Shebeen Club Mixer Monday, March 21st

The Auld Shebeen

The Auld Shebeen

Just a social night this month: no speaker, no pressure. Bring whatever you’re working on for boasting/comparison purposes! $25 at the door gets you dinner and a drink and the best literary cadre of companions in all of Vangroover! That’s the price for our special menu, or this once you can order off the regular menu and “pay as you go.”

Next month we’ll be back to our usual meet&greet/presentation/arguing and drinking schedule.

UPDATE: It’s apparently World Poetry Day on Monday.

Monday is World Poetry Day and, coincidentally, the anniversary of the first twitter tweet. Celebrate with a “twaiku” by Elizabeth Alexander:

Teeny tiny poem

Teeny tiny poem/just enuf 2hold/1 xllent big word/Impluvium/open-eyed courtyrd/collectng rain/as all poems do/ skylife, open/birds do:/ tweet

More on UN World Poetry Day here
NYTimes article here
Four New Twitter poems (including Alexander’s) here

 

 

Communications Director Wanted

suessian megaphone

Here’s a juicy job opportunity in the world of do-goodery, a field which I know appeals to Shebeen Club members. Found it on Twitter.

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

Position: Director, Communications
Organization: Small Change Fund http://smallchangefund.org/
Location: Toronto, Ontario or Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario

Small Change Fund empowers Canadians to make big change with small change. Athttp://smallchangefund.org/, we provide a place for people to discover, share, connect with, and support amazing grassroots projects in communities across the country.

Small Change Fund is a young and rapidly evolving organization searching for our first Director of Communications. As our Director of Communications you will have the chance to shape the future of an award-winning organization, and have an impact on all of the grassroots projects we support.

Your journalistic ability will enable you to draw out the stories behind the grassroots projects supported by Small Change Fund, and your skills in marketing will allow you to reach and engage sponsors and donors in supporting these important local efforts to enhance environmental sustainability and social justice.

Your aptitude for multi-tasking will allow you to transition between strategic and operational efforts in a fast-paced environment, while keeping an eye on detail. You excel in using social media for social good and your established network of media contacts support these efforts.

Your energy, enthusiasm and creativity lend well to Small Change Fund’s team, who believe that flexibility, an enterprising spirit, and positive outlook contribute to enabling us to consistently innovate in the area of grassroots giving.

The overarching goals of this position are to:
1. Build and reinforce Small Change Fund’s corporate identity/brand (visual, language) among target audiences
2. Engage target audiences in supporting the projects featured on smallchangefund.org
3. Build new and repeat traffic on smallchangefund.org, and work with staff team to ensure an innovative, unique and authentic experience for donors

Key Responsibilities include:
* Together with the Board Communications Committee, external advisors and staff, develop and execute a strategy using communications, marketing and public engagement standards and practices that reflect SCF’s mission and values.
* Develop a value proposition and key messages to communicate our core brand identity, and work closely with SCF team to ensure messaging is consistent with overall communications, marketing and public engagement objectives
* Provide strategy, content oversight, and creative management to SCF team, including working with consulting writers, designers, and programmers.
* In collaboration with the Program Team, write, create and assist in the dissemination of materials to attract high quality projects to smallchangefund.org
* Continually improve the presentation of projects on smallchangefund.org, including creating tools for donors to explore projects (i.e. video), and developing compelling language
* Working with the Program Team, create strategies and tools that encourage project leaders to tap into their networks, help them share their stories and report on their activities
* Focusing on pipeline and prospect development, and working across related areas, calendar, develop, and drive campaigns to targeted audiences to encourage engagement and philanthropy
* With support from the Program team, lead the creation of a donor centered experience that is creative and effective in maintaining existing and attracting new donors
* Manage media relations, research editorial opportunities and build relationships with key industry media.
* Leverage social networks to build affinities with potential partners, sponsors or issue positions
* Together with the President, Executive Director and Program team, lead the development of community or issue specific funds (e.g. indigenous people’s fund, climate change fund) that may be of particular interest to donors
* Monitor trends in social media tools and applications and appropriately apply that knowledge to increasing the use of social media at Small Change Fund
* Monitor social networks for potential threats or opportunities
* Measure the impact of social media on the overall marketing efforts
* Plan and administer budgets for communications/marketing for the organization
* Provide monthly reporting to executive team.

The successful candidate will have:
* A diploma or degree in communications, marketing, journalism or related area
* Minimum of five years of experience
* Demonstrated interest in the public sector

Interested candidates may send their resume and expression of interest, including links to online writing, blogs, articles, twitter feeds (in both attachment and copied into the body of an email) to info(at) smallchangefund.org* by March 15, 2011.

 

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Worst Curious George Book, Best Tweet Ever

FACT.

worst curious george book ever RT @raincoaster: RT @ArabRevolution: Yellow Hat Mercenaries in Benghazi [VIDEO] http://post.ly/1eqPU

worst curious george book ever RT @raincoaster: RT @ArabRevolution: Yellow Hat Mercenaries in Benghazi [VIDEO http://post.ly/1eqPU ]

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The Blog-To-Book Deal at the Shebeen Club

Canadian writer Darren Barefoot.

Image via Wikipedia

We’re back!

UPDATE: this just in, the venue is the upstairs lounge of Revel Room, 238 Abbott Street just south of Gastown in Hipsterville! Chef is working up some special entrees just for us!

Finally, a real Shebeen Club meeting at last! After a several-months-long layoff, we’re restarting with a bang with the hot topic of the Blog to Book deal. Who doesn’t want to put their already-posted words to work for them? What publisher wouldn’t love an author with a pre-existing following and 400,000 words or so already out there, ready to be judged by an editor? How do you hook up one of these deals? What’s the market looking for: recipes? fiction? poetry? dirty stories about Julian Assange? Duh, all of the above and more.

Join us on Monday, February 21st at 7pm for a timely, lively presentation by Darren Barefoot, one of Canada’s pre-eminent social media personalities, and Trena White, Acquiring Editor of Non-fiction at our own Douglas & McIntyre. Bring your questions, and your URL!

As always, tickets are $20 in advance (available till Feb 16th) or $25 at the door and include dinner and a drink. We’ll announce the venue in a couple of days, once we’ve locked down the menu. The venue is the upstairs lounge at Revel Room, 238 Abbott Street just south of Gastown. Chef is making some special entrees just for us!

Darren is a writer, marketer and blogger. He’s a co-founder of Capulet, a web marketing agency, and a co-founder in Northern Voice, one of Canada’s largest blogging and social media conferences. He’s the co-author, along with Julie Szabo, of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”. In 2011, he’s only consuming Canadian products, media and services, and writing about the experience at OneYearOneCanadian.ca.

Trena White

Trena White

Trena White is a book editor. She joined Douglas & McIntyre, a Vancouver-based independent publisher, as Acquiring Editor of Non-Fiction in 2010. Before that, she spent six years in Toronto as Editor at McClelland & Stewart, where she worked with emerging and established non-fiction writers in a wide range of subject areas, including memoir, current affairs, politics and history. She has a Master of Publishing from Simon Fraser University.

7-7:30 meet & mingle

7:30-8 listen & learn

8-whenever pitch, link, Add, Friend, Follow and schmooze!

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Selling Out: How Presales Can Make Your Book a Hit

 

To whom it may someday concern, in a minor way

Dear Author Arbitrageur

Who: The Shebeen Club presents author, speaker, and sales trainer Shane Gibson

What: Selling Out: How Presales Can Make Your Book a Hit

When: 7-9pm Monday, October 25th (one week later than our usual date)

Where: A private dining room upstairs at Revel Room, 238 Abbott Street just off Gastown, near the Woodward’s Building

Why: Because Shane’s latest book sold out its entire first printing before it was officially available for sale. We want to know how, and so do you!

How (much): $20 early-bird tickets/$25 at the door includes dinner and a glass of wine or beer

I worked as Shane’s editorial assistant on his latest book, Guerrilla Social Media Marketing (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson, the Guerrilla Marketing Guru) and while I was typing it up, I kept thinking what a great book it was. This is by way of disclosure, not puffery. Seems thousands of others feel the same way: the book officially sold out its first printing on September 30th; it wasn’t actually in stores until October 3rd.

That is what you call a successful book launch.

Shane is here to tell us how he and Jay did that, and teach us techniques that we can use on our own book launches, whether we’re publishers, editors, or authors. I only know one tip: 85% of life is showing up, so show up on October 25th and prepare to learn powerful tools for marketing your book from an author who’s not afraid of success! At this point, it just might be scared of him!

Shane Gibson

Shane Gibson

Shane Gibson is an international speaker and author who has addressed over 100,000 people over the past sixteen years on stages in North America, Southern Africa and South America.

Shane’s books include Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside Down, Closing Bigger: the Field Guide to Closing Bigger Deals, and his new book published by Entrepreneur Press (McGraw Hill) called Guerrilla Social Media Marketing, co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson.

Blogging since 2002, and podcasting since 2004 Shane drives the majority of his business from social media, and social networks. He has been published in numerous publications as an authority on the topics of leadership, marketing, social media, and sales performance. Some of these publications include CMA Magazine, the Financial Post, the Globe and Mail and Profit Magazine.

7-7:30 Meet & Mingle

7:30-8 Listen and Learn

8-9 Grinning maniacally while counting on your fingers and phoning your accountant