• Boyd Neil
• Lisa Walker
• Collin Douma
• Jonathan Dunn
• Julia Stein
• Sean Moffitt
• Elliot Silverstein

There was a great deal of discussion over the ethics and efficacy of the Sunsilk Bridezilla/Wig Out viral effort. It was universally panned on content and strategy however the majority felt that it was not necessarily unethical (with Collin Douma as a notable and vocal exception).

The second topic of discussion was the recent London Times article (hat tip for Maggie) of making “impersonating a consumer” an illegal act in 2008 in the UK. Several points were made about how this signifies the magnitude of the shift in influence toward the consumer. Prior to the social media revolution the notion of impersonating someone as powerless as an individual consumer would have been absurd (with the possible exception of lame false testimonials in ads).

Pretty sure that a good time was had by all.

[tags]throng, toronto, social media[/tags]

• Boyd Neil of Hill & Knowlton
• Lisa Walker of Hill & Knowlton
• Melody Gaukel of Ketchum
• Mark Daley of MacLaren McCann
• Colin Duoma of MacLaren McCann
• Jonathan Dunn of Marketing Magazine

Thanks to everyone who made it out and to those who sent their regrets.

Colin was definitely a lively addtion to the crowd, with no shortage of well thought out opinions on many aspects of social media (and it was nice to have a little more ad represenation to balance the PR folks). I realized that I had been to his blog radicaltrust.ca before, but hadn’t subscribed until now. Definitely worth a read.

Topics ranged from social media events, recent scandals, Social Media in mainstream media, and where to get cute little business cards cheap (from Moo.com apparently using a Flickr API).

Looking forward to next month.

[tags]Toronto, socialmedia, meetup, moo, throng [/tags]

• Boyd Neil of Hill & Knowlton
• Lisa Walker of Hill & Knowlton
• Martin Hoffman, Heather Anderson, Nicole Flippance, and (and another whose name I cannot recall, apologies) Natasha Compton of High Road Communications
• Sean Moffit of Agent Wildfire
• Melody Gaukel of Ketchum
• Maggie Fox from the Social Media Group
• Mark Daley of MacLaren McCann

Since the group was too large for any group conversations, I can only report on the ones that I was involved in, which ranged from how social media is changing the structure of the communications business, the geek dinner, to how passenger Via trains apparently stop during hunting season so hunters and their kills can get a ride into town.

The most interesting conversation of the night for me, was definitely with Boyd Neil discussing whether blogging promotes consensus on political issues or creates too many diverse opinions to be effectively synthesized in public policy. Now, I know very little about politics and public policy, but of course that never stopped a blogger from offering their opinion. It is an interesting question and I believe that it depends upon the issue, since there are certain straightforward issues that create the blogging “pile ons” where everyone violently agrees with each other with a few ammendments or additions. And then there are the more nuanced issues where everyone has a slightly different take and any real agreement is hard to reach.

I am not convinced that blogs or wikis are really the best forum for collaboratively generating public policy (too many chefs), but I do think that they are both amazing tools for discussing, exploring, debating and refining public policy as a work in progress.

[tags]throng, toronto, social media[/tags]

Was great to finally put a face to the name of Sean Moffit of Buzzcanuck (pictured far right) and face off in a long overdue match of Rock Paper Scissors (I won).

Lisa Walker has a written a brief synopsis of what we discussed, so I won’t repeat it here, but just wanted to thank all of those who made it out to the event. Looking forward to next month.

[tags]throng, toronto, social media[/tags]