It’s hard to watch a movie by Stephen Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, or starring Brad Pitt, J-Lo, or even (gasp) Justin Bieber without seeing product placements from companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nike, RIM, Dell, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and others. On screen stars are using iPhones, iPads, iPods, Android phones, and you will soon even see Motorola tablets and RIM Playbooks. You might even see Shane Schick on the big screen.
<- This is the infamous Mr. Schick
Of course nothing in the above paragraph is really relevant to the contest, but a brief experiment to see how Blogging Idol is tracked on the Internet. The speed at which Google indexes these posts is phenomenal, but more interesting is how quickly people searching the Internet actually locate our humble blogs when we insert key words. I once used the term “motorcycle” in a tweet, and within minutes had comments from Harley Davidson.
Blog or tweet about Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe, or Elizabeth May, and you’ll soon see increased activity.
I’ve seeded this post with a number of terms, and we’ll see what kind of activity this creates. The following search terms have already brought a number of people to the Blogging Idol site in the last 7 days:
| blogging idol | |
| one ring to rule them all | |
| jive software | |
| ucorder canada | |
| playbook contest | |
| should i buy a playbook | |
| vernor vinge true names | |
| rim future | |
| playbook contest canada | |
| tom rand | |
| infrastructure as a service | |
| software as a service versus platform as | |
| *services platform cloud* | |
| outlook stops working | |
| win blackberry playbook | |
| modx + how does client modify site | |
| toronto start-up resources | |
| outlook connector didn’t work for me | |
| future of rim | |
| blog idol | |
| why read | |
| the sale of nokia and motorola decrease | |
| why my hotmail stopped suddenly working | |
| idol blog | |
| blackberry playbook launch party toronto | |
| rim case study analysis | |
| blackberry playbook toronto twitter cont | |
| true names | |
| rim case study | |
| where can i buy the entourage edge in to | |
| blogidol.ca | |
| true names vernor vinge | |
| great playbook giveaway from rim | |
| ontario technology startup | |
| cloud and copyright | |
| iaas companies toronto | |
| why do i need a playbook | |
| blogidol/ca | |
| don sheppard | |
| technology adoption in canada | |
| cloud computing copyright | |
| application-fluent networking | |
| why should i buy a rim playbook | |
| rim playbook | |
| types of cloud computing | |
| modx and saleforce | |
| application fluent network | |
| ilia lobsanov 2011 | |
| product development fail case | |
| should i buy an ipad or a playbook |
As an IT leader, we need to be very aware of how the Internet works. If you haven’t done any work with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I would recommend you put it on your “I need to learn this” list.
One of the key strategies of being a CIO is being effective at “telling your story”. You need to advertise the successes of your team, not only to build credibility within your organization, but to build credibility with your network of partners and colleagues. Having a web presence (Twitter, Blogging, etc.) is one strategy that is easy to implement. Don’t be a shameless tagger, but do make sure you mention the technologies you are using, and through the magic of the Internet, you should soon be connected with a group of people with similar interests.
While I'm currently the CIO for Appleby College in Oakville (the best IT job in Canada), I've had a great ride in a number of positions in various locations. I've lead a team of more than 100 staff at Sheridan supporting a constituency of 50,000 users, I've been part of the founding team building a brand new medical school in Northern Ontario based completely around distributed education, I've started 3 companies, consulted internationally, drove my gorgeous wife crazy moving around all over, raised 2-1/2 great kids (I'll round it up when the final one leaves home), and occasionally scratch the ear of our butt ugly dog. My craft is not IT, but building IT organizations that support challenging and new ways to do things. I am utterly convinced that we as IT leadership need to dramatically change how IT is delivered, before we get relegated to a costly overhead department. In the midst of all this fun, I've had the distinction of being awarded the inaugural 2010 IT Leader of the Year (SME) Award from Computerworld Canada for my work at Appleby College. I'm humbled by the honor and thankful that some of my ideas actually make sense to someone.
