This weekend, I escaped to the Caledon Hills to visit friends and take part in their giant outdoor Easter egg hunt! Having not since participated in a proper Easter egg hunt since I was twelve years old, I found this mission to be quite fun. The task: find as many eggs for your team as possible. The winning team receives a giant basket of chocolate goodies.

Our team did win but of course the winnings were split by everyone. Happy Easter!

Cindy Gallop, an advertising and brand consultant I saw speak at Mashable Connect 2012 will be speaking. I thoroughly enjoyed watching her present. She was easily one of the most entertaining and engaging speakers at Mashable Connect and I know she will bring her spark back to DMS.

I’ll be participating on the panel Going Social Live: Real-Time Marketing and Engagement Through Social Media from 11:40AM – 12:30PM on March 20. If you’re attending the conference, come say hello!

Renegades Write the Rules by Amy Jo Martin

I’ve read many books on marketing, business and social media in the last few years but rarely do I stumble upon a gem. I find there are a lot of books out there that repeat the same rhetoric without offering concrete examples to draw upon.

Author Amy Jo Martin is an entrepreneur who established herself as a social media expert early in the game, literally because she worked as the Director of Digital Media and Research at the Phoenix Suns before starting out on her own with her company Digital Royalty.

I enjoy how candid she was about pushing the boundaries at her position with the Phoenix Suns, so she could advance the team’s online presence. Even after getting her hand slapped on a few occassions for stepping out the lines, she didn’t apologize for trying new things like inviting the fans to a TweetUp before the game, which was somewhat new at the time or setting up Shaq’s Twitter account which was against company policy.

In her experience working with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, she talks about having a content ‘Value Balance’ on Twitter. She describes telling him to categorize his tweets into different types of content like: Education, Entertainment, Inspiration, Exclusive, Information, and Reciprocation. This is something I’ve actually adopted through my work for TIFF in describing how we can offer different types of content for different audiences.

Although this book refers to a lot of examples using social media, anyone who wants great examples on how to lead instead of follow would enjoy this book.

Give it a watch.

In a few short weeks, The Gratitude Tea, an annual fundraising event I organize with my sister and close friends will be serving scones, sandwiches and all good things that a high tea requires. Come for the tea, stay for the kind words of gratitude shared by guests.

Next weekend I will make my way to Walt Disney World once again to attend my second Mashable Connect conference.

The intimate conference that brings the Mashable community together with the brightest minds in social and digital media is back for the 2012 edition with this year’s theme: Future of Digital.

What I love about this conference are the number of opportunities that allow attendees to connect with each other. From the opening night networking event to the activities inside the Disney parks and seated meals, Mashable Connect lives up to its name of bringing the community together to share, inspire and connect with one another offline.

Some of the speakers include: Burt Herman, Co-founder, Storify; Joe Fernandez, Founder & CEO, Klout; Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist, Bit.ly and June Cohen, Executive Producer, TED Media.

Here’s my favourite session from last year that features Craig Engler of Syfy Digital speaking on community engagement.

In less than a week I will be co-hosting an event that is near and dear to me, The Gratitude Tea. Now in it’s third year, the event is an afternoon tea in celebration of the inspiring people in your life.

Attendees are encouraged to bring the person who has had a positive affect on their life to the afternoon tea service and share a short story of their influential guest.

All funds raised will go to Dress for Success Toronto, a non-profit organization that provides career development to low-income women.

The event includes: afternoon tea, silent auction, live music, specialty vendors and other surprises!

Drink tea, give thanks and be merry at the 2011 Gratitude Tea.

http://gratitudetea.com/

#GratTEA11

I am excited to be yet again working on another Gratitude Tea, our annual fundraising tea for a local charity. Our charity of choice will be announced soon.

Come share a little gratitude in a high tea ceremony at Rosewater Toronto on December 11 with us. You won’t regret it

If you are wondering why an iconic tourist draw like Disney World was chosen for an important social media conference, it is most likely because it has completely embraced social media as part of how it does business. Most recently Disney partnered with Gowalla to customize a stamp or pin for every park-sanctioned hotel, attraction, restaurant and ride to help visitors explore the parks and attractions – the largest Gowalla partnership with a brand to date. I am sure Josh Williams, the CEO of Gowalla who is a Mashable Connect speaker will speak to this when he presents on Day One of the conference. I am hopeful the organizers will have an activity planned that will allow us to experience this partnership first-hand via our mobile devices and Gowalla app.

The weekend is packed with an incredible line up of speakers. To name just a few….

• Rohit Bhargava, SVP, Global Strategy & Marketing, Ogilvy
• Sabrina Caluori, Director of Social Media & Marketing, HBO
• Cameron Death, Senior Vice President and General Manager, NBCUniversal Digital Studio
• Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup
• David Karp, Founder, Tumblr
• Steve Rubel, SVP/Director of Insights, Edelman Digital
• Raymie Stata, SVP, Chief Technology Officer, Yahoo
• Josh Williams, CEO, Gowalla

I will be blogging while at the conference so look out for a few videos, posts, photos and tweets!

Simply broken down: Sesame Street + Saturday Night Live = internet trending topic!

The clever marketers behind the Sesame Street franchise realized an opportunity to take two cultural icons, Cookie Monster and SNL and put them together, to do something that had never been done before.

The Facebook fan campaign for Betty White to become a host on SNL was a hit and like Betty White who had never hosted SNL before, neither has Cookie Monster.

When I saw the first tweet….

RT @sesamestreet: Cookie Monster needs your help – he wants to host SNL! Watch the video and hit LIKE here: http://bit.ly/CookieSNL

….I knew this idea was going to catch on. In a matter of minutes, the number of people who ‘liked’ this idea on Facebook jumped from about 300 to 600 people. That’s when I knew I better start documenting how fast the trend was going to spread.

12:38 pm…

12:39 pm…

12:40 pm…

12:45 pm…

12:47 pm…

12:58 pm…

3:06 pm…

3:10 pm…

3:27 pm…

…and so on…and so on… If you would like to ‘LIKE’ Cookie Monster on Saturday Night Live to, go to: http://bit.ly/CookieSNL