Zitat des Tages von Ryan Holmes:
One of the ironies of a conference dedicated to all things digital and virtual is that the best ways to connect with people are surprisingly old-school. Social media tools can improve the odds of a serendipitous encounter at SXSW, but old-fashioned hustle, palm-pressing and - above all - creativity go a long way.
A swarm of new business tools coming to phones and desktops near you promise to boost efficiency and streamline collaboration by borrowing social features from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
Every day I'd come home after school, pop the hood of my mom's car, put alligator clips on the battery, and wire into the house and go play on my computer. If I used it for too long, I'd wear down the car battery, and my mom would be all mad at me the next day.
For everybody in their busy lives, you need to invest in sharpening your tools, and you need to invest in longevity.
I'd love to build a brand, a legacy.
Customer service teams at many companies have already embraced social media, often out of necessity.
You can run a sprint or your can run a marathon, but you can't sprint a marathon.
I think that Vancouver as well as Canada needs a boot camp for young entrepreneurs. We have already seen tens if not hundreds of people put their names forward to be involved in the program, and we just think this is an amazing way to accelerate what they're doing.
While consumer social like Facebook and Twitter gets the headlines, perhaps the greatest untapped potential for social networking lies in business applications.
Anyone working at HootSuite will tell you that I don't sugarcoat my opinions. I heavily encourage feedback and suggestions - partly because I'm blunt about offering the same in return.
Understanding and respecting your roots is critical not only to winning the tech talent wars but leaving a legacy that transcends bottom lines.
Not using social media in the workplace, in fact, is starting to make about as much sense as not using the phone or email.
If you catch me lying, it's probably because I'm about to surprise someone for their birthday, or hide away the specific details about a company getaway to a strange but amazing place.
Pizza made me who I am. In the summer of 1998, I dropped out of college and started a pizza restaurant called Growlies in my hometown in rural Canada. My seed money: a credit card with a $20,000 limit.
The point is that instead of a monolithic brick of printed content - delivered more or less unchanged to all subscribers - social media offers news that is personalized and nimble.
One thing I would like to see in Vancouver and Canada is something similar to the PayPal mafia. They were all early employees of PayPal. They all had monster exits with PayPal, and they were able to take their winnings and form a syndicate that co-invests.
The growing role of enterprise social media, plus the growing budgets and authority of CMOs entrusted with choosing the best platforms, translates into an exciting future for apps that harness social potential for large companies.
One of the most important principles I've learned is, every so often, just drop everything. Stop racing from one party to the next.
Workflow and usability are not afterthoughts; they impact the core of any project and dictate how it should be engineered.
The decision to leave a company you founded and move on to a new project is never an easy one.
Hammer down product fundamentals first. Make sure you've got something that works before doubling down on promotion and marketing. Create a groundswell of organic support, and only then leverage PR and advertising to spread the word.
By allowing multiple partners to contribute, an open platform can nurture an entire ecosystem of developers and apps. Good products integrate and become great products. Users get a one-stop solution for social needs.
Early in my career, I was involved with engineer-led projects, where designers came in late in the game and were expected to put lipstick on an existing code base. This almost never works.
By monitoring the activity taking place on social networks, retailers can amplify successful marketing and sales strategies and avoid weak tactics which can later be tied back to organizational objectives.
At the most basic level, prioritizing design also represents a practical consideration. It's far easier to design first and engineer later.
For some people, staying grounded means doing yoga. For others, it's spending time with family. Social media, too, can be a lifesaver.
No surprise that, as companies have adopted social media en masse, demand for software and applications to manage and monitor social use has exploded.
I don't know how many times I've turned to Twitter and Facebook to commiserate and celebrate, bounce ideas off of friends, colleagues and other entrepreneurs, and just connect with the wider world outside my office.
Without grounding, it's easy to embrace the 'baller' lifestyle: dropping out of tech, throwing money at cars, boats and real estate, and slipping into a cycle of spending and indulgence.
When my company was first getting off the ground, we were completely lost in the shuffle, despite our best efforts. In 2012, however, we had a 28-foot-long, 15,000-pound secret weapon. To stand out amid the gala parties and blow-out bashes hosted by much bigger tech companies, HootSuite decided to take to the streets.
We've all been inundated with so many ingenious, must-have, time-saving apps and tools that we really don't have a second left to spare.
Social media teams tend to be decentralized - a motley mix of in-house experts, off-site consultants and international partners. The result: Confusion, rogue tweets, and off-message posts are almost inevitable. The worst gaffes live on in social media infamy.
From its humble origins in college dorm rooms, social media has quietly crept into the boardroom.
Although the tech industry is very open to change, many people still have a closed-off mentality where, in the interest of protecting their ideas, they keep them hidden in dark caves.
The longer you're stuck in a position that doesn't truly challenge you, the less likely you'll be able to leave it. Inertia, in fact, is one of my worst fears.
Everybody getting a significant exit creates a legacy and creates something that you can pay forward and bootstrap an industry in a substantial way.