Categories: Articles

Geeked Out At Geek Dinner Toronto IV

It was quite the night at Geek Dinner Toronto IV tonight.
After the AIMS Canada event, Should Your Company Be Podcasting?, a group of close to forty Toronto Digerati headed over to Marcel’s on King Street where we commandeered the top floor and created conversation heat in what was very chilly room (from a temperature point of view).
A special thanks are in order to Kathryn Lagden of AIMS Canada – Association of Internet Marketing and Sales and Julia Brown (correction: Julia Stein), the Sophisticated Bohemian and PR Flack from Fleishman Hillard, for hooking up the location (As Borat would say, “great success”).
We had multiple tables that mixed the likes of Podsafe music artists with Bloggers, Podcasters and other new media mavens. I was fortunate enough to have One Degree Founder and Editor, Ken Schafer, on my right. We spent most of dinner yapping about DemoCamp and Technorati to Podcasting and a deep discussion about how all of the content we are creating online (along with the people we link to) fosters this very interesting and unique legacy that will not only live on forever, but will also be able to tell our individual story in a way a corporate bio or eulogy never could.
Imagine following someone’s LinkedIn, Blog posts, flickr sets, Podcasts and MySpace page. Think of the depth in trails of who they are linked to, what they appreciated and who this individual connected others through. When that person passes, this legacy lives on – no broken links, except for the “big one.”
You can be sure that Ken and I went deeper on this topic and it got me thinking about the true power of social media and social networks. We had a room full of people, connected mostly through an online conversation. Not defined by demographics or psychographics. Not defined by sex, race or age. These people are defined by who they are at their core and the people who connect with that.
It’s an interesting social experiment and even more fascinating when applied to marketing: who is your target market?
More likely than not, it’s a diverse group of people who are open to your message. A specific tribe – almost a family. Marketers need to raise the bar and engage these people because of what their interests are, as opposed to who they are.
I could not even tell you if the food was good or bad. I can’t recount what the temperature was. I can tell you that the stories and conversations are still dancing in my head.
If you think Geek Dinners are all about geeks, you clearly misunderstood the self-deprecating title.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.