Posts Tagged ‘business’

Attention Employers!

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Businesses are successful when they’re committed to their people — when they invest in the development of their employees. If you manage a business and want to motivate or reward your employees, then think CREATIVEMIX instead of a fruit basket or pizza day. Yeah – it’s just two days away but hey, won’t you look like the cool boss! Here are some great (and some lame!) reasons why you should register your staff for Vancouver’s Ideation Conference.

5 GREAT reasons to send your employee(s) to CREATIVEMIX

  1. Inspiration. You need a big idea and you need it now! Your staff will hear twelve in-depth talks on the nitty gritties of creativity, inspiration, and working outside the box. Maybe they’ll just come back with exactly what you need!
  2. New connections. Collaboration is the name of the game. It’s not just about networking and generating sales leads anymore (that’s so 1998). Your team will mix and mingle with other top creative minds, which could lead to alliances and new business in areas that may surprise you.
  3. Energy booster. Are your peeps stalling on a project or stuck in a rut? Give them some positive reinforcement – this will get the wheels turning for sure.
  4. Cutting edge. How cool will you be sending your staff to an ideation conference? Who does that?! You’d stand out from competitors as an innovative company doing everything you can to get the creative juices flowing.
  5. It’s local. Sure, you could spend thousands sending your crew to some status-quo conference in Vegas, or wherever, but the service providers, connections, and content will all be out of context. You need to inject some “local” into your business AND you don’t have the budget to send them out of town anyway.

5 TOTALLY LAME reasons to send your employee(s) to CREATIVEMIX

  1. Extra space in the office. You want to move some furniture around or practice your Rockband guitar licks without anyone around. We get it. Get rid of them for a day.
  2. More coffee for you. Your tired of sharing the coffee pot. Finally. . . a day when you can make the coffee the way YOU like it!
  3. Stop the whining. They are getting on your nerves. Mask your frustration with a pro-d day and enjoy some free time from all the annoying questions and complaints.
  4. Exit strategy. You’re going to fire them anyway but you need some time to plan the big boot. You can’t have a war room meeting when they’re within ear shot!
  5. Laundry money. When trying to balance the books you found some fiscal discrepancies. To cover your tracks you need to spend some money quick.

Please call Corwin at 604-803-2019 for more information regarding group rates.

Posted by: Eileen Rothe & Corwin Hiebert

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Posted in Conference Update, Creatives In Vancouver, Soap Box | No Comments »

Are You LoCo?

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

20080712_Yogathon_152Are you a business owner in Vancouver? On October 6th come celebrate the launch of LoCo BC, a new business network striving to create a diverse, vibrant local economy by strengthening small and mid-sized businesses, connecting and having fun in the process. The goal is to educate consumers and businesses about why it’s important to buy products and services from locally-owned companies whenever possible.

There are only 7 spots left so be quick about it. It’s only $20 BTW. You can learn more about this event and buy your tickets here.

This event is called Harnessing the Power of Local: Positioning Your Business to Thrive in a Shaky Economy and it will take place at Chambar Belgian Restaurant (very close to the Dirty Apron Cooking School… ah yeah). There will be a brief introduction to LoCo BC’s plans to drive local purchasing and support local businesses and then the focus will shift to the effective use of branding and new media tools.

Some of the groovy peeps involved with this event are:

Kierstin Dewest of Conscientious Innovation (Ci), a sustainability marketing firm and think tank, will draw on Ci’s annual survey of 5,000 North American consumers to highlight why local is an important and authentic brand advantage for your business. Ci has extensive experience with integrity brands® globally and at home – Worldchanging, Nike, SPUD, Novex, and UBC to name a few.

Robert Ouimet of Bigsnit Media Consulting will illustrate how digital media (websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook) can be used effectively to drive sales and create brand lift. Robert will explain how a merger of your online business presence with your core business is necessary for most businesses to keep up with technology, keep flexible enough to avoid a website revamp every two years, and keep it manageable with limited time and budget. Robert has worked in digital publishing with clients like the CBC, Biovia organic distributors, and VANOC’s collaborate art project CODE.

Posted by: Corwin Hiebert

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Events in Vancity

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Here’s a couple upcoming events you’ll want to check out:

innovationcamp-van

Vancouver Innovation Camp is an opportunity to learn and practice creativity and entrepreneurial skills through a series of activities inspired by the book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 (by Tina Seelig). During this 16 hour workshop, students will participate in a variety of exercises. Each activity focuses on practicing key principles of being an entrepreneur – identifying opportunities, learning from failure, defining success, and innovating. By the end of the workshop students will possess the tools to look at problems from a fresh perspective and identify opportunities, and the confidence to produce and implement creative solutions.

It’s being held at the Kontent Creative Office: Suite 203, 55 Water St. Vancouver BC. The first workshop is October 13th so don’t wait – sign-up as quick as you can.

Learn more at www.InnovationCamp.org.

trendcity-van

Trend City, Vancouver
Join the League of Kickass Business People for a stylish, thought-provoking evening with Vancouver’s leading business trendspotters, tastemakers and opinion leaders. Conversation and networking is kick-started with a panel discussion on what’s hot and what’s next in design, branding, style and media.

The featured panelists are: Kirk Lapointe (Managing Editor of The Vancouver Sun, Adjunct Professor at University of British Columbia and author of the mediamanager.com), Ginger Grant, PhD (Digital storyteller and creative business consultant. Author of Re-Visioning the Way We Work and Branding: From The Inside Out), Eric Karjaluoto (Creative Director and Principal at smashLAB, Founder of MakeFive and design/brand/experience blogger at ideasonideas.com), and Paul Melo (Designer, photographer, style-spotter and founder of stylequotient.ca and meloCreative).

The panel discussion will be moderated by Angele Beausoleil (Associate VP Strategy and Client Service at Fjord Interactive, former CEO of ITP Entertainment, interactive media marketer, inventor and Renaissance woman).

It’s coming up quick – September 23rd – and will be held at Cossette on Homer Street. Learn more here.

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Creative People in Business

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

fastcompany_100creativesThe June issue of Fast Company Magazine features a very interesting list you’ll want to check out: 100 Most Creative People in Business.

Clearly such a list begs the question “according to whom?” since the subjectivity and bias of lists like these usually renders them predictable and useless. As well, magazines often use TOP lists as an excuse to get as many famous people on their pages as possible in order to generate sales. Both of these indiscretions are just not cool when it comes to creative people and so this list deserves a critical eye.

Believe it or not Fast Company got it right on this one (almost). The editors and staff did a pretty good job keeping the “who’s who” out and focused on people behind the people; which gets them props for sure. Though it’s not hard to lead-off with Apple, Chuck Salter’s snapshot of creative superhero (#1) Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, is clearly a great start. Anyone who contributes so much to the success of a brand and its products and then calmly steps aside to let Steve Jobs bask in the glory belongs on such a list. Besides, Ive’s started in that role at the age of 29… all you can say is WOW.

A couple others stood out. Facebook’s Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager, sits amoung good company (#16) with his evangelistic approach to the discussion of open-identity standards – which is cool. Morin is a creative guy who’s helping his and many other companies, and that makes him a solid addition to the roster for sure. And despite his fame and fortune, J.J. Abrams (#14) should get all the praise in the world for the way he warps time and puts the adventure back in action television and injects mystery into car chase movies.

There seems to be only a couple blips on the radar when it comes the list and they both get bad marks for two very different reasons. (#18) Susan Athey, Chief Economist at Microsoft, is being hailed for her adult-oriented questions about designs’ affect on the platform. No wow there. The few words written about her leave you wondering if they were looking harder than they should have in order to drop a Microsoft bigwig onto the list. Just because she’s asking good questions doesn’t quite make her a creative business person. That being said, Microsoft seems to be working hard on reinventing themselves so we’ll give her a little slack assuming we’ll hear more from her very soon. The amount of praise Fast Company heaps on Tyra Banks (#49) is a bit awkward. Sure she’s got herself quite the fashion media empire but her “hyperactive hand in creating” her world seems to justify adding her to the Top 100 Divas list. Again, maybe she deserves the credit; creativity does come in all kinds of crazy, Fast Company just didn’t provide much evidence on this one.

Now what about us? What if we made a list of our own? Who are the great thinkers and rising stars of business we’ve heard of or have worked at? Leave a comment below with your Top 5 Most Creative Business People and we’ll combine them to make our own CREATIVMIX Top 100 (or fewer, depending on the comments of course; besides nothing says social networking quite like a Top 17 list).

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Posted in Creatives At Large, Magazines, Media, Soap Box | Comments Off