On our corporate blog and as an ongoing part of our work for a British client that provides a business-process-based customer relationship [...] read more »

In my 10 years of operating an Ottawa-headquartered public relations agency that focuses exclusively on clients in business-to-business technology sectors, I have far too often experienced a phenomenon I have come to call my " Ottawa inferiority complex theorem."

 And this month, it struck again.

We got a call from the marketing vice president of an Ottawa company that has been on our wish list for a long time. I promised not to reveal her (or his) identity. She said she had been referred to us because of our very strong reputation and wondered if we were interested [...] read more »

That was just one of the more intemperate statements made earlier this week by Red Herring publisher and CEO Alex Vieux at his company's Canada 08 conference at Mont Tremblant, Quebec. Vieux also slammed Canadians as "risk-averse," told one VC he was lazy for having a lower pace of completed deals than the average Silicon Valley firm, and advised companies to avoid federal-government-owned BDC Venture Capital because one of its partners said he'd have to vet with a committee his inclination to invest in a company.

It was a strange way to court business and enhance a brand that has already [...] read more »

A fascinating new experiment in encouraging technical entrepreneurship amongst university students gets officially launched tomorrow night at the University of Waterloo. A mash-up of student residence and business incubator, the university's new VeloCity is billed as "a place where some of UW's most talented, entrepreneurial, creative and technologically savvy students will be united under one roof to work on the future of mobile communications, web and new media."

Students who live in the residence will be expected to team up with each other to work on projects in mobile communications, web [...] read more »

 The Montréal start up community will gather at Société des arts technologiques November 27 for the third edition of Startup Camp Montreal, an event dedicated, as its website says, "to all things startup."

Headlining the event will be keynote speakers Patrick Lor and Austin Hill and the five startups selected by a panel of gurus to make presentations. Presenting companies will have five minutes in which to tell the audience about their concept with the audience then weighing in for five to 10 minutes of questions and feedback. Afterwards, all attending comnpanies will have [...] read more »

One of the most frequent and, to tell the truth, most boring and least helpful, themes in the blogosphere is the all-too-common declaration by one blogger or another that PR is dead. With all the authority of his well-read blog, Robert Scoble started the ball rolling again this week with a post Monday that celebrated the fact that he actually heard about a new company - more of a raw beta concept, really - from some source other than a PR or corporate flack.

Leaving aside for the moment the question why this should be so noteworthy - Hey, Robert: It's a rare day I don't learn something [...] read more »

When I first started out in the PR game, I worked mainly for a trio of seasoned practitioners in Halifax who used to relish the fact that business tended to slow down in the summer months. Then again, they were devoted sailors, who took every advantage of their reduced workload to drop tools, raise sails and take to the open waters.

Their actions were a consequence of the not-uncommon belief that, unless you peddle a hot-weather product like beer, summer-time marketing is a waste of time because everyone's on vacation. I've just returned from the better part of three weeks off, thus accounting [...] read more »

 When Oracle Corp. announced earlier today that it was taking steps to help and encourage its customers to upgrade to the latest version of its database software, at least one major technology publishing house was ready for the story by having yesterday interviewed an expert from the Oracle community on why the company was taking this step. When IDG News Service reported today on the Oracle move, Canada’s own Paul Vallée, founder and president of Ottawa-based The Pythian Group, was quoted in reaction to the announcement, thanks to the media outlet yesterday seeking out Vallée [...] read more »

I was faced with one of those paradoxes last week that reminded me of that old but cogent dictum that statistics too often are used as a drunk uses a lamp post – for support rather than illumination. I may be straying far from [...] read more »

The University of Southern California’s Annenberg [...] read more »