Yulbiz 2007 - Best of Montreal's Business Blogosphere
Yulbiz 2007 wrapped up last night at Cafe Melies with the Yulbiz November edition, featuring the release of the new book Pourquoi blogger dans un contexte d'affaires (Reasons to Blog in a Business Setting). After the jump (the read-more link), I've got the news, gossip and best of all - some cool pictures and video of Yulbiz November's participants! Plus, a wrap-up of my Yulbiz 07 experience and the people it's allowed me to meet.
I'm writing this from school and have unfortunately left the cards I was given last night at home. So if I forget to mention you, just drop a comment and I'll be sure to update this post.
After saying hi to my friend, expert internet marketer Michel Leblanc, and new acquaintance Mathieu Bélanger, of K3 Media web agency (more on K3 in a minute) who were standing outside (see picture above) I went in and spotted Eric Kucharsky (left), of TechnoMontreal whom you'll recall I met at an earlier Yulbiz. I took a picture, but he was in a conversation so I didn't want to interrupt too much.
To start things off, I sidled over to the cool camera lady from Canoe.ca. We talked about how she came to be working as a camerawoman and it turns out she studied biology and then journalism, with a view to getting into scientific journalism. That said though, she says she's having a blast at Canoe! I can't find the video on Canoe, she had no business cards and my memory isn't working so great on 5 hours sleep. So, if you want to help me out and comment to tell me her name, that would be great.
I caught up with Bruno Bhutto (please correct me if I'm misspelling that, Bruno), who was a panelist at FacebookCamp, where I also spoke on Facebook advertising. We had a fun chat and he told me about this photoshop community he's been with for a good 5 years, called Worth 1000. As in, "a picture is worth a thousand words."
Particularly cool are these two aggressive looking plants: Bang Bang and Revenge.
Bruno and I shot a video describing the site. He describes the contests on the site, mentions the mainstream media have picked up on it and more.
Stupid Blogger/Blogspot isn't letting me upload, so that'll have to come in a later edit.
Soon afterward, I caught my buddy Sylvain Carle in a shot with Bruno. Sylvain (and Michel) are co-authors of Pourquoi blogger along with some of the other folks. I picked up my copy last night and it's really looking good and enjoyable, though I haven't read it all yet (so maybe it sucks around Sylvain or Michel's chapters ... not! ;) ).
Sylvain also discussed his chapter of the book with me in a video, but that'll obviously have to wait. Speaking of which, how do you rotate video? I shot it with my handheld camera upright...
Pascal Veilleux of NSI and myself discussed what he and the gang are doing with corporate blogs and all, and it sounded quite exciting. Pascal's on my list of experts on corporate bloggers, so if that's your bag, you should go over and give him a shout. Again, I'll post the video later.
Further in, I sat down for a quick talk with my buddy Andres Restrepo, whom I also met at a previous Yulbiz (if you're no good at reading between the lines, the name of the game is consistency and frequency). He's now working for Ressac (smart move, Ressac!) where Julien Raby, who's now heading up Cossette's search marketing arm, used to work (btw, Julien, you guys need to rank for Cossette search marketing! Let me know when Cossette's at least got a specific page in place and I'll modify that link to SEOmoz's Service marketplace).
Passing by at that specific moment was another friend I made through Yulbiz, popular blogger (and videoblogger!) Philippe Martin, who's the go-to-guy for making and http://www.nayezpaspeur.ca">designing blogs! Notice that the link to his site is a deeplink. I used to just link to the homepage, but his design skills placed a tab to that part of the site above the fold and made me notice it! So there you go, he'll help you do better SEO too!
Following this I was fortunate enough to chat with my friend Nicolas Cossette, who blogs on SMO (aka SMM) and works at NVI Solutions. I also met a couple of new people. For the first time, Guillaume Bouchard, NVI's CEO, showed up as did his new hire, Samuel (don't think you told me your last name, I'm afraid). It was great talking to him and I think it's fair to say we both learnt something from each other (I learnt some tips on closing the sale, he learnt my credit card # ;) ). Here are Nicolas, Samuel, Guillaume and I:
See the FacebookCamp shirt I'm wearing (click the pick to enlarge)? That's from speaking at FacebookCamp Montreal, and the shirt and conference were partly sponsored by K3. Thanks a lot for the generosity Mathieu!
Anyways, if you're looking for SEOs who know the French market, besides Michel, you'd be hard pressed to find a better crew (Michel's not a crew, but you get the idea) than Go Referencement. (If you want something in English ... I'm outranking Guillaume and NVI for Montreal SEO ;). Write me: Gab at seoroi dot c o m.)
Next up I had a quick hello with Etienne Denis, CEO of 90 Degres (who's looking for a French editor for his company's content services). Yet another fellow I'd met at a previous Yulbiz! I've got a video with Etienne too.
About that time I caught up with a recent acquaintance and new friend, Claude Malaison. He's been involved with tech stuff since before I was born - literaly. Besides organizing Webcom Montreal and suchlike (he's the French Canadian Danny Sullivan!), he's President of Emergence Web, a boutique agency focused on Web 2.0 strategy. In any case, I pulled Claude into a pic with Nicolas, Philippe and Stephane Waffo (another new acquaintance and a cool dude :) ). I also got those fellows in a shot with Martin Lessard, a terrific blogger whose first chapter in the Pourquoi blogger book I'm really enjoying - check out Zero Seconde for more Web 2.0.
Left to right: Martin Lessard, Stephane Waffo, Philippe Martin and Nicolas Cossette.
Same order: Stephane (slightly cut out, sorry!), Philippe, Claude and Nicolas.
By the way, please don't read anything into the size of the pics. I'm just playing around with formatting and seeing Blogger's capacities (also trying to speed up load time), as I don't often get to do a post with pics.
As the night began to wind down, I saw my friends Kim Vallee, Muriel Ide, and Jerome Paradis. Muriel's started a jewelry line! Jerome's developing a Facebook App that he's nearly got finished! More info when it's out :). (Speaking of which, Martin's talking about a televised debate about Facebook at ZS.)
Here are Jerome, Kim (far right), Stephane and his friend whose name unfortunately escapes me at the moment (Stephane or Stephane's friend, if you read this, please comment to remind me) - but who happens to be a really good communicator. I think I bored his ear off for a half hour and he showed interest throughout!
Finally, I had the opportunity to meet the excellent Tristan Peloquin of Technaute. He's only started blogging since last March's Quebec elections, but as this brilliant fellow can attest, that means nothing. We emailed around the time of the elections on political marketing. Tristan, if you're reading this, Epiar's blog has the Presidential ROI thing I was telling you about. For my other readers, Tristan also wrote a chapter in the book, fyi, and from my previous reading of his writing, I'm sure it'll be great!
Here are some other posts on Yulbiz you might like
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bringing your camera was a smart move ! always nice to look at the pics and to know who do what