Got that from Andy Beal’s blog few months ago. Found it really funny since at the same time I was leaving our sales department at NVI to focus on Marketing Account Management. While I used to be Director of Sales & Communications, I’m now Director of Accounts.  Consequently, I’m involved in all of our client’s internet marketing strategy. On a daily basis, I manage a kick-ass team of 7 Account Managers.

Where I’ve been?

Yeah I know, I was just not there during the last couple of months. I mean, I wasn’t blogging, not updating most of my social profiles and was having a hard time keeping up to date with a lot of my RSS feeds.  So there are some random thoughts about different things that happened between July ’09 and January 2010.

HostingCon 2009

August 2009:  I was in Washington for the biggest hosting related conference. It was my first time there and I really enjoyed it.  Simon Rouillier, NVI’s CMO was invited to present a Top Social Media Strategies conference so we took the opportunity to network with existing clients and connect with some prospects.

I quickly found out that the hosting industry is way more mature then nthe SEO/SEM industry: players have been there for more than 10 years and companies such as Microsoft, Parallels & other cloud hosting companies are investing tons of money to promote their products and  programs.

One session that I’ve particularly like during the 3-days conference was the one about the IPV6.  A little bit like everyone in the web, I already knew that IPv6 is the “next generation” protocol to replace the current version Internet Protocol IP Version 4 (“IPv4″) : we’re currently lacking of IP adressess. I found very interesting to hear  the session’ speaker preaching to hosting companies about the fact that they won’t have any other choice but to offer IPV6 to their client base right away.

SMX East 2009

October 2009: It was in July when we’ve submitted a pitch to have our Analytics expert presenting at the Search Marketing Expo conference in New York. When the pitch got accepted we quickly decided to spend few days in New York for this event considered as one of the main of the SEO/SEM industry.

The show was good even if we all felt that the venue was more targeting agency people than corporations. Besides our analytics expert, Account Manager CT Moore was also giving a talk about Search Engine Marketing and Your Affiliate Program. Here’s also a shot interview that I gave to WebmasterRadio about Analytics for Social Media.

SES Chicago 2009

Early December 2009: Chicago was cold and windy (what’s new) when we landed there for the Search Engine Strategies event. We decided to try the Chicago SES show mainly based on the very good ROI that we got from the Toronto event back in June. Simon, Guillaume, Jonathan and myself were there to run the booth and to connect with everyone from the industry. While I’ve managed to met with a lot of interesting people during the three days of the conference, I didn’t get the chance to visit the city at all, that’s too bad since I received very good comments on how Chicago is supposed to be a great place to be.

From all the panels presented, my favorite one was definitely the PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle. Just by the fact that we had qualified people such as David Naylor, Rand Fishkin and Michael Grey interacting during that session, it really brought the debate to another level. I’ve taken notes while listening at that presentation so I might publish something on that in the future. Here again in Chicago , I’ve given an interview to WebmasterRadio plus another one to Byron Gordon from SEO-PR.

C’est parfois incroyable de constater comme tout le monde connaît Cossette.

Il ne se passe pas une semaine sans que l’on me demande si j’ai un quelconque lien de parenté avec la compagnie. Vous devriez même voir la déception de certains qui, lors d’événements de réseautage (du genre ou l’on se promène avec un tag ”my name is” dans le cou) m’abordent en pensant entamer une discussion avec un employé de la plus grande boîte de com au pays. Hé non, à  part de partager le même nom de famille et de venir de Québec, il n’y a pas grand chose qui me lie avec le monde de Cossette, du moins pas au premier coup d’oeil.

J’écris ”au premier coup d’oeil” car dans un passé lointain (du genre en 1997) j’aspirais déjà à une brillante carrière en publicité – bien qu’à  ce moment je ne connaissais pratiquement rien du métier sinon qu’il existait une boîte partageant le même nom que celui de mon père. C’est finalement suite à  des études en Sciences, Lettres et Arts et puis en administration des affaires (marketing) que je choisis un parcours plus près des ventes et du marketing que de la publicité et des communications.

Ce que je trouve aujourd’hui intéressant avec Cossette c’est que la société représente désormais le symbole d’une industrie. De fait, s’élevant désormais au rang de one of the largest marketing communications company in the world (as per Wikipedia), la boîte fait figure de géant qui comme le note Marie-Claude Ducas chez Infopresse, traverse, comme beaucoup d’agences, une zone de turbulences et qui à Montréal, a perdu au cours des derniers mois plusieurs gros comptes: une partie du mandat de Bell, celui de Molson, celui du Groupe Pages Jaunes. Sans compter que GM, un de leurs principaux clients, ne va pas particulièrement bien…

Dans un même ordre d’idées, Sophie Cousineau de La Presse ajoute que depuis qu’il a touché un sommet de 13,39$ en juin 2007, le titre de Cossette dégringole à la Bourse de Toronto. Il ne valait plus que 2,78$ le 20 mai dernier. Or, la récession, qui est sans pitié pour les contrats de publicité (pensez à General Motors), n’explique pas tout. Cossette a perdu d’importants mandats, notamment son contrat exclusif avec Bell Canada, qu’elle partage avec trois autres agences.

Ayant moi-même récemment travaillé avec Molson et McDonald’s toujours dans le cadre de mandats n’étant pas octroyé à Cossette, je suis à même de constater que l’entreprise semble avoir du mal à saisir plusieurs opportunités notamment celles liées à l’interactif et au Web. Il sera donc particulièrement intéressant de suivre la présente bataille pour le contrôle de la compagnie.

À mon humble avis, l’industrie de la communication-marketing québécoise, tout droit issu impunément d’une relation inscestueuse, de par le nombre d’ex-Cossette travaillant maintenant chez la compétion ou encore chez le client, devrait se trouver d’une part vivement concernée par les événements et d’une autre part concertée par ce qui arrive à leur symbole, jadis fort et puissant.

I’ve just decided to leave Facebook.

Starting as of today I will delete a contact a day. I used to have 318 friends, I’m now at 317 and by the end of 2009 I should have cancelled all my connexions.

Update (June 3rd): Not that easy to do so, since everyone that I’m deleting is sending me a friend request to connect with them… Anyway I’m currently at 259 friends.

Poste permanent basé à Montréal. Vous possédez un baccalauréat en marketing ou en communication. Vous avez 3 à 5 ans d’expérience en marketing interactif (Web) ainsi qu’une expérience en gestion d’équipe. Parfaitement bilingue autant à l’oral qu’à l’écrit, vous êtes un bon communicateur et un fin diplomate. Vous avez beaucoup d’initiative et votre talent en idéation vous amène souvent à être reconnu comme un précurseur. Mordu d’internet, vous êtes à l’affut des courants et tendances de l’heure et savez les exploiter de manière à les rendre profitables. Vous êtes également habiles à mettre en place des outils de marketing et de communication (B2C et B2B). Côté technique, vous maîtrisez les outils de monitoring statistique et de performance. (voir description du poste sur le site de NewAd.)

I remember myself two weeks ago leaving for a 15 days vacation and wondering if I’m gonna be able to make it. The challenge was real: living without any online connection while enjoying an hiking/camping trip in the beautiful national parks of Banff and Jasper both in the Canadian Rockies.

Am I addicted to the internet?

Considering the fact that my work requires that I spend minimum 8 hrs a day logged to the net and that the first thing that I do when coming back from work is turning on my computer, I would say that it might seem that I have some kind of cyberaddiction. While addictions can be healthy, unhealthy, or a mixture of both, according to the experts, the situation becomes pathological when you start neglecting important things in your life because of this behavior. The problem with this so-called addiction not yet recognized by the DSM-IV (the bible for all symptoms and treatments of mental disorders) is that, like Dr Nathan Shapira states, individuals that exhibit problematic internet use often suffer from other psychiatric disorders. Let’s just think about what people are doing besides of working on the net: adult entertainment, online casinos, gaming, social networking; these paterns of behavior can easily be associate with problems that people might also face into the offline world.

Another point of view on the topic is the one from Kim Young, who became an authority in this field and thinks that cyberaddiction is a real disorder. Young wrote an important article that became a reference in cyberaddiction, she even gives a short exercise with questions to answers that will give you a rough idea if you are considered as dependents. So is CyberAddiction real, who knows? Like many things coming from the web, I guess it’s too soon to tell.

What do you do when you are on vacation?
Back to my two weeks challenge: No I didn’t made it! After a full week without any connection, I had to go check my credit card balance and my banking services… I took also the time to go through (really quickly) some of my emails. Besides this 10 minutes rush, I felt ok for another full week. Anyway, what’s the worst from being apart from the online world? Yes I’ve feared that when I’ll be back everybody would have changed from twitter to identi.ca but it didn’t quite happen (I mean not yet). I’ve also lost all my karma points but think that I’ll take the opportunity to leave plurk, BTW anybody wants my plurkbuddy twitter account? So what did I missed really, Praized has finally launched their API, bravo to you guys. What else? I guess I’ll see when I’ll catch up with the 1000+ stories waiting for me into my feed reader.

Further info on Cyberaddiction and Pathological Internet Use

Internet Addiction:the emergence of a new clinical disorder by Kimberly S. Young (University of Pittsburgh)
Is the Internet Addictive, or Are Addicts Using the Internet? by King, S. A. (1996)
Computer and Cyberspace Addiction by Suler, J. (2004)
Healthy and Pathological Internet Use by John Suler, CyberPsychology and Behavior, 2, 385-394, 1999
Internet Addiction Disorder: Causes, Symptoms,and Consequences by Jennifer R. Ferris, Psychology, Virginia Tech
“On the Internet No One Knows I’m an Introvert”: Extroversion, Neuroticism, and Internet Interaction by Yair Amichai-Hamburger, Galit Wainapel, Shaul Fox. CyberPsychology & Behavior. April 1, 2002

Who’s that Regular Everyday Normal Montrealer with over 4.5 millions views of his clips on YouTube and expected to become the next big thing in the States? Jon Lajoie, besides of staring in RadCan’s L’Auberge Du Chien Noir, is apparently on his way to become our first local comedian using social Medias and more especially YouTube in order to leverage an international career. More to come since he is currently negotiating with majors such as HBO to get something big.

Mighty ducks saved by montreal’s police officer

Forget about the police brutality cases and the more recent riots following Boston Bruins elimination. When they are not caught smoking in their cars, the Montreal police is always there to protect and serve!

MONTREAL CANADIENS 1993 ROAD TO THE CUP

It’s probably been too long since we have won the cup. Great memories Enjoy! (shorter version here)

Malajube “Montreal -40°C”

First band ever from Montreal making it to the top of the week on YouTube’s list with their Montreal -40°C song. see also Dave’s version with lyrics translated and Valgod1983′s cover.

From New York City to Montreal

IMHO: The way that Tourisme Montreal should promote the city.

Nadia Comaneci, Montréal 1976 TEN !!!

Yes, Montreal was once host of the Olympics and Nadia Queen of the Games!

Montreal: Two Minute Tour

Still the best Tour of the city that I’ve found. Informative if you plan to visit the city.

Snowboarding in the city – Sunset Films – Montreal

Bonus: love snowboarding, didn’t think that Montreal was offering that much opportunities.

Image Credit : blork

A day in a life : Jeudi 13 Mars 2008
6.08am: Woke up, got out of bed, essaie de pas réveiller celle qui dort à mes côtés parce que c’est sa journée de congé
6.12am: verre de jus et céréales, besoin de mon fix: lecture emails, rss reader, réseaux sociaux,…
7.09am: douche + préparation à partir, descend l’acadie puis parc, arrive au centre-ville
7.51am: cherche un endroit pour acheter des muffins, n’en trouve pas, me présente sans muffins à mon groupe d’échange Think Thank de l’AMM
8.05am: premier meeting avec Claude, Diane, Stéphane et moi (on cherche d’autres gens pour réseauter sur le développement d’affaires en marketing)
9.51am: rencontre très agréable, doit retourner au bureau, pogné dans le traffic en arrière d’un camion de livraison arrêté et qui occupe l’unique voie dans la rue
10.15am: découvre qu’il y a une SAQ dans le même édifice que notre bureau, retour à la job
12.26am: retour de dîner, rencontre mes twitter friends: SammyQc, isaSuperstar et eduplessis au coin St-Laurent et Mont-Royal
12.33: reçoit un appel d’une fille qui a le même nom que ma chatte grise, 1ere fois que ça arrive, curieux… retour à la job
2.15pm: meeting de pre-prod avec les gens de Mount-Royal Walsh pour débuter la refonte de leur site, efficace
3.57pm: meeting over, doit faire propostion pour site tourisme Bas-Saint-Laurent, faire un suivi sur le dossier des RP de NVI, faire plusieurs suivis
5.01pm: je vois YulbizQc sur mon agenda, je crois que ça sera pour une prochaine fois, j’ai une pensée pour les gens de Qc qui tente cette fois ci de mettre l’événement à 17h plutôt qu’à 19h, je crois que c’est une bonne idée, faudrait voir comment ça été
5.26pm: me pousse du bureau, monte parc, puis l’acadie
5.51pm: back at home, prend un courte marche pour aller porter un dvd + aller chercher une bouteille de vin, souper avec Mary
8.01pm: arrive aux grands explorateurs à Laval et me rend compte que le jeudi ça commence pas à la même heure que le mercredi, j’arrive donc à l’entracte et manque la moitié du show
8.42pm: écoute le film et me rappelle ma croisière sur la côte ouest du Mexique en novembre 2006
9.33pm: back at home, spending some quality time w/ my love
11.41pm: dodo

voilà pour les gens qui se demandent ce que je fais dans la vie, c’est une journée pas mal typique.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/

Entering the world of non-business blogging

Most of the people that I know are blogging for business related reasons. In fact, it becomes obvious that blogging can be more than efficient to create a communication with your users, customers, providers, fans, employees… By giving people a quite easy way to open the discussion with your organisation, not only they will take part in the discussion but they will involve themselves (if it’s not already done) into the creation of their own personal space on the web. I spent part of yesterday going through some of these personal spaces, journals and other web logs created by Montrealers. I’d like to share what I have found with you in the following post.

Who is blogging in Montreal?

It could be anybody. I mean, seriously: it could be the teacher of your kids, the person who is coming to your place to fix your mechanics, the student sitting beside you in your literature class or that guy at your job that you`re talking once a day over the phone. What are they blogging about? I would say their life: work, happiness, failures, love, lifestyle,intensity, feelings… Let’s take a quick look a some of the most visited blogs in the city and others that I found interesting).

1. Midnight Poutine: Montrealers need Midnight Poutine. It’s a personal ongoing account of the city’s happenings. It’s a delicious high-fat source of rants, raves and musings. … It is a blog about Montreal music, arts, film, events, people, places and other happenings.

2. Vu d’ici – seen from here: Un blog, un collage d’idée, de photos, de pensées & observations, un magazine, un podcast, un videocast. Your daily dose of inspiration – for late and early adopters – since 03/2002. MC describes herself as an artist interested in people, life, technology, and the creative potential of web publishing tools.

3. Blork Blog: This blog turned seven years old on December 27. Hard to categorize, the blog was nominated in 6 categories at the Canadian Blog Awards ’06:best blog, best photo/art blog, best personal blog, best blog post, best blog post series, best activities bog. Still about Montreal lifestyle but coming from somebody that was born and raise in Nova Scotia.

4. Fagstein: Steve Faguy describes himself has a twenty-something geek freelance journalist who lives in Montreal. I would say that if trad journalism has difficulties to reach a younger audience, that’s partly because of blogs like his where you can find all the news about the city plus a lot more.

5. Histoires de geek: Seen on his blog, msg to his girlfriend : Comment ça va se matin? Moi, présentement, je commence à être saoul. On a eu beaucoup de plaisir ce soir/nuit/matin (il est 5h46 présentement) à boire et niaiser. Trois personnes de Lachute on décidé qu’il était plus tuff que mois sur l’alcool mais bon, as usual, il se sont poussé avant d’être humiliés… Tu sais comme s’est!

6. Amours, vertiges et chlorophylle: carnets naïfs d’un homme face a la vie et au VIH. I won’t say more, please read the first note that he wrote explaining why he’s blogging.

7. LightSpeedChronicles: She is a video game producer living in Montreal, talks about her life in general, running, and quite often speaks of gaming and game development to a non-gamer audience. They call her lightspeedchick… find out why on her blog.

Your blog DNA

So many blogs, so many reasons to write, to publish… As seen on Zero Seconde, here’s my top 10 9 reasons why I blog: 1-To communicate, 2-To define myslef, 3-To learn, 4-To network, 5-To be seen, 6-To inform, 7-To sell, 8-To influence, 9-To remember. May I ask you whats are yours?

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This post was mainly inspired by the feedback that I received on my blog lately, I was asked to share about or experiences working into internet marketing. Few days ago, NVI (Guillaume) had a meeting with the whole marketing management of a company offering several of the most popular brands in Canada. One of the vice-president’s questions was about understanding social media marketing (who’s reading blogs, what are they?-blogs-, who’s commenting?). These questions were justified considering that their top marketing agency that they deal with advises them the best they can but sometimes doesn’t have answers to questions such as, where should we go?, how can we reach our customers, what should avoid and why?…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slyder/

Montreal social media marketing blog in 2007

I started blogging few months ago without any specific strategy to experience what blogging was all about. I began writing about events in Montreal related to the internet marketing industry: BarCamp Montreal 3, Facebook Camp, Interactive to the max, Webcom, Webcamp, Yulbiz,… but the articles that have received the most attention viewers were those with topics non-related to Montreal and focused on social media marketing (Is digital interactivity changing marketing and The rise of social media marketing). But regardless the visibility, the most valuable thing that blogging gave me is the opportunity to meet a lot of people here in Montreal (mostly bloggers).

Happy New Year 2008

I’d like to take the opportunity to wish them a wonderful year 2008 and tell them that even if I’m not commeting on their blog, I still pay attention to everything they write. So let’s start with the Yulbiz gang: Philippe Martin, Martin Ouellette, Claude Malaison, Michel Leblanc, Mathieu Bélanger, Kim et Jerome. People that I met randomly in different activities : Pierre-Antoine Fradet, Gab SEO Goldenberg, Jonathan Moquin, Jonathan Stoikovitch, Heri Rakotomalala, Simon Law, Michelle Sullivan, Mitch Joel, Joseph Thornley, Sylvain a frog Carle, Jean-Marc Langevin, Marc Laporte, Patrick Tanguay, Guillaume Brunet, Mylène Forget. Since I don’t have any blogroll, I’ll continue my list of Montrealers that I’m following via my feed reader (and that I’d surely like to have a quick chat with all of them in 2008): Eric Kucharsky, David Hamel, Pierre Coté, Ben Yoskovitz, Marc Snyder, Pierre Bouchard, Vincent Abry, Yves Williams, Martin Lessard, Alexandre Taillefer, Eric Baillargeon, Andres Restrepo.

To all of you, I wish you the best with your family, and of course your projects and business.

Special wishes and thanks to Guillaume Bouchard who introduced me to the internet marketing and nicely brought me on his amazing crew at NVI.

Looking forward at 2008 (things to achieve)

1. Structure and lead our sales department
2. Find myself a clear role into our internet marketing team
3. Define a strategy for MontrealSocialMedia.com
4. Make Third Tuesday Montreal a success
5. Plan an event for SEO in Montreal (maybe related to la journée Infopresse on SEM, don’t know yet)