heavily padded participants, the best time wins. So Crashed Ice is a combination speed skating meets alpine skiing with a hint of ice hockey, and always in an urban environment. The 2013 Red Bull Crashed Ice season starts in Niagara Falls this year, just down the road from the waterfalls. The best view of the whole affair will undoubtedly be from atop the Skylon Tower which is very close to the STARTING line atop Clifton Hill. And inside the Red Bull Fan Zone should be thrilling – I will update you with pictures and text from that event next week. Read more about Crashed Ice on Skylon’s Niagara Falls blog. Below is the… Read more »
Posted in: business storytelling, Interactive, Personal Blog, Smojoe Clients, Video, Web Marketing
Taged with: Clifton Hill, Crashed Ice, fans, Kyle Croxall, Niagara Falls, Red Bull, Scott Croxall, Skylon Tower, Web Marketing
Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not a complainer by nature, but I will not hesitate to stand up and point out injustice. Such is the case here in my new domicile, a brand new freshly erected glass and concrete condominium building at Dundas St. E. and Parliament. In this building, unfortunately for us, the underground parking garage is ruled by trolls! That’s right, trolls live amongst us, and they do exact a heavy toll from unsuspecting visitors to our homes. This is their business logo. Here’s the skinny: if you drive a car when you come to visit me, then you’ll definitely want to park it somewhere, and left to your own volition you’ll probably use the blue circle P parking garage under the condo building. Driving down the ramp, you will enter the realm of the trolls. Be sure and pay the $5 parking fees down here,… Read more »
Posted in: corporate social responsibility, Personal Blog, security, Social innovation
Taged with: complaint, Daniels Corp, developers, Jeff Zanardo, parking garage, Precise Parklink, profit, property management, scam
A hundred years ago, the first filmmakers built their own movie cameras and recorded the world’s first motion picture images. These pioneers correctly predicted that their business would change the world. Making the ‘dancing shadows of light’ on the silver screen would soon be regarded as the highest art form, a powerful new communication tool called cinema. Storytellers from around the world experimented with length, dialogue and genres, and eventually a common narrative form appeared, and an entire new industry emerged to repackage man’s archetypal myths on silver nitrate. Human brains need emotional narratives the same way our human bodies need nutritious food. Today we live in another great age of change – web media is a powerful new tool that’s quickly transforming our lives and changing the way we do business, and the way we tell stories. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. All… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, business storytelling, Future Technology, Interactive, Personal Blog, Photography, Social innovation, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: Battleship Potemkin, constructing meaning on the web, Rudolf Arnheim, Soviet Constructivism, storytelling
It’s October already. September was a blur, but there was one day I did manage to get out to my parent’s farm in time to help harvest honey. We brought in one hundred and forty honey supers in one day. Here I am helping my brothers harvest their honey crop. The harvest is late this year, and beeing out in a ‘yard-of-bees’ on a chilly September morning isn’t much fun – the bees were miserable! But the mist covered scenery is breathtaking. I love this particular beeyard because its centered in an old apple orchard. Its a trip back in time to when local farmers planted fruit trees and made their own home cooked pies and preserves. Now here in a very old field, far from any major highway there are a half dozen hundred year old trees and their children, and their forgotten fruit lies all around the perimeter… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, business storytelling, Canada Blog Friends, Friends of Smojoe, Personal Blog, Smojoe Clients, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: brand story, business storyteller, design, Duo, marketing blog, Nora Camps, strategy
MILESTONE This blog now has 100 posts. I just crossed the line. I’m reminded of a conversation at WordCamp09 where a guy said ‘You’re not a blogger until you have 100 posts.’ I started this portal in June 2008 to help sell my intangible goodness. This 100th blog post affords me the perfect opportunity to reflect back on my own progress as a freelance writer, blogger, web content producer and thinker / organizer that specializes in helping others find a marketing path in the age of earned media. I taught myself and learned empirically the Smojoe Code of compound link building and ‘how to make keyword sandwiches’. Readers of every description have watched and read along as Smojoe gave birth to Lenzr and everyone can see what that business is becoming… This blog is one of the best places to glean rare inside looks at traffic stats and issues. Will… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, business storytelling, Friends of Smojoe, Lenzr, Personal Blog, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Clients, Smojoe Events, Social innovation, Web Marketing
Taged with: A Counting Exercise, Bell Globe Media, Deb Lewis, Greenwashing, Jadac, LifeCapture Interactive, Nestle Pure Life, Peter Miskimmin
