Inspired by Mark Goren’s “Get To Know Me” post introducing himself to people he has meet either in person or via Twitter at the Social Media For Government Conference happening right now in Capital City, Canada (can I call Ottawa that?).

I am the Web Content Specialist for CNW Group, and I’ve been in involved in social media for over two years now, having started BlogCampaigning with Espen Skoland in August, 2006.

On Thursday morning, I’ll be holding a workshop at this conference about the Social Media Release. As you might be aware, CNW Group just launched a version of the SMR. Part of my job involves educating both clients and CNW staff about the benefits of communicating using social media, and using the SMR in particular.

I’m in Ottawa until Friday evening, so feel free to get in touch with me if you want to catch up. I’m @parkernow on Twitter, or you can email me at Parker (at) blogcampaigning (dot) com. I’ll also be attending Thursday evening’s CPRS Ottawa event, so hopefully I’ll see you there.

-Parker

Ryan Peal blogs for Hill and Knowlton at Creativity In Public Relations. While it isn’t the most creative title for a blog about creativity, all of his posts are about really neat PR campaigns.

His most recent post is about AMP Energy Drink’s new “Walk of No Shame” video that I’m sure they’re hoping will go viral.

While we’re on the topic of viral video and guerilla marketing tactics, Amanda Gravel posted a great video via Slate about the future of viral marketing :

And since I know you want to watch one more video, check out this video from the Stock Footage Awards (link).

Have a great weekend!

-Parker

Since it’s Friday, you’re probably getting things tidied up for the weekend and looking at your schedule for next week.

If you’re in Toronto not doing anything on Tuesday, September 16 then stop by Fionn McCool’s to hear from the people behind AideRSS. Ilya Grigorik, Co-founder and Chief Technology Office, Jim Murphy, VP Development, and Melanie Baker, AideRSS’ Community Manager will all be present.

This is the first Third Tuesday Toronto event of the new year, and it should be a good one.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend as I will be in Ottawa speaking about Social Media Releases at the Social Media for Government conference.

I’ll be in the nations capital from the 15-19 of September if you’re there and want to grab a beer and talk about how little I care about the rivalry between the Sens and the Leafs.

-Parker

Between this story on Slate about what “Aerial Wolf-Gunning” is and why Sarah Palin supports it and the picture (left) of her that I got from this post on I09, I think we’re going to have a pretty interesting few months (or years, depending on the election outcome).

I never know if stuff like this fills me with Canadian pride or makes me wish I was American.

-Parker

Getting Started Online

Over the course of the summer, a bunch of my friends have started to express interest in starting their own blogs.

One group of friends feels that having a blog will help create an online presence for their band, A Northern Drawl.

Another friend created a blog to share her stories of late-night debauchery and celebrity searching in Toronto.

My friend Sarah asked me to help her set up a blog for her trip to South America.

And my new roomate told me that he wants to start a blog to use as an online resume for his video work (I’m hoping that my other roommate will resume writing the always-excellent T-zero blog about Toronto culture and breakfast now that he has returned from an overseas stint).

In short, they all want an online presence for themselves and since I’m known amongst them as “the guy that knows stuff about the internets,” they’ve come to me for advice.

While I’ll be happily helping them when I get a chance, I thought I’d also share some of the advice I’m giving them with the readers of BlogCampaigning. Hopefully you’ll be able to give them some additional advice, or point them in the right direction when you think I’ve lead them astray.

My advice for starting off has been that they should get a Twitter account.

Why? Because Setting up an account on Twitter is a lot like starting a blog.

Following people, having them follow you and experimenting with some of the tools that work with Twitter are a great introduction to how things like RSS and other social media tools work. For example, I showed my roommate how he could set up an account on The Hype Machine (a website we both think is pretty sweet) so that everytime he favorited a song there it would alert his Twitter followers.

Customizing Your Twitter Profile

Customizing your Twitter profile is also a good introduction to customizing your own blog and working with web tools. I’ve got nothing against blogs based on templates or Twitter accounts that use the default colors and background image, but I think that taking the extra step in customization is very important. Just as Seth Godin equates downloading and installing Firefox as the equivalent to applying for college or university. As he writes: “the kind of person that puts the effort into getting into and completing college is also the kind of person who succeeds at other things.”

Customizing your Twitter profile will help you learn about image editing (as you decide what to use as your profile image and as a background image) and hexadecimal colors. If you aren’t quite sure what you want your blog to look like, playing around with colors and images on Twitter is an easy way to get started.

Doing this sort of customization will also help people identify you more easily, and will help distinguish you from the legions of spammers (when was the last time you followed someone that didn’t have a Twitter profile pic? When was the last time you subscribed to a blog based on an unmodified Kubrick template?).

Online Conversations

“I don’t really get it,” “how do I know who to talk to?” and “who is going to want to listen to what I have to say?” are three of the most common things I hear from my friends when I’m telling them about how to get started on Twitter.

My response to this is to just dive in and get started. I wrote before how I thought that Twitter is like an online cocktail party, full of different conversations that you can either choose to ignore or join (just like a real cocktail party). In both cases, no one cares if you are a wallflower and just listen. Chances are, they won’t interact with you either. To be part of the “conversation” you’ll have to speak up. In Twitter, this amounts to sharing links that you think are interesting, responding to things other people have said, or simply adding your own opinion (”conversation” in quotation marks because I’m cringing at how cliched that word has become even though it is the only one that works here).

Can you think of any other advice for them?

Maybe tell them directly - my roommate Claudio is @Clizz on Twitter, my friend Sarah’s blog is Alpaca For Dinner, my colleague Jessica is @JessicaSine on Twitter and my friend Katie is @Vandertramp on Twitter (her website is Mischief, Mayhem, Parties and Boys). You might also want to check out A Northern Drawl - although the only have a MySpace page right now, I’m excited to help them promote their music and develop and online presence for themselves.

If you’re in Toronto (or love it or are thinking of visiting) be sure and check out my other roommate’s blog Tzero. It is especially great if you’re looking for reviews of breakfast places in the downtown area.

-Parker

The Toronto International Film Festival is known for its glamorous parties full of beautiful people from the worlds of the media and entertainment elite, and this is the first year that Thirsty Thursday is going to take place during the same week as TIFF.

While it isn’t an official TIFF event, it is still going to be pretty awesome.

For those of you that haven’t attended a Thirsty Thursday event before, the basic idea is that it is a casual get together for young people in Public Relations or Marketing.  It began as a few friends meeting for drinks, and has grown into a event to look forward to every month.

Celebrities you will see at this week’s Thirsty Thursday:

Chris Clarke (yes, the Chris Clarke who was quoted in the Toronto Star)

Jessica Sine (the face of Access CNW)

Amanda Laird (my colleague, who got her job as a result of this post on BlogCampaigning)

So get your life together and spend what could be one of the last nice Thursdays of the year swilling beer with Toronto’s finest young communicators on the rooftop patio of Pauper’s Pub (539 Bloor Street) at around 7pm.

-Parker

Gamepolitics just directed my attention towards this interesting mod for Half Life 2: Thanks to some talented modders gamers can now experience a virtual recreation of the walled East-Berlin.

Explains Garry’s Mod:

The anticipated BerlinWall map has been released. The map offers singleplayer experience from the view of an East German citizen, dreaming of living in the West Germany. The gameplay in the map is non-linear, you can take many paths to west. Also, avoid making mistakes, they can be deadly, and remember to check everywhere for some sort of weapons.

The map works the best in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, but like common Source-based maps, it also works in Garry’s Mod. Not offering the best gameplay experience in it, but works great for posing and comics.

This is the kind of stuff I love: Using the simulational nature of digital games to foster a better understanding of historical events as they offer a grade of immersion other media don’t, fostering much needed respect for the often chastised games in the process.

If the rules work accordingly. Unfortunately I haven’t yet had a chance yet to play this mod (as I’m using a Mac) but from what I’ve gathered this might not always be the case.

According users of this forum, parts of the game involve direct armed confrontations with guards. Violence of this sort certainly wasn’t part of the process of trying to flee from the socialist reign of terror as this would have been even more suicidal. Apparently it is also possible to run through barbed wire without getting injured, an aspect I find highly objectionable as one of the most gruesome deaths at the wall (or what was to become the wall) was caused but just that: Getting stuck in barbed wire, getting shot, bleeding to death.

These problems are increased by an age old problem: Trying to escape from East Germany certainly involved a lot of arbitrary factors – games rules don’t, otherwise that game wouldn’t be playable. Or to put it differently: Life’s not fair, games (mostly) are.

By speaking speaking of belittlement: Saving the “game” or a God mode weren’t options for these people who decided to take the ordeal of escaping upon themselves.

From what I could gather from the screenshots the problematic nature of this games also extends to its representation. Using Combine soldiers as an ersatz for East German border guards again is highly troublesome – just like using the iconic crowbar as a weapon – due to the connotations that spring up in our heads: The first thing I thought of was headcrabs.

As much as the creators of this mod should be applauded for trying there still are massive problems up ahead, but as a glimpse into games’ potential as a tool to teach it can be regarded as a thought-provoking – yet problematic – project.

-Jens

All images take from the Chrome Comic Book.

-Parker

Since the launch of CNW’s Social Media Release a few weeks ago, I’ve often been asked if including comments on the body of a release are a good idea, and if people should opt for them.

Comments are a great tool. If people react to your release in a positive manner, this could be reflected in the comments they leave, supportive of your brand or message.

However, there is the chance that someone will react negatively to your announcement. The fear of them leaving a critical or otherwise nasty comment is what is driving the uncertainty about using comments on a release.

Rather than being seen as a threat, I think that the negative comment should be seen as an opportunity. If one person is critical of your announcement. When they leave a negative comment, you have the chance to respond directly after it and in an official capacity. In a release without comments enabled, unhappy visitors might vocalize their feelings elsewhere, in places you can’t reach or might not be aware of. Further visitors to the release who might also be harboring the same feelings might read your response and be swayed.

-Parker

*

The 1920s, not only the “Roaring Twenties” but also the decade that saw the peak of the KKK, the rise of communism, the publishing of Mein Kampf and the prohibition – all events pointing to the social tensions of the time.

Finally one of the main, yet so far neglected causes of these misdemeanors could be identified: The Spanish Inquisition arcade game, still playable at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum. It is an absolutely terrifying torture simulator, allowing the mutilation of people whose only crime it is to hold different beliefs. Rumour has it that this game was the main reason behind the Bath School disaster.

Comments Jack Thompson: “If some wacked-out adult wants to spend his time playing The Spanish Inquisition, one has to wonder why he doesn’t get a life, but when it comes to kids, it has a demonstrable impact on their behavior and the development of the frontal lobes of their brain.”

-Jens