Archive for the 'Toronto' Category

Keri the Canadian Explorer

in Blogging, Culture Blogger, Ontario, Photography and Toronto

KeriCDN is a talkative girl with lots of creative energy; exploring Canada is her raison d’etre.  At Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, Keri studied business, history and linguistics, but her real life education started in February 2008, when she started blogging.

Keri The Canadian Explorer has culturally significant adventures everyday, and she shares her discoveries with a growing tribe of domestic and international followers. It’s interesting that she profiles all types of Canadians, not just the ‘great ones’.  She reports the facts and lets her audience decide if her subjects and settings are worthy of praise. For example, she’s quite proud of a recent video exploring the Canadian Navy.

Keri’s site contains no advertising.  She has refused to do sponsored posts and thinks Google AdSense looks tacky; she doesn’t want to appear avaricious for three cents a day.  The business training inside of her is however looking for benign sponsors; she would like to play a part in something larger, something sponsored by a proud and worthwhile Canadian enterprise.

To that end, she threw a blog party at the Reservoir Lounge last November.  It was a big success, and helped put her at the center of a local community of like minded individuals.  Since then she has banded together with some other famous web friends to create The Toronto Blog Girls which is a loose association of popular Toronto fashionistas and event bloggers that reside in Canada’s largest city.  All of these girls are attractive, intelligent and artistic, and together they’re a powerful press squad.

Check out Ryan Couldrey’s photo of Keri using automatic weapons.

Keri’s biggest fault might be that she’s too darn nice. In the video she did with Five Hockey Legends, she really shouldn’t have let security interrupt her filming, and it’s so typical of Canadians to apologize and be so concerned with procedures instead of just rolling tape and saying sorry later. To that point it would have been great if she’d turned and tried to leave with Red Kelly’s NHL Stanley Cup ring…  but she’s too nice.

Keri often profiles influential speakers and attends a lot of events on inspirational subjects. In most episodes the girl charms her way backstage or somehow corners presenters after appearances. Her well conceived queries combined with her compelling interview style more than compensate for the bad lighting and sound quality in these commando videos.  See Gary Vaynerchuk Loves Canada!

KeriCDN Quests for the 2010 Olympic Games

Keri’s short term dream is to attend and chronicle the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. As a true Canadian explorer and premium blogger, she believes it’s her manifest destiny to be at this international event, sharing the experience with the rest of the nation. This single cause has coloured her blog for months. She entered contests, wrote letters and collectively schemed right along with her readers to get herself over to the other side of the continent in February.  And then finally, it worked.

Keri had her hands on the torch in January 2010.  She photographed it, wrote about it, and was questioned about it on national television.  Before that, Keri charmed contest mavens with her Samsung mobile explorer video entry and issued repeated requests for votes. Her quest for Vancouver goes all the way back to September 2009 when she reviewed the Olympic apparel at The Bay, and fantasized about her wish list of events to cover.  Later that month while bike riding with her friend Jody, the Olympics Games are back on her brain. She interrupts her explanation of the difference between an Inukshuk and Inunnguaq and gets completely sidetracked by a point about the Nunavut flag being associated with next year’s Olympics.  Well all the obsessing finally paid off…

Keri has been contracted by Canoe.ca and Sun Media to cover the Winter Games as official press.

In addition to her blog, you can subscribe to KeriCDN videos on YouTube and follow her on Twitter  @KeriCDN.

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Casie Stewart in Toronto

in Fashion Blogger, Personal Blog and Toronto

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Casie Stewart is a blog nerdCasie Diana Stewart is a restless 26 year old artist, poet and blogger. She documents urban charity events, shopping excursions, and fashion parties. She writes about herself mostly, and describes her adventures cycling in Toronto, surfing (online & on waves), her art and assorted photography projects, sewing & making clothes, funky local stores, and twitter. She’s a pretty girl with a good sense of humour, and a very popular blogspot.

Casie Stewart: this is my life has the byline, people . places . things . thoughts: in attempt to keep more memories, and that’s a good honest motivation for starting and maintaining a personal blog. This writer puts vanity aside and impresses readers with her candor, and her ability to relate details and get specific alongside her innermost thoughts.

Casie StewartIt all started in June 2006. Casie needed something to do while her boss was away. “I posted a bunch of stuff one day, and the rest is history.” Her first posts were CGI cartoons she drew herself and short rants about her life and the things she was doing.  “When I started blogging, I wanted to create a place where I could keep memories and record things as they happened. I’ve got so many thoughts and not the best memory. I created my blog in attempt to keep more memories. It’s worked really well. I often look back to remember what I did, wore, and said.”

Casie Stewart up wallCasie has dual citizenship; Canadian and New Zealand. She once lived in Sydney Australia (Bondi Beach), Indiana, and New York. Her parents emigrated to Canada to raise their children, and Casie grew up in Cambridge, Ont.  Casie says she’s always been artistic and entrepreneurial; when she was 14 she co-wrote an anthology of poetry and prose called Jeans. In 1996 she won the Miss Teen Pageant in Cambridge and the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in part because she was a founding member of the Cambridge Youth Council that opened a skate park, a drop-in center, and now celebrates the 11th year of the Rock the Mill festival.

Casie spent two years working in the head office of “a large private retail organization,” and “had a great career as a Queen West hipster and party girl which lead to knowing alot of really cool & interesting people.” After she got tired of the party life Casie got into the Toronto tech community and joined forces with other tech-minded people to organize events such as #gentTO, Twestival, and Pay it Back Toronto.

Casie Stewart Do GooderCasie Stewart’s most popular post was born last October when she explained her famous Toronto Sun September, 2001 Sunshine Girl appearance, and that’s understandable, check out the picture. This splash occurred about four months after her second most celebrated post, Blackberry Message Pending Problem which brought mass Google search traffic as thousands of other Canadians struggled with the same issue. And please check out Steamrolled By Drunkards because its easy to see why’s she’s loved as she relates a great story about visiting an event at the Steam Whistle Brewery to meet people she knows on Twitter.

I’ll get you my pretty. “I’ve had a few surprises with people recognizing me because they read my blog. That’s a huge compliment and change from being a party animal when people recognize you for other stuff.”

Casie Stewart for charityOops he did it again. “I was surprised when the owner of Well Hung, a postering company postered some stuff from my blog on Queen Street in bright neon. That was a pretty rad surprise! He’s done it a couple times now too!”

Casie’s Twitter

Casie’s Facebook When I asked Casie Stewart about the future of her blog, she replied, “The goal of keeping more memories is still the same. However, now I’m working more on creating a brand, and a following. No one besides me really read it for the first two years. Then, I went through some drama and said one day, ‘Hey, I’m a writer and I can do this. I’m gonna share this with everyone. I’m a blogger now’.

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Zucket in Toronto

in Blogging, Fashion Blogger, Personal Blog, Toronto, Tourism and niche blogs

Sass Zucket is a twenty three year old Asian girl from Hong Kong who grew up in Vancouver before coming east to go to school. She’s smart. The girl was enrolled in the University of Toronto at age 16 and graduated at 21 with a degree in human biology and genetics. So what’s she doing now? She’s a party girl, and a world famous blogger.

Zucket is a sneak peek inside Toronto’s hottest parties from a slightly jaded female perspective. The blog is fun to read like e-talk is fun to watch, but it’s meaner and grungier than anything on television, and kind of dirty. Each post images some form of consumption and chronicles rock stars, fashion models, booze, bands and bar fights.

Zucket is a great blog because of the author’s narrative insights into these candid photos. Her readers Laugh Out Loud in comments when she reminds them that a certain friend wore the same shirt two Saturdays in a row (with photo links to prove it) or who paid for who’s drinks all night. She has meaningful conversations with celebrities, and only very occasionally writes about shopping, clothes and cosmetics; you’re more likely to find posts detailing the nutritional value of her favourite Chinese foods.

Sass fraternizes with professional photographers, including Kavin from Shark vs Bear, and Pete Nema, Dana Richardson, Raymi’s boyfriend Phil, and Carl W. Heindl of eroder.com . When these talented artists snap shots of Sass enjoying Toronto, she hunts them down and copies them from their Flickr pages, and Facebook galleries to repost on her own blog. That way her readers can enjoy seeing her mocking boys upstairs at the Drake Hotel, or rocking out on dance floor of the Wrong Bar, or even recovering in the sunlight of a Sunday at the Lakeview Lunch.

She’s part of a community. Momentary glimpses inside Toronto’s west end nightclubs is just one of the things that makes Zucket such a premier online attraction. LG Fashion Week Finale Party: Atop the Top of the Burroughes hooked this subscriber. That post is an exciting behind-the-scenes look at a fashion party meltdown. Zucket’s descriptions are brief and leave me hungry for more details, and her friends are beautiful and candid. Readers can’t find this stuff anywhere else, except perhaps on other blogs… like Raymi The Minx ?

Zucket spawned from Raymi; she’s a spin-off. When I asked Sass about the similarities she replied: Yes, I know Raymi, she is one of my closest friends. I started reading her blog and then figured out that she lived within a 2 block radius from me. Stalked her and the rest is history. Today the keyword Raymi the Minx is the fifth largest tag in Zucket’s sidebar; the first four being Alcohol, Party, Toronto, and Babes. It’s not hard to see why this blog is so popular.

Near the beginning of Sass Zucket’s weblog, I came across something very personal, a key to understanding the origins of her blog. And when I asked Sass why she started blogging she replied, …I started blogging because I hated my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend with a raging passion. I had so many mean, awful things to say about them that I also thought were really funny. My friends were tired of hearing me whine but I wasn’t tired of whining and needed a venue to vent. I’m also kind of a megalomaniac so I decided a blog was a good way to delude myself into a sense of celebrity. My attention seeking tendencies haven’t changed, so I’m still blogging. It has become such a large part of my lifestyle and routine, that I’d rather blog before bed than wash the make-up off of my face.

Follow Sass on Twitter?

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Urban Native Girl Stuff in Toronto

in Fashion Blogger, Ontario, Personal Blog and Toronto

Lisa CharleyboyLisa Charleyboy is a very talented twenty something First Nations girl of the Tsilhqot’in (Dene) Raven Clan. Born and raised in the mountain wilderness of Williams Lake British Columbia, Lisa now lives in Toronto Ontario where she’s working hard to complete her Bachelor of Honours Degree in Professional Writing at York University.

Urban Native Girl Stuff echoes the culture shock of her paradox.  Slightly more polished than an online diary, Lisa’s personal blog details her existence in downtown Toronto. She writes about clothes, new beauty products, and native cultural events like the Toronto Pow Wows.

Lisa writes about issues and topics that might appeal to girls of any race, but especially Canadian aboriginal teenagers and young adults.  Urban Native Girl Stuff is a pastiche of the usual ‘single female topics’ including fashion, beauty, and nightclubs, but this urban girl is different because of her unique origins. Her best posts explore relationship dynamics and dating; here’s where we most often glimpse the girl from Williams Lake BC.

Clever readers might deduce that Lisa Charleyboy attended Ryerson University in Toronto for Fashion Communication, as well as John Casablancas Institute of Applied Arts in Vancouver for Fashion Arts. She reports her new career strategy is to work as a journalist documenting Native Canadian fashion, arts and entertainment, while sculpting her gifts as an actress in film and television. It’s a good plan. She’s a great writer and will certainly be recognized as such in time, and her beauty and ’stage presence’ suggest we’ll be seeing more of her on TV in the future.

As a professional writer, Lisa Charleyboy is off to a great start. Before school she was a contributing fashion & beauty columnist at Williams Lake Tribune (she pitched the editor and was paid). In her first year at York University she was the Contributing Arts Editor at Spirit Magazine and has subsequently written & sold articles to Inside Stunts Magazine, Spirit Magazine, and Redskins Magazine. In second year she was the Fashion & Lifestyle Editor at Excalibur Newspaper. During her first and second years she assisted with creating IndigeNEWS Newsletter for the Aboriginal Services Office at York University.

As an actress Lisa Charleyboy co-starred in the short film ‘Rezolution’ in the 2008 ImagineNATIVE Film Festival. She also has a role in the soon to be released ‘You Are Here’, and she tells readers that she’s excited about filming an new indie feature ‘The Rainbow Farm’ in Toronto this winter.

Lisa Charleyboy in earth tonesNow here’s where this Canada Blog Friends profile gets really interesting. I wrote to Lisa and asked her which of her posts that she thinks is her best. This was her reply,

Decade Dating has probably been the post that has been discussed the most to date. It is a reflection on May-December relationships, of which I had recently just ended one such relationship. I think the topic is fairly controversial and also very interesting and intriguing to people as to why girls in their 20s enter these types of relationships. I even walked into a local eatery where the owner, an acquaintance of mine, was involved in a May-December relationship and said that his young wife had read this post. It was a little awkward, since my stance at the end of the blog was that these types of relationships are beneficial to only one party.

My favorite is Red Cred: Joseph (Dega) Lazare . Red Cred is a series of profiles that I will be doing to showcase Native artists. I want to highlight modern, talented, progressive Native/Indigenous artists who are paving the way to be role models for youth and who are otherwise just cool peeps that deserve a little spotlight on them. I really want the non-Native community to see other Native people who are successful, educated and superbly gifted in order to challenge stereotypes that still haunt Native people. I also want other Native people who are not necessarily tapped into the Native arts community to realize the significant contributions we’re making all across Canada and the U.S.

Well done Lisa, that’s the perfect synopsis. Welcome to Canada Blog Friends.

On many levels, Lisa Charleyboy is a beacon of hope and a great role model for indigenous women that too often must sacrifice something for education and personal empowerment.  Canada Blog Friends has no doubt that Urban Native Girl Stuff will someday help unite the entire Native community all across North America. Everyone can share in her blog’s journey as she continues the Native storytelling tradition learned on the distant shores of Williams Lake, British Columbia.

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Ghost of a Flea in Toronto

in Ontario, Scholar and Toronto

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Nicholas Packwood writes blog candy. His text is hard boiled sugar that’s packed with cool pictures and compelling captions; his blog posts are short and sweet and super readable.

Ghost of a Flea jumbleGhost of a Flea is politics and pop culture from Packwood’s perspective. He’s very opinionated, and one of the few anti-Obama bloggers left on the internet. Could his peculiar flavour be distilled from knowledge acquired by reading and writing and finally teaching anthropology and religious studies? Ghost of Flea aims to address contemporary themes inside a ‘ghostly’ anthropological context. First published in 2002, this blog has had some moments in the sun.

“From Canadian blogger Nicholas Packwood comes Ghost of a Flea, a blog with an eye on international opinion of the war” - USA Today

Nicholas Packwood considers himself to be more of a “thinker than a linker”, but because of time constraints he sometimes can only point readers in the direction of something he finds interesting. His passion is his remedy.

Ghost of a Flea cross statuePackwood writes, “Blogging allows me to express my opinions more constructively than by throwing things at the television. Occasionally, blogging also allows me to feel as though my opinion is being considered in the wider conversations of the day. [It] also reassures me every day that I am not alone in my questions and concerns; there is an enormous comfort and support knowing I am not the only person whose television has been saved by this new medium.”

Ghost of a Flea is an interesting blog by an interesting person. In addition to teaching anthropology and communications to undergraduates, Nicolas is undertaking a doctorate in social anthropology, and is also a student in a recording arts program office phone system someday hopes to work in audio mixing and production. You can catch Nicholas Packwood performing his own “dark ambient and industrial music in Toronto clubs, usually of the gothic variety”.

Ghost of a Flea at MyspaceDuring the US elections, Nicholas preserved his blog’s political theme, and smeared all of the candidates, but mostly Obama. A prime example is Please Connect The Dots. But he understands readers can only take so much rhetoric, so he seems to alter and adjust the percentage of political opinion… On October 30th (which is ALMOST Halloween) Nicholas used Ghost of a Flea to promote Devil’s Night at The Savage Garden, a quintessential Goth club in Toronto. His post Dark Times Demand Dark Music is primed with a photo of Lena Headey.

Ghost of a Flea is concocted to entertain readers, and Nicholas is satisfied with that easy market. He writes, In many ways this is more important to me than if I have managed to convince anybody of anything by the writing, let alone whether we find in time that we disagree about most things.

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Raymi the Minx in Toronto

in Blogging, Ontario, Personal Blog and Toronto

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Lauren White is a blog pioneer. She started her web log back in 2000 when Blogger itself was less that a year old and still owned by Pyra Labs. Back then, very few people knew anything about blogging, and this Canadian girl was an early thought leader in the process of discovering what’s cool, and what brings traffic.

Raymi the MinxRaymi the Minx is a classic blog that details strange happenings in the life of a sexy girl living in the heart of downtown Toronto.  Chances are, if you’ve ever spent a day surfing around the net reading blogs, you’ve encountered Raymi’s work. She’s listed on hundreds of blog rolls, ranked in dozens of indexes in many different niches, and has won numerous awards in multiple categories – her blog has inspired the first posts of some of today’s best writers.

Raymi’s work is more personal than most personal blogs. She flashes her smile as frequently as her skinny body (and her boots, and even on rare occasions, her breasts). Such self portraits are of course the highlights of her archives, and accrue many dozen comments. Her curious poses draw reader into even more compelling personal stories. This girl lets us live inside her relationships as she randomly explains her existence. With such comprehensive content it’s hard not to start feeling like you actually know her, and since she allows everyone to learn so much about her, she soon becomes the best friend you’ve never met.

I see my blog as a way to kill boredom for me and for you and if some days there is a bit of genius to it, awesome. Raymi, Sept 2008

Raymi the Minx in Oxford in 2000Over the past eight years, Raymi has become a Canadian web celebrity. Thousands of readers have watched her grow up on the internet and most have followed her work from the moment they discovered her domain. Here archives are indeed expansive. She would need Inventory Software to keep track of all the products and stories that she’s distributed over the past decade. Digging back to the year 2000, it’s possible to see the young Lauren White before the metamorphosis.

Here’s me (raymi) in Oxford. that siGn between my krotch sez, ‘please keep off grass’ or something and there i am On the grass like the eFFing rebellious bitch i’ve always been.

Marketable DepressionLike every artist’s first work, Raymi’s early material seems unrefined by comparison. Backin 2000 she often experimented by altering text sizes and fonts to deliberately defy standard formats. Personally I’m thrilled she outgrew the baby talk slang, and a particularly annoying habit of spelling ‘with’ as ‘wif’. Her evolution is still in progress and now an even more prolific pen has turned to writing novels. Here’s a link to buy Marketable Depression on CafePress, which is Raymi’s book about her younger years, when she was depressed, dabbled in drugs, and was crippled by her own poor choice in men.

Another book in the works, as yet untitled, will present sequences from an even larger story. There is no set release date as Raymi finds the idea of compulsory writing very stressful. ‘Writers constantly feel guilt over not writing and all eventually kill themselves, whether by drink or other hands-on means‘, she writes.Tanlines Not seeking self annihilation, she spends her days making art and taking beautiful photos to add to the twenty thousand images already stored in her Flickr gallery photo stream.

More than a blogger, Raymi the Minx is a poet, media darling, and a web based sexual itch. She has the unique ability to write provocative content and draw a crowd, and provoke admiration.  This painting by her friend Jamie Boud perfectly represents Raymi’s acrylic disposition.  Her mildly erotic portraits are usually punctuated with Toronto landmarks to remind us that she’s real, and lives just down the street somewhere… But her reality is better, sexier and more stimulating than ours will ever be.

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Shambled Ramblings in Toronto

in Blogging, Ontario, Personal Blog and Toronto

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Kristen Goetz has a personal blog that she describes as a nothing blog, but that’s because she writes about everything. At age twenty five, Kristen hopes for a professional career as a writer, and so she posts insights on summer fun, bars, fast cars and the best cell phone deals in Canada. She’s looking for a suitable corporate master to repaint her profile with a purpose. Because right now, her seemingly pointless content shimmers like a reflection of herself in a fast flowing stream of events that is her life in Toronto.

Kristen w glassesShambled Ramblings started because Kristen was offered a job as a corporate blogger on the condition that she initiate a personal blogspot domain where she could cross promote the sponsor company. The enterprise launched Kristen’s blogging career. She wrote diligently for months, building credibility and refining her prose. She wrote about her recent break-up of a three-year relationship, and the possibilities of a new one. She wrote about snowstorms, and her friend’s problems, and greasy food, and traffic tickets and the music of Kermit The Frog - it took awhile before she found her voice.

Kristen walking the winter streets in TorontoSadly, by the time Kristen finally got up to speed and truly personalized her domain, and before she ever made a dime, the initial job offer fell through, and the company that seduced her into the blogosphere was no longer in business. Other companies and media buyers contacted her but unfortunately they wanted to compromise truth, and censor her language. Since her readership had begun to grow, Kristen declined. “There was no way that I was going to endorse products I’d never used, or tone down the sarcasm. I didn’t want my personal blog to sound like anyone else.” She relates. Yet in many ways, Shambled Ramblings has a lot to do with Kristen searching for, and finding different identities.

Since many of her posts are about her recent move from St. Catharines to Toronto, Kristen punctuates her text with Canadian keywords, people, places, and Queen St W Toronto events.  A common theme is her quest to sample as many different Ontario microbrews in her local Parkdale bars and pubs, before declaring a favourite.

Kristen at New YearsKristen is a cool chick that likes to party on occasion. It’s a fact she knows the lyrics to hundreds of obscure early 1980’s heavy metal songs. She likes live music, and plays a mean game of pool. Her posts are personal and range from self-deprecating and questioning to sarcastic and in-your-face. Sometimes there’s a bit of self-improvement. It’s for that reason – the randomness of her subjects – that she concludes she has a nothing blog.

But Kristen’s blog is actually something pretty special. It’s a look into the mind and everyday life of a female twenty-something, new to the city and still searching for a career. Whether she’s ranting about an annoyance, re-capping her busy weekend, or making relevant observations about our society, Shambled Ramblings is an honest peek at a young woman learning more about herself, and what’s she’s capable of achieving in Toronto.

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Social Capital Value Add

in Ontario, Scholar, Toronto and Web Designer

Social Capital Value add Michael Cayley is a web entrepreneur that studies culture and communication and prognosticates on the future of social networks. Those of us who read the scraps of wisdom he leaves lying around in his posts hope to profit by actualizing his ideas.

Michael Cayley goes white water raftingMichael Cayley met Rob Campbell (that’s me) on Sept 4th 2008 at Timothys coffee shop in the Carrot Common on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. We spoke for two hours. After the meeting I walked away with a profound new understanding of social media, and a bold new vision of the charitable future of Canada Blog Friends.

Social Value Capital Add is one of the most prophetic and important blogs in Canada.  It contains a lot of graduate level ideas, and I find myself cross referencing terms and rereading phrases… Yes the material is rich like good chocolate cake.

Here’s the skinny: the world has changed since broadband has become more popular than dial up. All of mankind’s corporations have moved online, and all of us individuals too. The way we do business has changed and is still changing as findability becomes pivotal to success.  In short, the Internet business world has outgrown contemporary business valuation models. And I say this not from a venture capital ‘how much will I make from this deal?’ perspective, but also from a risk management ‘why are we not making our bottom line anymore?’ stand point. The enterprise 2.0 age needs better social value metrics; the role of the corporation could change dramatically as profits are spent developing positive social capital.

On October 24th 2007, Microsoft bought a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 Million and that placed the valuation of Facebook at $15 Billion or thereabouts… and I say wow. But tell me how did they arrive at that number? The SCVA outlines the fundamental precept that ‘understanding how and why messages are transmitted electronically from one person to another is a source of power and value’.

Michael Cayley, a Principal at Context Creative, has just been published in the Change This manifesto along with other web gurus and visionaries Seth Godin and John Kotter - Leading Change, The Heart of Change. Andrew Abela, a PhD, consultant, and the New York Times best selling author Vince Poscente.

Michael Cayley bio picMichael announced the publication of his SCVA work in a quirky piece of writing entitled How did this dog get in the boardroom? which I interpret as a metaphor for how hard it is for corporations to pick the perfect logo, tagline, and image in the age of memetic brands. How do you make your message resonate in an online world filled with user submitted media? And of course the dog is barking for change.

The Social Value Capital Add has been proposed as a guide to new investors and corporate mangers alike. The theory is an extrapolation of traditional brand management that Michael hopes will bring talent and resources to the undervalued social components of online business.

Get Michael Cayley’s SCVA ebook http://socialcapitalvalueadd.com/share-the-scva-ebook/

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