5 Things Learned at Vancouver's Economic Breakfast

This year's event at the Vancouver Hilton attracted 500 businesses, politicians, and other movers and shakers that work in and around the Clark County region. The keynote speaker was Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments, whose dry wit humor either met a really tough crowd or it was too Californian for the Pacific Northwest. After hearing his speech, I wondered if I sounded like to PNWers that when I relocated from California to Washington.

Get there early, at least a half hour before breakfast starts. You can mingle and network with other early risers before settling down on a table for breakfast.

Bring your "A" game in social networking to this event, because social + networking has nothing to do with posting a status online. As a commercial real estate agent said to me at the event, it's all about schmoozing.

Dress to impress, like you would if you were going for a job interview. The event has panel sessions after the breakfast. This your chance to ask industry insiders about their take on what's happening in the city or county -and- make an impression. You never know what opportunities may arise from meeting each panel of speakers.

Sit with some rain makers. You may not know who they are or what companies they work for. Heck, half the attendees look like they could be retired. You are better off sitting with old geezers (men and women) for their wealth of knowledge, than with younger, snappy dressed people.. unless you are trying to pick someone up as a dating prospect. Vancouver's economic breakfast audience is made up of four distinct types: older generation (50+ yrs old), local government officials and their staffers, CEOs and entrepreneurs, and students. Ok, there are really five groups but the fifth doesn't want you at their table (these people have purchased a table just for their company and/or friends; it's very clique-ish). It makes for interesting table discussions during breakfast. Because of the noise of the banquet hall, you are limited to intimate conversations of people sitting on either side of you. The first time I attended, I sat at a city official table before reading the sign on the table. That was awkward.

The breakfast is a venue for making connections happen. Be that guy (or gal) who knows a guy (or gal) that knows a guy (or gal). Everyone brings something to this event. And, everyone has the potential of becoming more than just that guy (or gal) you met or sat with at breakfast.

LinkedIn: Profile Suggestions

At this rate, I won't even have to think about what to add to my profile to get the extended network to click onto it. Looks like a new "analytics" rollout from LinkedIn that shows you a little bit more about "Who's viewed your profile". Seriously, I don't think I'd get "up to 3%" more views per click that I add to the profile. Seems like a lot of the suggested skills aren't skills but keyword phrases used by my peers in the management consulting industry. This is almost as bad as getting a skill recommendation from someone who behaves online as a 2nd or 3rd degree connection. What do you think?

2014-02-12, LinkedIn Profile View Suggestions

The view for updated stats available to basic accounts has been upgraded. This is what it looks like now instead of the former tiny line chart and a raw number count.

2014-02-12, LinkedIn Profile Views Dashboard

Event: Ignite Seattle

I am often amazed about the courage these people have to stand up in front of a large crowd and talk about their passion.

As a newcomer to the metro area, I am fortunate for having stumbled upon the Town Hall venue and this particular event. Imagine watching 15 speakers, allotted 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds for a total of 5 minutes speaking time, talk about a subject, business idea, traumatic experience, life experience, or why no one should eat cheese. What I liked about it was that the speakers were able to succinctly do their storytelling in an engaging way (through slides) that made us (the audience) care about their story.


As for myself, do I have a passion I could talk to a crowd about, and would it be inspirational to others? I have no idea. I've always thought that my life and work passions could intermingle; though I'm not sure if I can separate the idea of a hobby from a passion from a side project. I have few of the first, an undecided part on passion, and many side projects.

One of the speakers' advice was: don't think, just do. 

Save the date: May 16, that's the next Ignite Seattle at Town Hall (8th & Seneca)

Linked InMaps

This feature is brought to you by LinkedIn Labs and makes a graphical representation of how your network is connected. It's not surprising when I look at my own LinkedIn network how very few people cross-pollinate to other circles. Someone should build an add-in for G+ so that data junkies can see what 2.3 billion +1 transactions look like in the three months that +1 has been available.

What is interesting to note is that this visualization only takes into consideration 1st degree of separation connections. 

Color code: The upper left of the spiral (orange and purple, banking industry), bottom (green) represents colleagues from a recent employer, and the large upper right cluster (blue) are all the people I met directly through LinkedIn.

Overview: social media metrics

All this hubbub about social media marketing has prompted me to scour the web for what organizations are doing about implementing this as part of their customer life cycle management strategy. If this scenario hasn't happened in your workplace yet, it might some day and it's best to at least have a body of knowledge when your boss or client asks for your insight about this very topic.

For a top-level overview, poplabs has put together a pretty succinct presentation about social media metrics. The premise behind the slides is: how do you measure the impact of your social media marketing campaign?

According to poplabs, social media is supported on the techdev side by entities like YouTube, Technorati, FeedBurner, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Facebook, VIRB, MySpace, twitter, Pownce, digg, del.icio.us, etc. There is a growing trend in the number of companies willing to adopt conversation marketing as a means to include customers in a product or service life cycle. Ultimately, this creates solid customer relationships because the customer believes they are not only being heard, but something is being done about it. Social media is an interrelational strategy that collaborates with and connects to web and internet marketing strategy.

Web strategy encompasses where customers get their news and information about a company's products and services. It should first be a solid, well developed website with all the necessary details a customer needs to perform a transaction, or as marketers call it, to respond to a call-to-action (e.g., customer fills out a contact form, requests more information or a demo, or purchases directly from the website).

Internet marketing strategy covers how the customers are pushed or pulled to website properties, whether it's by affiliate networks, banner ad exchanges, pay per click (PPC), search ads (SEO, SEM), or through online public relations efforts.

Social media enables customers to have an open feedback channel with a company, its core product groups, or with specific brands. It is supposed to use one-to-one relationships and personal-or-business social networks to succeed.

Influence and Engagement are two metrics that poplabs identifies as being the most important for social media. These concepts have always been around since the dawn of marketing where a person's influence traditionally drives referrals and cross-sell opportunities; and engagement is how far a referral is willing to become a lifetime customer of a particular product or service.

Tracking and measuring social media is also nothing new. This involves classic competitive intelligence where you look at key employees and CXOs, relevant industry sites, domains and urls, product/service names, product/service urls, tracking competitor activity for like products/services, insider activity, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.