Goodbye, CNW

After two and a half years of working for CNW Group, I've made the difficult decision to leave and pursue another opportunity. I say it was difficult decision because CNW has been more than just an amazing place to work. I spent the majority of my waking hours since 2007 at the company's Bay Street headquarters, and the people here have become more than just colleagues. I mean, I've probably talked on the phone more with people in CNW's Western Canada offices than I have with my mom in the past few years.

CNW, and the people there, gave me a ton of great opportunities that I might not have had elsewhere, and for that I'm truly thankful. When I was just a guy with a tan, sleeping on my friend's couch, Laurie Smith (now CNW's VP of Culture and Communication) took a chance on me and offered me a position as a Communications Coordinator. Since then, I've had a few different roles in a couple of different departments. In each case, my colleagues and managers were always supportive of what I was doing.

I will always look back at my time with CNW fondly, and while I certainly enjoyed the work I did there, I'm going to miss the people that worked there more.

Thanks for the great time, CNW. I hope we keep in touch.

Yours Truly,

-Parker Mason

P.S.: As sad as I am to be leaving CNW, I'm also super-excited to start the next stage of my life and career. I'll fill you in on the details in a week or so (I'll still be in Toronto). You can always reach me via e-mail (parker@blogcampaigning.com) or at Facebook.com/ParkerMason.

Let's Move On

I was pretty happy about Jeremiah Owyang's recent post about how he was invited to give a talk about social media to a large company. Rather than focus on the why and the what of the social media universe, Jeremiah says that he will focus on the 'how' in the talk. (However, I'm not a fan about the way he measures his own success. People might get talking and brain-storming, but that doesn't mean that upper-management is going to shoot their ideas down.)

And the how is exactly what I think is missing from nearly every social media guide I've read, and nearly every conference, talk or, event about social media and web 2.0 that I've been to.

I'm pretty sure that if I hear about how great the conversation is one more time, I'm going to resign from this blog. I want some solid facts, some actual stories about how social media has been successfully integrated into corporate culture, a marketing campaign, anything. We all know that it's great, that's why we're here. Let's stop patting ourselves on the back, and let's start talking tactics, specifics, details. Its good to know that despite the endless self-congratulating about how great the conversation is, there are still a few people with their heads on their shoulders like Jeremiah. People who know that we need to move on from this endless talking about "what" and "why" we have this brand new web, people who talk about the "how."

At BlogCampaigning, we aspire to talk about the how. I try and throw out concrete ideas as often as possible with the hope that someone can add to them. Espen puts out consistent statistics about politics, pulled from a ton of sources, and Jens' posts on video games are light years ahead of what any y'all are doing.

-Parker