I wanted to share our latest Delvinia INSIGHTS report . This release of Delvinia INSIGHTS: Experience Design Considerations shows that Canada’s NGen and Boomers cite headaches and vision loss respectively as leading issues that impair their computer use. In addition, the website design features that Canadians consider important indicate the need for designers to take the physicality of all users into account – whether they suffer from a disability or not.

You can now download Delvinia INSIGHTS at http://www.delvinia.com/insight.

This report was created from our proprietary insight tools – our AskingCanadians™ consumer research panel and our Insight Engine of consumer attitudes and behaviours – that allow us to keep a finger on the pulse of the needs and behaviours of Canadian consumers. Delvinia INSIGHTS is just a morsel of the information that we have in our Insight Engine, and this helps us create and integrate insight-driven Digital Customer Experiences within the context of the total customer experience.

Share your experiences and examples or just let us know what you think of this report.

I was asked to appear on BNN’s show “Stars & Dogs” as part of the The Close with Kim Parlee and Andrew Bell. The idea being this segment is that Kim and Andrew take a “bull” and “bear” position on a particular stock, commodity, etc. and then their special guest decides who made the best argument.

I was asked to come on the show to be the judge on the topic “Will Oil reach $100 per barrell a year from now”. When I was asked to come on the show, I said to myself, what do I have to say about oil, other than I hate the price of gas.

But when I listened to their arguments and brought my perspective from the digital space as well as running a Canadian company, it really enjoyed sharing a perspective that wasn’t simply an oil analyst’s point of view and I felt that my viewpoint would be able to resonate with other business people like myself.

It was a lot of fun and I look forward to being a judge on a future episode.

You can check out the clip at http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip177392

We just released our latest Delvinia INSIGHTS that shares some of our recent data on the habits and behaviours of Canadians. This is just one way we use our insight engine to help understand the behaviours of Canadians.

Some of the highlights are:

SOCIAL NETWORKING
Highlights about Canada’s view towards Social Networking include:

- 83% of female Canadians aged 18-30 feel digital technology allows for easier social connections, compared to their male counterparts at 76%.

- Only 6% of NGen and 4% of Gen X report visiting recent media darling, Twitter, in the last month. The same as other, less talked about social networks including Hi5, DIGG and Tagged.

- There is a significant difference between how frequently Canadians visit social network sites vs. post content. YouTube experiences the greatest difference between views and posts – for example, while 83% of NGen visited YouTube only 6% posted content. While 59% of Boomers visited the site, only 4% posted content.

SHARING INFORMATION
When sharing information online, here’s how Canadians felt:

- No surprise, NGen feel the safest about sharing any type of personal information online but are more comfortable sharing credit card (79%) rather than address and phone number (50%).

- The majority of NGen and Gen X feel safe about sharing and using credit card information; Boomers & Canadians 65+ are significantly less confident (only 46% of Boomers, 39% of 65+ feel safe).

- Only the majority of NGen are comfortable sharing demographic information (53%) – the majority of all other generations are neutral or not comfortable sharing information like their age, gender and marital status.

- Most Canadians would prefer NOT to share their addresses or phone numbers online. NGen is most comfortable (yet only 29% feel safe), while Boomers are least comfortable (only 22% feel safe).

The entire report can be downloaded at http://www.delvinia.com/insight

There is so little information available about Canadians and their digital behaviours available. This is why we created the Delvinia Insight Engine to help in our approach create more effective digital experiences.

Download the report and share your thoughts.

Today, I had the opportunity to deliver a lunchtime keynote at the Emerging Leaders Network Summit, in Toronto. I shared the work I have been doing with Ryerson University to help understand the potential for digital media and to examine what the next evolution of university supported, industry led, centre of excellence would look like.

An initiative of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, the Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) is a group of 100+ emerging leaders who have been identified as city-building leaders. On Tuesday April 7th, the ELN held it’s inaugural Summit, an all-day working session where we will examine pressing issues facing the region. The theme was Why Not Here? The Emerging Leaders Network Ideas for Toronto.

After 15 years working in digital media, it was great to share a vision how we can help turn Ontario into a Global leader for Digital Media.

Please share your comments - all are welcome.

I just returned from speaking at the Social Media Roadshow in Vancouver put on by the Sales & Marketing Executives International (SMEI). The presentation was a great format where Loren McDonald from SilverPOP and I were the two keynote speakers and then we were followed by a great panel with. Willis Turner, the President of the SMEI, was a great host and clearly has a vibrant organization on his hands.

I got to meet some really interesting people and everyone loved our use of the Digital Diseases to describe the issues that are going on out there. They also seemed to like the example of the work we have done with the Canadian Opera company in helping them understand the Digital Customer Experience that led to rebuilding their website. Twitter was definitely at the top of the conversations, and everyone loved the link that Delvinia’s own Randy Matheson sent to me showing a parody of a Twitterers called “Twouble with Twitter“. It also gave me the opportunity to share some of our Canadian data on the Digital Customer and promote our newly released Delvinia Insight initiative.

Here is my presentation posted on Slideshare

Also, Willis interviewed us after the presentation on our views about the potential of Social Media for Marketers. Here’s the interview:

It was great to see that Loren’s and my presentations were complimented each other and I really enjoyed how he used examples to describe the work that SilverPOP was doing.

I met Rebecca Bollwitt, who runs the Miss604.com blog and is considered the top blogger in all of Vancouver. Rebecca is really on top of things from a social media perspective and it was even funnier when she was live tweeting during my presentation, that a few delvinians tweeted back to ask how I was doing. She even live blogged about the event and my presentation. She was getting ready to blog about the Junos, and it was fun connecting on twitter with her so I could hear the updates of how she was enjoying the event. The other panelists Jordan Willms discussed how “Work at Play” were developing social media campaigns, Rob Duncan from BCIT talked about how he is using LinkedIn to share his insights and build his network, and Chris Breikss from 6S Marketing talked about how their firm was evolving from search marketing to social media marketing. We are all connected now, and it’s great making some new friends from the other side of the country.

Great event Willis…thanks for having me share the Digital Diseases on the west coast.

As part of our effort to contribute to the growth of the interactive industry in Canada, Delvinia is beginning to share monthly insights that uncover and understand the nuances of Canadian consumers
Our first insight reveals interesting details between Net Generation and Baby Boomers.

With their proprietary Insight Engine, Delvinia is able to gather and analyze the consumer perspective on a variety of issues and even tailor it for companies. With the release of Boomers and the Net Generation, Delvinia is able to demonstrate its depth of understanding of the digital behaviours of Canadians.

Our Insight Engine is continually updated through quarterly and adhoc profiling surveys through its AskingCanadians(TM). A sample of more than 2,500 regionally and demographically representative responses of Boomers and NGeners who participated in the research forms the Boomers and Net Generation insights summary . The following three categories were studied:

Purchase cycle preferences
Banking behaviours
Technology ownership

Delvinia’s interactive design division, Delvinia Interactive, focuses on creating and integrating insight-driven Digital Customer Experiences within the context of the total customer experience. And it’s Delvinia’s proprietary insight tools – their AskingCanadiansâ„¢ consumer research panel and their Insight Engine of consumer attitudes and behaviours – that allow them to keep a finger on the pulse of the needs and behaviours of Boomers, NGen, and other Canadian consumer groups.

Future insights planned to be released include:

- Social networking and attitudes towards personal information sharing
- Accessibility, online behaviour and attitudes towards advertising
- Mobile Behaviour

To download Delvinia Interactive’s complete Boomers and the Net Generation insight summary, visit www.delvinia.com/insight.

Feel free to share your thoughts or recommendations of Canadian specific insights for future releases.

Throughout 2008, I had the opportunity to write a weekly column for VUE Magazine, where my good friend Stephen Popiel is the Editor-in-Chief. Since Delvinia straddles the marketing and research communities by having an Insight-driven approach to our interactive design and digital marketing capabilities, along with our AskingCanadians online research community, he felt that I could provide an interesting perspective on how the digital experiences were affecting market researchers. I really enjoyed my year of writing for VUE and it really helped my articulate some of my ability to explain why Market Researchers are not immune to the Digital Diseases. You can check out all my articles in the Delvinia News Section and look for “Embracing Chaos”.

This year, I was thrilled to see that Delvinia’s own VP and Managing Director, Steve Mast, was asked to write a feature in the January 2009 issue of VUE Magazine. Steve brings an entirely new perspective to providing a digital perspective because of his passion and depth of how people are using the various digital technologies, particularly from a marketing perspective.

His feature is titled, “Buzz Marketing: The Age of Influence” gives a great perspective on how the concept of “Word of Mouth” advertising is really taking hold with all the social media tools available, such as Twitter, Facebook, among the few well known ones.

Steve is not only an expert on understanding how to apply these innovative tools appropriately, without succumbing to one of the deadly digital diseases, but he also provides a grounded and balanced perspective about why you cannot dismiss them.

Steve, like myself, are great believers in the use of Online Communities to use this new type of customer relationship to make informed decisions by marketers today.

He also highlights in his article that in this “Age of Influence” that the marketers have to relinquish control to the communities and it takes a real commitment to apply buzz marketing to build a brand. Otherwise, there inevitably, whether they are victims of a digital disease or not, they will be aliented by those customers that they wish to build a long lasting relationship with. Which can have the same devastating results.

Take a look at Steve’s feature article in VUE Magazine, and share your thoughts.

Like many offices I am sure, the entire Delvinia office spent a couple of hours sitting in our boardroom watching a live feed of the Obama inauguration projected on the large screen. It was great to see such a historic event live and we even were able to take pictures with the newly inaugurated President by posing beside his projection on our boardroom screen. A team building event in itself - to be part of watching such a historic moment.

Anyhow, we initially chose CNN as our feed which was amazing at first. CNN even had something going on with Facebook where you could update your status and it would be a feed coming in with other comments. You could either watch your friends or you could watch everyone. Very Twitterish - I even saw a couple of comments that it should have been Twitter - however, I think the installed base on FB is much larger still.

You could watch different clips that were live or recently live, and the streaming was working well. The interface was clean and there wasn’t too much going on to distract you from the overall experience of watching the inauguration. Even the quick flash download to update my flash player wasn’t too intrusive. Until…it just crashed and we had to switch over to the coverage on CBC . CBC had a straight ahead feed through a windows media player, but we lost the experience of collectively watching what people were saying as we watched.

Although, a couple of people kept updating us as they sat with their laptops and dialed into their Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Now, you can’t completely blame CNN for this, but after creating such a great digital experience for the election, its a drag that their capacity got overwhelmed by the sheer success of the initiative.

I’m sure a lot of people will be talking, writing and tweeting about the CNN and Facebook partnership.

Apart from the crashing of their feed, which was a symptom of the technology, I would say this was a Disease-Free initiative…well done!!

We recently announced a successful program we completed with the Town of Markham - Delvinia press release- that used a digital experience to engage youth (10 - 18 year olds) to participate in helping to define public policy for Markham’s Green Print strategy.

From my perspective, Frank Scarpitti, the Mayor of Markham is a visionary when it comes to wanting to engage his residents in public policy. I think that Barack Obama has been following in Frank’s footsteps - that’s why Obama was elected the President of the United States

Mayor Frank really knows how important it is to include residents throughout the entire process of policy making. Especially when it comes to going beyond the activists and lobbyists who typically have the most influence. I was lucky to interview the Mayor for a feature article I wrote for VUE Magazine last October where he shared his views and genuine interest in involving Markham residents on what Council’s plans are for Markham and of course, how important the use of the Internet and digital technologies are in engaging residents to participate in the process. For the full article visit The Digital Dialogue: Providing People a Voice, Surrendering Control of the Conversation,.

Delvinia has had the pleasure of working with Markham since 2003 to help them best use a digital experience to embrace e-democracy. From the 2003 Election when they introduced Internet Voting as an option, to 2006 where they continued offering Internet Voting, they have seen remarkable results in public participation in their municipal election that is significantly higher than average. And then in 2007, the Mayor and Council spearheaded, Click with Markham, an award winning initiative to obtain public feedback on their Strategic Plan using an digital experience. Instead of holding a Town Hall and having 150 people show up, the Click with Markham initiative had over 7000 residents participate and give feedback.

The recent success of the the Green Print initiative was just another demonstration of Markham’s leadership and vision to engage Markham residents and particularly youth through a digital experience. It was Markham’s idea that the method of engagement went beyond traditional methods they had employed to engage youth and to use an approach more relevant to a youth audience, particularly utilizing the Internet to not only engage youth but to ensure that they would participate.

The initiative reached out to 10-18 year olds through a well executed outreach program into the schools as well as using creating a Facebook Group. Everything was about driving them to the Green Print website to learn about the Green Print initiative and to sign up to to participate in the “Quest for a Better Markham” campaign. The site also used polls with weekly prizing to keep visitors coming back, but the site did not overwhelm visitors with too much information or things to do. They key stakeholders did a great job of listening to our advice about the overall experience so they would not succumb to one of the deadly diseases. It was touch and go for a while when there was some confusion about how much information needed to be included on the site. A tendency of governments at all levels is to inundate visitors with way too much content (DATAPOX), but in this case they recognized that they would not be able to achieve more than one objective with this type of site. They resisted their urge to overcommunicate and ensure that the primary goal was to simply engage the youth audience to become involved.

The result was over 2000 submissions from the Markham youth and some great input into the Green Print Strategic Plan, all because of a clean, well communicated and relevant digital experience.

Congratulations to Markham for continuing the be an incredible example of creating great digital experiences that deliver results and not becominng afflicated with a digital disease like Datapox.