"You'll biz it up" with other IT business pros and develop your network of like-minded bloggers. That was certainly the theme of yet another succesful Yulbiz bash at cafe Melies, as dozens of Montreal business bloggers. Here's the low down [and dirty] on the cool people I chatted with at Yulbiz October 2007.
You need to read through to the end to make sure you hear about all the coolest people that matter in Montreal marketing and tech! (And then leave a comment.)
Sebastien regaled us with the story of how his girlfriend (conjointe gets lost in translation to English, please excuse me Sebastien) and he set up a screen capture movie on Second Life with actors playing out part of her youth/children's book. This genius marketing tactic was apparently a big success at a book fair in Sherbrooke. It's on sale at Mosaique.
Pascal's company has a great name, where I'm concerned: Never Stop Improving - NSI. Pretty appropriate for a company that is in the business of offering reviews and constructive criticism! And I need to give them my compliments for using a blog as the basis for their website!
Speaking of blogs, Vincent's company is selling them big-time! They've come up with a new CMS oriented to banks and conservative companies not at ease with open-source software and that prefer a proprietary solution. Thus, the multiple media content manager. We didn't get a chance to discuss it in much more depth unfortunately, but hopefully next Yulbiz we can speak about it some more!
Around the time I was hanging out with Vince, Pascal and Seba, Claude Malaison of emergence web and I traded a few words. You might recall that I couldn't remember his name from a previous Yulbiz... Well, I got his card this time! Claude is organizing Webcom (amongst others) and is excited as he's bringing in some great speakers!
Edit: I didn't get Jacques's card, but he wrote me his name and specialization in my agenda. Jacques Warren is an analytics expert and former reseller for Web Trends. He's got a handful of blogs, which, when updated, offer some good material. Consider this one (in French) on analyzing visitor paths.
Same Edit: Similarly, I didn't get Julien Niquet's card but what I did get was much more significant: a sneak peak at the future of banking. He's working on Colektivo. I'd say more, but I think it's hush to avoid getting the idea stolen. Julien and his project are absolutely a pair that need to be kept an eye on, because they're doing big things!
Soon afterwards, I was chatting with Olivier Niquet and Jean-Philippe Wauthier of Cent Papiers (a french play on words that I can't translate properly...). Consider it the french equivalent of Gooruze, Squidoo or Youmoz. (If you have no clue what I'm talking about, google those words.)
Another fascinating conversation was the one I had with Sophie Lachapelle of Infopresse. She's working on an article on how Quebec marketing and ad agencies make use of social networks. (I'll have a case study on SEO ROI about my own efforts and discuss other peoples' ad efforts on the site soon enough. Sneak preview: CTR is terrible! Stay tuned...)
Jonathan Stoikovitch and his friend Nico Stinghe got in a word edgewise (Nico handing a card over: "photographe" lol), but we didn't have very substantive conversations. Jon's got some interesting software for co-browsing available in any case.
And last but far from least (perhaps the most enjoyable conversation on the night) was with Nicolas Cossette. He's joined ranks with the enemy (kidding about the "enemy" thing... what I meant to say was "evil empire" haha - OKOK, relax, I'm joking ) but is nonetheless a very friendly guy. He commented on my SEO ROI blog a little while ago and we finally got to meet and have a chat :). I'd keep my eye on him, fellows, because he's a clever guy and I'm a fairly talent judge.
(I also need to mention Philippe Martin and Michel Leblanc, who, as usual, were the cool and courteous organizers of this month's Yulbiz. Also, a cheery-o to Geoffroi and Alain whom I saw but didn't get to chat with.)
I think we should make sure next YulBiz every blogger bring a friend as I did: it's so stimulating. Thanks for the report! It's allow me to follow other conversations I didn't have time to (hence, anyway, my blog name, zero seconde!) ciao
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I think we should make sure next YulBiz every blogger bring a friend as I did: it's so stimulating. Thanks for the report! It's allow me to follow other conversations I didn't have time to (hence, anyway, my blog name, zero seconde!) ciao