
Deborah Lewis runs an upscale event planning business in downtown Toronto. On average she designs, promotes and executes between thirty five and fifty of the city’s biggest and most memorable occasions each year, and she blogs about it and posts pictures on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. Her blog gives readers the pertinent details and more – it shares a precious inside look at the makings of each happenstance.
DebLewis.ca is the home of an expert party planner and web savvy event promoter. This thirty something woman writes about parties, past present and future. The blog is rich with event summaries wherein she wraps up the best stories with photos and anecdotal accounts of the food and music, and any outstanding memories. She writes about celebrity chefs and musicians, politicians, charities and of course the charismatic people that attend these events. She tweets her blog posts, and has an engaged Facebook following. Deb’s digital presence adds a lot of value to her events; the sponsors benefit from blog links, Facebook likes and social media ‘klout’.
As the founder and owner of Toronto City Events, Lewis shares her insights and her discoveries and successes using the web to promote events. When she speaks at gatherings, she can fill a room with people eager to hear her secrets.
Deborah started blogging four years ago because she was curious about this new trend and wanted a more candid less business vehicle to connect with people. She was enjoying reading other local blogs and felt it would be an interesting movement to experience writing her own. And of course she identified blogging as a key tool to complement her business communications.
What are the results? Deb relates that immediately after starting her blog she found she was hearing more feedback from participants about the events. People were leaving comments and coming to Facebook to tag themselves in pictures. She also heard more stories and more opinions about hers and other people’s events which helped her develop better programming, but also helped increase her web and online marketing skills as she learned to respond to these queries and quips and compliments.
Deb’s most read posts are the ones that are most informative. She wrote a piece about the bars that stay open till 4am during the Toronto Film Festival that was retweeted constantly in September by the Toronto Twitterati and became a big hit with thousands of readers during TIFF and after.
Another popular post is The Beer Boutique in Liberty Village and that’s partly because the headline is phrased to resemble the search term that everyone types into Google when seeking this elusive location . It was also well shared on Facebook and Twitter around that locality. Some posts in Deb’s blog are made of what she calls ‘cultivated content’ and by that she means that her interns write the pieces from scripts that she finds or creates. Deb writes ‘…some stories I write 100%, where others I provide the framework and have the final edits and touches.’ Managing creative interns is difficult and this sentence hints at her process.
What’s in the future? More blog content and the domain will be expanding to include more rich media, more videos and podcasts. And the blog will be getting a face lift in 2012. But more substantially Deb wants to streamline the style of the posts to include more event tips and resources for people who are attending, and more content will be made available for folks who are “…interested in my area of expertise, and ideas for planning and promoting events. We’ve become a resource for what events are happening in Toronto and provide people with insights into how these events are created.”



Mark’s most popular blog post is his piece on the
As a CA Mark cannot provide investment advice, however, he openly discusses his investing mishaps and provides information on websites of interest for investors.

Packwood 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.”


Over 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
Like 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. Raymi has inventory for sale on her website, and memories enough to fill storage units full to the brim with laughter. Here’s a link to buy
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
Samantha is a 27 year old married mother-of-two that works in the construction industry. During the day she (sometimes) wears a hard hat, coveralls and steel toed boots on downtown Toronto construction sites. But at home, in the evenings, she gently constructs beautiful social nets – she blogs and builds pretty web buttons that bind together a potent roster of rookie moms.
Sam is ahead of the curve in social networking, and her techniques are worth studying - her Tempting Mama Twitter account now has 380 followers, due in part to the brilliant avatar. One thing I noticed right away is how her blog incorporates lots of popular social networking buttons. Her Stumble Page is focused on motherhood, but assembled from lots of diverse source material.
Okay now the real reason why I love Samantha – she puts it on the line. She is genuine and open and writes from the heart. I remember reading the post she wrote back in January under her blog’s Marriage tag where she opened up about her own marital problems. I marveled at the honesty and the bravery of her self documentation – she had the courage to step out from behind the façade and face reality in confessional writing that becomes the ultimate public self exploration. The next day she started dismantling the facade and her readership helped.


Ted understands that he’s playing a role as 

Here it is, a 1950 AEC Regent III double-decker bus in a 1999 photograph. Complete with London Transport fleet names and lots of other cool authenticities, the vehicle looks to be in reasonable condition - only the radiator and most of the engine cooling system is missing. The story goes that this vehicle was imported into the United States from England and came to be owned by two women from Oregon. It was sold in Santa Rosa California when it broke down on the highway and was deemed too expensive to repair. Now if it could be properly fixed and completely refurbished, it would certainly be a novelty on the streets of Toronto. Mathew was consumed checking
In keeping with the same spiritual idea of raising the dead, this blogger is also active in the
Keely Valentine must type as fast as she thinks, for her writing seems as natural as a seventeen year old girl talks. Each post flows together into a wonderfully feminine, refreshingly amateur blog spectacle. This girl is supremely confident and that’s manifest in her devil-may-care writing. Its all attitude and Keely’s got it, and she ‘brings it’ with good information rich posts. It really doesn’t matter that her prose is littered with typographical errors, and run on sentences, because that somehow adds to her juvenile authenticity and the presentation of her unique content.








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