ICT Social Network

Radian6 launches the 'biggest game changer yet'

Rowser — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:39:53 -0400

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John Pollack

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Thursday March 11th, 2010

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/980435

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Marcel LeBrun, Radian6 Technologies Inc. chief executive, says he sees social media becoming as important to any business as the telephone. ‘Here’s the device you use to communicate online,’ he says of the Radian6 Engagement Console software, which helps businesses monitor and communicate easier with their customers across all social media. Photo by: Matthew Sherwood/Telegraph-Journal

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New software integrates social media monitoring service with user's network accounts

A New Brunswick technology firm announced Wednesday its "biggest product launch" since the company started.

Radian6 Technologies Inc. has developed a tool to help businesses monitor and communicate easier with their customers across all social media.

"It's our biggest game changer yet," said the software startup's chief executive Marcel LeBrun, in a promotional YouTube video that resembles Apple Inc.'s brag clips for its game changing gadgets.

Dubbed the Radian6 Engagement Console, the software integrates the firm's social media monitoring service, which tracks brand mentions across the web, with a user's network accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter and others, to manage it all in one screen.

Companies are beginning to use social media for more than just marketing and communications, LeBrun said in an interview Wednesday.

"It's moving to many different roles and many different business processes," he said.

Social media enthusiasts talk about "answering the social phone," in reference to businesses listening to their customers and interacting with them online. LeBrun said he sees social media becoming as important to any business as the telephone.

"Here's the device you use to communicate online," he said of the software.

The console allows users to respond with their personal social network accounts, or the corporate ones, and can be customized to give different people different abilities.

"When you deploy this broadly it fundamentally transforms a company's culture in how they think about customers," LeBrun said.

Instead of being told what customers are saying about the company, employees get to hear - or more often read - it themselves, he said.

Radian6 will offer this to its existing customers - which include big brands such as Dell, Microsoft and Pepsi - as part of its dashboard, which features in depth analytics about a brand across the social web, for no extra charge.

The software is currently in beta test with some of the existing customers and will be on the open market in April.

"This console will be priced so it will make business sense to deploy it to thousands," LeBrun said, though he wouldn't reveal the price because it is not yet "set in stone."

The veteran tech executive and entrepreneur wouldn't estimate how much additional revenue the new software will generate and said the company hasn't done those estimations, but he said "It's going to be good."

The software could generate additional revenue from existing customers using the social media monitoring dashboard that also want to give the console to hundreds of frontline employees interacting with customers.

"Now everything that happens in the engagement console is also recorded and available in the dashboard to be analyzed," LeBrun said. "It actually enriches the dashboard."

Companies can better and more easily monitor the affects of engaging with customers online with the software.

For companies such as Microsoft, which has a team dedicated to monitoring its Xbox brand online and responding to customers questions and comments, the engagement console will make their jobs easier.

"The consol is a real-time collaboration tool," LeBrun said. "We can see what each other is doing. The second I touch a post you can see I'm on it, so there's no duplication of effort."

FUSION Saint John | Party with a Purpose | IIBA Fundy Region Chapter

Rowser — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:10:32 -0400

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Our Vision:
To be the world's leading association for business analysis professionals.

Our Mission:
To develop and maintain standards for the practice of business analysis and for the certification of its practitioners.

Fundy Region IIBA Chapter

Party with a Purpose - February 26, 2010

The Fundy Region IIBA Chapter is partnering with FUSION Saint John to host a Party with a Purpose.

A well established and attended series of events, FUSION Saint John's Party with a Purpose is a unique combination of information sharing, community involvement and networking.

In partnering with FUSIO N to host Party with a Purpose, the Fundy Region IIBA Chapter hopes to increase the profile of the Business Analysis profession in the region.

Please help us in promoting the IIBA through an evening of fun.

Details:

Lemongrass, 1 Market Square
Friday, February 26, 2010
5:30pm - 7:00pm
About FUSION Saint John:

FUSION is a networking group for active, civic-minded Greater Saint John residents.

We serve as a catalyst for engagement through networking, partnerships and events, and are a leader in the movement that is helping to prevent the migration of educated young people to larger cities and to encourage those who have left to return to the Greater Saint John region.

We strive to breathe new life into greater Saint John, making it the premier place to live, work and play.

For more information about FUSION, please visit their web site http://www.fusionsj.com or Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2289345022

RSVP is not Required

Cyber Social lets local IT people mingle

johnsgunn — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:38:35 -0400

Author

Glenna Hanley

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Daily Gleaner, The, Published Thursday January 14th, 2010

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http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/rss/article/919908

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Cyber Social provides Fredericton’s growing community of high-tech and knowledge industry workers a place to meet face to face. Members of the Cyber Social organizing committee are, starting on the bottom left and going clockwise, Natalie Hartford, Lucas Roze, Erik Philippe, Susan Holt, Celine Diotte, Peter Gee, Laura O’Blenis and Chrystal Hallihan. A monthly event in Fredericton, called Cyber Social, is providing the city's growing community of high-tech and knowledge industry workers a place to meet face-to-face, network and unwind and have some fun. Glenna Hanley photo

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Being comfortable communicating via cell phones, smart phones, text messaging, emails, and teleconferencing doesn't mean even IT people don't get lonely for a familiar face.

"It is a networking group that was established by a number of knowledge industry companies and employees who were interested in having an opportunity to connect and network, meet new people, share business leads and just really get together and loosen the ties and have some of those easy discussions we have after five," said Laura O'Blenis.

O'Blenis, general manager of the Knowledge Park, is chair of the Cyber Social organizing committee.

The socials, going on for six years, are held once a month at the James Joyce Pub in the Crowne Plaza hotel.

Attendees at the Wednesday night event include information technology consultants, social media monitoring, Internet security, people working in bio-technology, engineering, health care, and the IT side from all three levels of government. Universities and colleges are also well represented, said O'Blenis.

"You've got the people that are very technical that come and the sales people and the brand managers or developers, or software developers. It's definitely a broad cross section," said O'Blenis.

There are people coming from other parts of the province too.

"We have some people that come up from the Université de Moncton co-op program, trying to make sure that they can place students in appropriate employment opportunities."

A different company sponsors the social each month, usually, but not always, an IT company. The law firm Stewart McKelvey sponsored the December social.

To ensure the event doesn't take on an infomercial environment, the sponsors have just three minutes to make a presentation about their company, followed by five minutes for five individuals to promote themselves or their company.

After that it's on to the fun part: door prizes, refreshments, munchies and talking, mixing and mingling.

If people do not appear to be mixing well, then the organizers pull out the networking games, said O'Blenis.

People drop their business cards into a box for the door prizes. This serves a dual purpose, tracking who is attending and how many, said Lucas Roze, communication officer with Enterprise Fredericton. Enterprise Fredericton hosts Cyber Social and provides administrative support.

As many as 45 to 55 people have been showing up to the event, said Roze.

Susan Holt, of Chalk Media, attends the socials and has joined the eight-member organizing committee.

"I've been attending because I wanted the benefit of getting to know other people in the IT community in Fredericton," said Holt. "It's an informal way for IT people to have some fun together, stay in touch with what is going on and possibly make connections that could benefit them down the road."

She works in human resources and the socials give her is a chance to scout for new employees for job openings at Chalk.

Chalk Media, a subsidiary of Research in Motion (RIM), creator of the Blackberry, announced this week it is doubling its workforce in Fredericton.

Holt said it is beneficial to meet with like-minded people, find out what they are doing, to bounce ideas off each other and sometimes find opportunities to collaborate on projects.

A newcomer to the Cyber Social is Ryan Veino, senior consultant with OnX Enterprise Solutions, an IT solutions provider. The company is based in Toronto and is just starting to put down some roots in Fredericton and the Maritimes.

Veino moved from Ottawa in July and the cyber socials are just what he needed to fast-track the start up of his company in this new location.

"The very first Cyber Social this year in September, I had the opportunity to sponsor. From the mass email (a notice of the event) that went out, we were able to give a brief writeup of who we are. And from that we were approached by the Province of New Brunswick to talk about some business." said Veino.

He also found potential partners who could compliment the work OnX does.

"It's just been fantastic. My boss in Ottawa is quite happy with the progress."

Cyber Social is also on Twitter and Linkedin and has a growing number of followers on those sites, said Lucas.

For more information check out www.twitter.com/FredCybersocial and in Linkein.com under groups.

Forward Thinking is a Thursday feature that explores research and development, as well as new technologies in our community. Send your comments and story ideas to news@dailygleaner.com.

Twitter spirit alive and well in Fredericton

Rowser — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:30:47 -0400

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday December 7th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/881025

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Charles Barry sends out a tweet during a tweetup in Fredericton last week: ‘Being interviewed and photographed by @johnpollack at the #fredtweetup for The Telegraph Journal.’ Photo by John Pollack/ Telegraph-Journal

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Most North American don't often show up at a bar on a Wednesday night alone. We don't commonly approach a total stranger to have a chat - though some Maritimers may be exceptions - and we are usually nervous meeting people in person we met online.

John Pollack/telegraph-journal

But last week almost 100 Fredericton area residents broke these conventions.

It wasn't your average social gather or networking session, because many attendees had never met in person, didn't work in the same professions and weren't in the same age group. The only thing everyone at The Garrison District Ale House last Wednesday night had in common is they all use the social networking and micro-blogging site Twitter.

Following a North American phenomenon, a few Frederictonians planned a "tweetup," where a group of twitter users, many of whom had previously connected online, all decided meet.

"It's a great way to network with other people in the city," Charles Barry said of the event.

The Fredericton-based IT worker said he met a lot of people he had only ever talked to online.

"It's kind of like meeting a pen pal," he said. "It makes what they write a little bit more meaningful, because if you can associate what they write with what they were like when you met them, then you kind of have a better idea of who they are and might appreciate what they write a bit more."

Event organizer Carter Vagrant said he was happy with the turnout and that the crowd brought the Twitter spirit to the in-person gathering.

"If you looked around tonight you saw people talking. There was nobody sitting in a corner by themselves not talking to somebody, even if they were the shiest person in the world somebody was talking to them," he said. "Twitter has the distinct ability - I don't know why but it does - it brings out that conversation."

On Twitter most users don't have to approve who can read their page of 140-character messages, which is the default setting on the networking site. But on many other networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, most users will control who they let see their profile.

Vagrant, head of Vagrant Web & Creative, a graphic design and web hosting company, said tweetups represent part of a drastic shift in the North American attitude towards meeting people online.

"The difference between now and five years ago its not even the same game," he said. "Internet people are not faceless avatars or usernames anymore, they're actual people. They're your next-door neighbour, they're your teacher, your preacher, your boss. (For the most part) it's not the spooky guy three cities down."

Barry said people meeting online and then in person isn't new, but tweetups are part of a change.

"It's a big shift to the mainstream of culture," he said. "Very similar things have been happening in music scenes for close to 10 years."

Fredericton mayor Brad Woodside said the event was social networking at its finest.

He said the event, and Twitter itself, helps bring the community together and promotes discussion about the social issues of the day.

"I like to hear all views from all people and it doesn't matter who they are or what their position is. Every voice is important," he said, "and Twitter's a great way to absorb that."

City plans to travel more on high-tech highway

Rowser — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:05:16 -0400

Author

Heather McLaughlin

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Daily Gleaner, Published Friday November 6th, 2009

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http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/cityregion/article/848690

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Web tools | Twitter, Facebook embraced

Fredericton has the tools and it has the technology.

But how far does the city want to go using social networking sites, blogs, webcasting of video and interactive chatting with its citizens?

"We want to embrace technology and we want to use it in a way that's beneficial to not just inside the city and city employees," said Coun. Stephen Kelly, chairman of the city's information technology committee.

The committee met Thursday to learn how web tools can be used to enhance not only the city's intranet - internal website for its staff members - but also external communication with the public.

"We're encouraging our staff to bring forward new and innovative pieces of the web to better provide services to both the city and the public," he said.

Kelly joked with committee members that he recently thought his daughter lacked friends, because when his home phone rings, it's never for her.

Instead, the younger generation increasingly relies on email, texting, cellphones and social networking sites to talk, he said.

"This is going to be the new society that's in front of us," Kelly said.

Maurice Gallant, assistant director of corporate services and chief information officer, said the city wants to use these tools to help people choose how to interact with their municipal government.

Currently, when the city wants to host a public meeting or event to convey information to the public, it generally finds a venue and invites people to be present at the site or to email their comments to the city.

"There's no doubt at some point people are going to be choosing new channels to do that. We want to do that carefully and without introducing risks, but at the right time. That's definitely the direction that we want to go in and I think that's the direction that our council is interested in going in as well," he said.

The technology division is working one step at a time and figuring out department needs individually, Gallant said.

For instance, the city's tourism division is already using Twitter and Facebook to convey information to the public.

"They're using a number of these technologies to let people know what's going on, when they're going on and they're inviting people to register for those events. They're allowing them to subscribe to RSS feeds. Little by little, that will go from being special and unique to becoming absolutely mainstream.''

Increasingly, the city is posting background information on the Internet and different tools for feedback will become more commonplace, he said.

Gallant said it's not about cost, since most of the applications aren't expensive to implement, but it's finding the right way to apply the technologies in the public forum.

"For us to use Twitter to inform the public about an event at Killarney Lake is not a financial cost, it's a matter of everybody working together to use those right tools to do the job," Gallant said.

The community services division has had success in gravitating to online bookings and registrations for use of recreation programs and facilities, said division director Wayne Tallon.

The city's website www.fredericton.ca is seeing an increasing number of hits. Two years ago, 30,000 hits on the city's website was the norm.

Now that figure has climbed to 1.2 million hits, said Valerie Kelly, senior project manager on the web 2.0 tools project.

Kelly briefed the committee on intranet changes being developed so that city workers can fill out forms online, update and access their personal payroll data, and use their intranet service more easily.

TONIGHT: propel Director and Mentor, Dan Martell, to Keynote Rising Stars Gala

Jeff Roach — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:54:37 -0300

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Rising Stars Committee

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http://propelict.com/node/1791

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Dan Martell, 2009 Rising Stars Keynote Speaker

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Tickets still available - details below

An award winning Entrepreneur, Dan recently co-founded Flowtown, a company focused on providing web-based tools that allow small businesses to measure their online marketing efforts. Now living in San Francisco, Martell spends the majority of his time looking at ways to build a bridge between Silicon Valley and New Brunswick. As an informal angel investor, he is active in advising entrepreneurs using metric-based marketing tactics to gain market adoption.

Cost:
$75.00 per person. Tickets available at the door. Details at www.risingstars.ca

The Best 54Hours of the Season Start Friday in Moncton!

Rowser — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:32:05 -0300

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propel Accelerator is pumped to be involved with 54Hours Startup Weekend!

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Started Friday October 2 and running through to Sunday, New Brunswick's entrepreneurs, developers, and designers will gather together to share ideas and start businesses at the Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown Moncton. Similar to other startup weekends that have been held in cities across North America, the 54Hours event seeks to take business ideas from concept to launch in just one weekend.

Participants begin by bringing pitch ideas to the table on Friday evening, and the best of those ideas will be accepted by working teams. The goal is to divide into teams on Friday evening, and bring the ideas to market by the following Monday morning. “The entire weekend is meant to be a fun way for members of the ICT and business community to interact and network with one another at a deeper level than is generally possible at a traditional industry event,” says Craig Gallant, an ICT project manager based in Moncton who is one of the organizers. “54 Hours is designed to be a lot of fun, however will hopefully also result in the creation of several web-based enterprises that will enrich New Brunswick's ICT environment”.

There is no cost to attend the event and the only requirement is a little skill, a positive attitude and a willingness to roll with the punches. The atmosphere is meant to be fun and the entire process organic. “We’ve adopted the slogan 'No Talk. All Action.' for the event and we are intentionally keeping the agenda loosely defined,” explains Gallant. “We want to the weekend to be like the early days of a startup, where creativity and frenetic energy are the norm and there aren’t a lot of rules.”

So what happens when the weekend is over? Above all, it is hoped that a strong community bond will form but beyond that, it depends on the group. Some groups work beyond the weekend and continue to build and market their products; some may incorporate as companies and even engage in angel rounds. Issues like ownership and shares are determined by the members of a team over the course of the weekend and 54Hours will not retain any ownership of any company that might be formed over the course of the event.

"There are plenty of good ideas out there, but it takes more than an idea to give a business its legs. This is an opportunity to assemble business managers, startup enthusiasts, developers, designers and marketers in one place to see if natural partnerships will form. We are extremely interested to see what might come from this weekend."

To participate in this fun, unique networking event, please visit www.54Hours.com and sign up.

Matt Doherty, a participant from a recent 54hours weekend held in Saint John, NB, summed it up this way: “…54hours was an experience akin to throwing a handful of seeds in a garden and seeing what grew. To have such a talented cross-section of people come together and create three businesses with actual opportunities is such a great outcome. Everyone who attended brought something different and being surrounded by these people showed me how myopic we can become in our day to day life. It was refreshing to be able to learn from and to interact with such a varied group. If I had to pick one word to describe the weekend, it would be 'intense'”.

Media Contacts:
Heather Spencer
Emerging & Social Media Specialist, HAWK
spencer.heather@hawk.ca
506.877.1485

Michael Wilcott
Xentient Solutions Inc.
mwilcott@xentientsolutions.com
506.647.3269

Local group gathers for intensive business-building event

Jeff Roach — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:18:46 -0300

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The <a href="http://propelaccelerator.ca">Propel Accelerator</a> is a major sponsor of 54Hours.

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Moncton, NB - September 18, 2009 - On October 2nd, 3rd, and 4th developers, designers and entrepreneurs from around the province will gather together for a community building startup event in downtown Moncton at the Crowne Plaza hotel. Similar to other startup weekends that have been held in cities across North America, the 54Hours event seeks to take business ideas from concept to launch in just one weekend.

"We strongly support these grassroots, creative activities that help people visualize what their ideas might look like in the shape of a business." says Jeff Roach of propel ICT, a private, non-profit, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) association based in New Brunswick. "There are plenty of good ideas out there, but it takes more than an idea to give a business its legs. This is an opportunity to assemble business managers, startup enthusiasts, developers, designers and marketers in one place to see if natural partnerships will form. We are extremely interested to see what might come from this weekend."

To participate in this fun, unique networking event, please visit www.54Hours.com and sign up.

Media Contacts:
Heather Spencer

Emerging & Social Media Specialist, HAWK

spencer.heather@hawk.ca

506.877.1485

Michael Wilcott
Xentient Solutions Inc.
mwilcott@xentientsolutions.com
506.647.3269

More ideas will generate more capital

Jeff Roach — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:33:34 -0300

Author

John Pollack

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Wednesday May 27th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/679971

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Marcel LeBrun, chief executive of Radian6, a New Brunswick company that has become a global leader in social media monitoring, says attracting large companies to the province won’t likely create the human capital necessary for developing a cluster of new innovative businesses. LeBrun says the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market. ‘I’m a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come.’

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Technology Executive favours attracting entrepreneurs to province, not big companies

New Brunswick needs to stop promoting the province as a place to do business if it wants to encourage new innovative startups, a leading technology executive says.

"If they're setting up here because they can get access to low cost call centre workers than no, it's not going to do anything for the tech sector," LeBrun said of a large technology company hypothetically opening operations here. "If they move their research and development here that would be a different thing, but I don't think that's what's being sold to them at the moment."

He said idea generation is usually kept close to the leadership of a company that won't likely move its headquarters here.

LeBrun will be the keynote speaker at Propel ICT's annual general meeting today in Saint John. His speech to the technology association crowd will focus on how web 2.0, particularly social media, provides new opportunities for businesses and further breaks down geographic borders.

Though the Internet has connected people around the world for about 20 years, LeBrun said in an interview, he will argue in his speech that the more recent popularity of the social web makes virtual proximity more important than physical proximity thereby eliminating geography as a factor for many businesses.

LeBrun said attracting companies to New Brunswick may make sense on an economic development agenda, and acknowledged discouraging the job creation efforts is controversial, but he, like many others involved with Propel ICT, feel the province needs to have a strong focus on entrepreneurship.

LeBrun sees value in inspiring creative home-grown business ideas that can use new Internet tools to compete in a world-wide market.

"It's a global world and we need to build globally minded companies," he said. "When you're in a flat world where geography doesn't matter you can't take your geography and use it as a differentiator."

He wants to see New Brunswick develop a technology cluster that will breed creativity, such as in California's Silicon Valley. Similarly to the popularity of a sport, LeBrun said a successful regional industry will come from people seeing it done and wanting to give it a try.

"If you come to bat enough times you're eventually going to hit something," LeBrun said. "I think the number of times we swing our bat is the key metric we need to be focused on."

Though New Brunswick doesn't have the population or money that Silicon Valley does, he said the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market.

"I'm a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come," he said.

LeBrun argues consumers don't care where a product or service is from - if it is interesting and stands out enough to generate discussion online it will likely sell.

"If you're a little jewelry company in Fredericton and you've got a product that's remarkable, that people will talk about, there's no reason why you can't really figure out how to grow that business," he said.

Twitter makes appearance at conference

johnsgunn — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0300

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Mary-Ellen Saunders

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday April 27th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/648014

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Jeff Roach twitters on his black berry at the Imagine the Possibilities conference. Photo Cindy Wilson/Telegraph-Journal

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SAINT JOHN - In a pitch-black theatre at Samuel de Champlain, where 100 community and business leaders gathered Saturday to imagine the future of Greater Saint John, small lights flickered from laptops and cell phones as information zipped in and out of the room.

Jeff Roach, executive director of PropeICT, and Shawn Peterson, on behalf of FUSION Saint John, documented the Imagine the Possibilities conference with short, typed messages they distributed on the social networking site, Twitter.

The Saturday conference was an opportunity for community members to come together to imagine ways to make the area a better place. It was also the first time community members have been invited to participate in a Saint John conference via Twitter.

Conference delegates and online bloggers discussed potential projects for Greater Saint John, such as a second oil refinery, a new police and justice complex, and a recreational facility.

Twitter is a social networking site where people post small blogs or messages of 140 characters or less and can read similar posts from people across the world. Members of the site can access the short blogs on their phones or computers and reply to those.

"It's a public conversation," Roach said. "Imagine you are at a trade show and it's full of hundreds of people and they are all talking to each other. Imagine you can listen in on all of those conversations and interject whenever you wanted. It's a very powerful new way to communicate."

Roach and Peterson posted short Tweets which summarized comments as soon as they came out of the speaker's mouths; they posted videos that were played at the conference and took photos with their phones and posted them with short comments.

People read along with the conference while walking down the street with their phones in hand or browsing the Internet. Some of the attendees secretly used their cell phones to post comments on Twitter which sounded like conversations friends whisper to one another at events.

One blogger posted this from inside the conference; "there's a civic conference with a live twitter feed. can't decide if it's dorky or fantastic"¦panelists envisioning sj 50 years from now: my vision? more young families in city centre than in the suburbs."

Roach said there were several people from Moncton following the conference online, who Tweeted their envy of Saint John's unique event.

"Right now Twitter is a major part of our media landscape," Roach said. "If we are trying to get engagement from the community this is one way we have to do it or we are going to leave out a significant part of the population."