I have summarized a few sound bites from this session that went on for almost two hours.

George Colony, Forrester Research, on customers interactions:

• 1% of consumers consult a corporate blog
• 8% of consumers follow or fan companies

How will “social” change leadership? It creates an obligation to listen. You should be good, because in the future everyone will know about you.

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn, on social networking themes:

• How do you get robust connections between people?
• How do you get transparency of information?
• How to think about web 2.0? What happens when every person has an online identity and is a participant?

Owen Van Natta, MySpace:

• Distribution of content is happening much more through people, as opposed to a limited number of portals

Gina Bianchini, Ning:

• In 2009 people spent three times the amount of time on social sites than they had in the prior year

Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics:

• Young people are giving away their personal information too much
• Thousands of people will not get their dream job this year because their employer did the reference check on Facebook

Evan Williams, Twitter: Twitter is looking to do three things:

• filtering and discovering engine
• generating of content and having influence over others
• building relationships of all types

Tim Berners-Lee:

• We need to study web as a scientific discipline, we need people to study social networks
• It is fascinating how a meme spreads across Twitter.

…it is, indeed. Here’s the full session on YouTube:

Let me tell ya – working together with talented folks like Daniele Rossi, John Leschinski and Tommy Vallier has been an exciting, “open-source” experience!

Go check out the PodCamp Toronto 2010 site! Subscribe to our feed or grab the podcast.

I am looking forward to seeing you there on February 20 and 21. It will be fun! If you are new to PodCamp Toronto, here is the elevator pitch:

PodCamp Toronto 2010 is a FREE “unconference” bringing together professionals and hobbyists from Toronto and the surrounding area to explore the cutting edge of new and social media. If you are an online content creator – hobbist and professionals – who are building communities online in a variety of ways, then PodCamp Toronto 2010 is for you. Share ideas, discuss theories and learn lessons from an audience of experts. Network, network, network. All are welcome. Join us!

The official hash tag is #pcto2010

Funny story: JobConnect is a government funded program offered by St. Stephen Community House. I have met some of the folks over at SSCH on my third day after moving to Canada, many years ago. Lots of good memories. Phillip my friend, where are you now?

Possible advice: pay attention to domain names, it’s not a joke. If you really need such a shortcut URL, it’s not too late to own one. Be creative. Here’s my own example which, of course, I love it: urllr.com/goog

Turns out most active day of the week among my LinkedIn connections is Monday. Makes sense for a business tool.

Everyone needs some fun and relaxation by Wednesday, which seems to be the most active day on Facebook.

Good. Folks, just don’t let Facebook take over your week-end. Or entire week. Please :)

“A rubber ball will bounce and someone else can pick it up. That’s your work life. The glass ball is family, friends, your health. Drop it, and if you’re lucky it’ll just crack. If you’re not so lucky, it’ll break into a million pieces. No matter what it’ll never be the same.”

Michael Winser – via Dave Winer

I wish you all the best for 2009! Take care.

In order for me to measure the latter, I did a bit of ego searching.

Disclosure: I have used a freshly installed browser to conduct this search and take the screen capture – Opera for Mac, no cookies, no previous similar searches, no account history, nothing that could have altered the search results page (SERP).

According to the White Pages (I have no reasons to show up there), I am one of the few “Baldeans” in North America, and certainly there are many more in the world. So yes, I’m pretty happy with the current SERP, so far: my main site, my blog, my LinkedIn profile, my Facebook page, my tweets and some of my pictures.

How do you want to be found? How do you measure your personal branding? What do you want people to think of ya?

Beautiful! It has WiFi support, download speed is pretty good. Opera has added couple of North American hosted proxy servers – this should help as well. Get this: because of the WAP/socket/http support, I’m able to surf on a BlackBerry email plan only, when WiFi is not available. Yes, I had to disable the firewall, but that’s okay for now.

The address bar can be used for web search, much like your desktop browser.

Bookmarks – now this is a real plus. You can manage your bookmarks on the web, if you have an account with My Opera, and get them synchronized OTA on your BlackBerry client.

RSS feeds are here. I’m using Goggle Reader as my main feed manager, accessible from anywhere, but this mini browser has a built-in feed reader. Comes in handy.

There are two browsing options: mobile view and classic view. Javascript and CSS are rendered quite well. I like the magnifier option to quickly scan a page.

Best use so far? Being able to access my JahJah account and address book to initiate long distance (read international) calls without paying Rogers a fortune. I also have an unlimited incoming voice plan, so web initiated calls are a super-bonus in this case.

Go get the Opera Mini 4.2 now. It is supposed to work well on other smart phones.

See it in action.

Later edit: yes, I have switched to the iPhone 3GS in the mean time. Love it!

Here is something to think about: Goldman Sachs made the headlines quite often over the last few months. Have you ever wondered why Goldman Sachs does not have a list of job openings on their careers web site? Because they know talent does not hang out every day on their corporate web site.

Now, why do you think they have recently acquired a stake in LinkedIn? Aha. That’s why. They know they need to be present in this place, listening and watching for skilled prospects. And Goldman Sachs is not the only company.

When did you last update your profile?

Rob Master / Unilever
To be successful in today’s digital marketing landscape you need to figure out “how to penetrate the culture?”

Steve Levy / Ipsos Reid
Consumers outspend advertisers to avoid the advertising noise.

Top digital marketing trends: email, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, interactive consumer websites, blogging and podcasting, social network marketing, mobile marketing. Last one is still very complicated though. No kidding.

I was talking to Rick Bruner of Google over lunch – I wish the new Google AdPlanner had Canadian data as well. “Release early and reitrate often” is Google’s philosophy. Hopefully soon enough we’ll see those numbers: your web site stats and your competitors’.

First panel discussion
Barak Obama is the Digital Marketer of the year.

Charlie Gray, Head of Staffing and HR at Google and Bruce Powell of IQ Partners shared very interesting tips on how to find, hire and retain the best talent.

Tara O’Doherty / w.illi.am
Avoid web site information overload and band-aid design.
A blog is a tactic, not a strategy.
Only 50 per cent of your visitors agree with your web site design. Huh!
“F-pattern” web page scan determined by eye tracking still rules. There are still techniques you canuse if you really like to have a right navigation.

Stacey Grant-Thompson / Rogers
22 million mobile users in Canada. Of course, we’re still far behind the rest of the world, partially thanks to the big three carriers. Location Based Services (LBS) and the Electronic Wallet are the next trends in mobile usage.

David Pogue
“I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg. It turns out that the number one name in social networking is sociallly challenged.”

Interested in seeing tweets?

Chris, you are the star – some of us are just rocking along. I know, I owe you big. Thank you again!