PodCampMontréal, Montréal’s biggest social media conference is in one month ahead, sept 11th and 12th.

The event is organized as a camp, meaning everyone is invited to present, all in informal settings. The format has been proven successful, with sessions ranging from blog marketing, social media monetization to discussions on the future of media, or social media 101 sessions. This year’s edition will probably have interesting sessions on Twitter, new services like Foursquare, and I expect also sessions on social media for mobile.

But Sylvain Grand’Maison (QuebecBalado Fono), one of the original instigators of the event, presents it better than me:

(view in HD on vimeo)

I like especially when he talks about Montréal in the latest 30 sec. of the video.

If you are in Montréal Sept 11th and 12th, don’t miss PodCampMontréal. I have been to the last edition, with insightful tips and also a way to learn about the latest trends, but as everyone knows, it’s a great way to meet in the corridors all the bloggers, journalists, new media citizens and influences from Montréal and other cities.

CakeMail, a Montreal-based email marketing service for agencies or consultants, has released just last week a major version of its software. The codename is Tiramisu and brings in all the shiny bells & whistles you could wish in an email marketing service: A/B testing, advanced analytics, dynamic content, an add-ons store, and more. The main new features are highlighted in a central page.

This version thus makes Cakemail more flexible to its users, especially power-users. For instance, a major marketing campaign targeting different demographics can be carried using the dynamic content feature. A marketer still doing market research and still working on advertising copy can make a smart use of  the A/B feature. Even more, managers can get raw market data from Cakemail’s new analytics function. The new features do not fail to highly impress, compared to the service’s debut.

There are also new features made for easier  reselling of the Cakemail. Client management and rebranding of the tool have been improved. Of course, Cakemail still has its unique advantages: available in multiple languages, and its pluggable dynamic back-end.

All in all, Tiramisu puts Cakemail proudly amongst CampaignMonitor or MailChimp, two very well-known newsletters and email marketing service. Go give it a try! And congrats to François Lane (@cakemail_ceo) and the Cakemail team!

Christine Renaud (@e180) as well as other supporting team members organized a 5 à 7 last tuesday, smartly named “5 à 7 «Marché des savoirs» – Réseau des entrepreneurs sociaux du Québec”, which is a rather catching & curious event name. I lost touch what she was doing with her e-180 startup, but the event looked like it had a purpose behind so I finally joined in.

There were lots going on, but the main concept was simple: match 2 individuals, one teacher and one learner. So attendees would chat to others who would have an interesting skill set on their name tags.

I found it interesting as a product validation mechanic. Lean development for instance encourages early customer validation, but most posts on the Internet focuses on putting online a homepage or a landing page and tracking conversion stats.

It strikes me that an offline event similar to what Christine Renaud would be much more efficient and faster than the classical homepage form. You get to see how people react and feel to your product and you know quickly if it has value to them. You can also improvise new “user experience” tactics to make things flow better. I found out for instance you need a mentor/community manager to actively match people.

Of course, this might difficult for certain kinds of web startups, but not impossible. Just setup a fun-looking event, invite potential users for drinks, observe & note interactions, and make it fun & light. Gaming and mobile startups would especially gain from this tool.

Ça venait de @jeanlucs lundi.

Oui encore une fois, un article qui n’a rien à avoir avec la technologie, et qui n’a rien à avoir avec Montréal, mais comme je suis en plein dans le marketing ces jours-ci, on a l’impression de se regarder dans un miroir, surtout la séquence dans la salle de contrôle.

Probablement une vidéo qui va être encore plus vrai dans 6 mois, comme je sais que le buzz et le marketing viral peut maintenant être contrôlé et généré.

Felipe Coimbra released last monday twtBizCard, an add-on service which allows twitter users to exchange business contacts with replies, a virtual handshake if you like.

The story is not so much about twtBizCard. Of course, the idea is interesting, since after all, LinkedIn does 15 million uniques a month. But for me, your twitter profile is already your business card in itself, with its quick bio, website, and also features for sending replies and messages. Meet someone, add to twitter, keep in touch, exchange tweets, and you’ve done already so much more than what a simple business card can do.

So why did I write this entry on MontrealTechWatch? Well if you go through twtapps’s history and if you know Felipe Coimbra, you realize that twtBizCard is actually the 10th Twitter application in 5 months, which makes it about 2 new twitter applications every month. And you know that with that speed of development, twtapps is bound to get the jackpot, at one point of another. twtpolls, twtvite, all of those are already well trafficked, but I’m sure there will be one which will get massive traffic.

In comparison, a heavyweight app like TechEntreprise, or any other web app managed by n-person teams, seem to be developed in slow motion. One could argue that those “traditional” apps have more stickiness, user data history, and rich interfaces, etc. but developing twitter applications undeniably has a big advantage in release cycles and as a result, in overall products risks. Felipe Coimbra might not even be optimizing for stickiness: just view the quick description, and click a button to interact with the app, and voilà, you’re back to twitter. Those quick, short burts of interactions might be the future of web applications.

Interestingly, Felipe also makes I-stats, a real-time web analytics software. I’m assuming Felipe relies on those detailed data to do optimization and maximize metrics such as user interactions through split tests for instance.

While I was writing those articles, it struck me how practical for me (and the reader) they are. It’s an objective list of what’s up in Montréal, and could get people in the lopp, without necessarily reading long reviews or without me spending one hour or more to write an article.

In the age of Twitter, friendfeed, never-ending flood of emails, and activity streams on every new website, where everyone’s attention span is now in minutes instead of hours, I think this is a very good format that should now be on MTW. It’s the sort of thing you’d read in the morning, with tidbits of what’s up about technology or startups in town. See it as me being a curator, and it will be then up to you to follow links and get your own opinion about a particular piece of news.

One added advantage is that much more technologies, events, startups, and entrepreneurs can be highlighted on MTW thanks to this new feature. This is important since I think everyone should have an equal opportunity, regardless if they’re backed from a big VC fund, or if it’s just a programmer who is working alone “in his garage”.

Send a tweet at @mtw if you want to spread a community news, an event, a new job listing, new features for a product or a web service, updates on key people, or major blog posts. I won’t rely 100% on Twitter to get information, since they are many other sources, but Twitter has the replies tab which is handy for later reference, without necessarily the engagement you need in emails.

Of course, long articles and reviews are still going to be part of the blog if there’s a new major startup launch or a new major event coming up.

Open up the firehose then!

Kudos to Ashkan Karbasfrooshan’s watchmojo, one of the biggest web video producers in the world, which announced they’ve reached viewership of 33,333,333. Ashkan has obviously a sense for communication and show. I’m sure he’s could work in the PR department of General Motors and still find a way to put a positive spin on things:

It took the company two and a half years to reach the milestone. To put the 33 million figure into perspective:

• Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird and One Hundred Years of Solitude have all sold 30 million copies since being published in 1936, 1960 and 1967 respectively.
• Nintendo has sold 30 million Wii consoles since 2006.
• The Grand Theft Auto video game series have sold 30 million copies since launching in 1997.
• The average Friends or Seinfeld episode and the finales of American Idol garnered around 30 million viewers each.
• Each year at baseball stadiums, 30 million hot dogs are eaten.
• Each week, 30 million people visit Starbucks.
• Canada, Uganda, Morocco and Algeria each have just over 30 million inhabitants.

We were 200 marketers with a passion for internet communications at MIXX Canada yesterday. I came back home with some nice takeaways even if some presentations were more sales pitches than passionate speeches.

(more…)

Michelle Blanc just finished her conference at MIXX Canada. I’m sitting next to Patrice Guy Martin and Adele McAlear. We are using the tag #mixxmtl on Twitter. Jacques Hervé Roubert from Nurun is next on stage. Video: 5 Ways panel is starting now.

- Adrien O’Leary

Bloom Digital has launched officially late this week, with the announced goal to address the current issues in online advertising.

The Bloom Digital team comes straight from Cossette, a leading integrated marketing agency, and as such, their team is composed of communication, advertising and marketing experts, as well as key technologists (Yves Poiré, Vlad Stesin, Bosko Milekic among others) . On their initial blog post, they’ve recognized the failure of current advertising platforms, unapplicable because of media hyperfragmentation and the very nature of social media, blogs and social networks. It’s well known for instance that Google AdWords is the worst for focused blogs or web startups. It’s often irrelevant, un-engaging, and can even bring a negative value; unless you have a mass audience, with millions of pageviews.

Saying that their vision is a new paradigm would be far-fetched, but it’s quite refreshing to see that one of Canada’s biggest communication agency recognized the problems of the market and launched the BloomDigital upstart. I’m especially looking forward to the platform they are building for blogs. Web publishers, startups and web entrepreneurs building online audiences and looking to monetize via ads should also be on the outlook for their platform. Of course, building this platform is a challenge in itself. Traditionally, leading brands frown upon advertising on small “unnaccountable” web destinations, preferring established websites such as newspapers. But if there’s a team in Montreal who can do it, it’s this team, with their expertise in putting together technology/publishers/ad networks and its advertising expertise.