I was perusing the Association of Internet Marketing & Sales website (nice new blog, by the way!) and saw this listing for a talk that Shel Holtz is giving on September 20th. So of course I immediately bought a ticket!

Details are as follows:

How Social Media is Changing Everything You Know……and what you should be doing about it! [I added the “!”]

Wednesday September 20th, 2006

Business is changing. Technology has provided the means for people and communities to assume control of messages. For organizations to succeed in this new era, they need to cede control of the message and learn how to participate in the conversation. It’s no small challenge.

There will be lots of time for Q&A so bring your questions. After the presentation we’ll continue the discussion over drinks and appetizers.

I’m as interested in hearing what Shel has to say as I am in who shows up. Hope I’m not the only one there!

Well, our latest success story is happening as you read. A local candidate in the municipal elections (and when I say local – I mean it literally. We have discovered that we live about two blocks from one another), Julia Kollek was referred to us by a former colleague of mine from my newsroom days. As a candidate for City Council, Julia’s budget was limited, but we wanted to work with here, so we were pleased to be able to come up with a solution that was both affordable and high-profile: a blog, of course!

Randy has created a stunning template design, and we’re just waiting on final confirmation of what content she’d like to include before moving off to programming. In the meantime, we’ve slapped up the standard Blogger template as a place-holder, which is better than nothing. But just you wait until her custom template goes up – I will post a link here, it is eye-poppingly gorgeous and professional! We’ve come up with a great symbol for her to use throughout the campaign (her slogan is “It’s time for a Breath of Fresh Air“) – a blue sky with snow-white clouds. Talk about impact. Can’t wait to see it live and in action – Julia herself is really excited about the feedback component, and hopes to hear a lot from her constituents. We’ll see just how wired Dundas actually is.

UPDATE: Julia also had some challenges in bringing her team together in terms of both scheduling and collaboration. So we set up a wiki for her to facilitate communication. I’ve used PB Wiki in the past, but this time we’ve tried wikispaces. I’d like to see how usabilty and reliability compare.

Final Update: Well, the election’s come and gone – Julia was up against a well-known incumbent who’s been involved in local politics fpr more than 20 years and hasn’t lost an election in the last decade. How’d she do? She came within 250 votes of kicking his butt. Well done, Julia – I can’t wait until next time!