Hello everyone and welcome to the October 2008 edition of Canada 9-5, a selection of Canadians who use blogging to showcase their work and civic involvement.  This time around is unusual – normally we present a mix of submitted blogs and others we have come across in our travels; this time we’re only presenting those that were submitted through the blog carnival.  We actually get a lot of submissions but many of them fall by the wayside because somehow the message that this is about Canadian bloggers didn’t quite get through.

Here’s what’s on tap today:

Ethnic Marketing

Ethnicomm submitted an article about using Google alerts.  I also liked this post on marketing to ethnic communities.

A recent article on Adage.com called “Marketers: We Don’t Get How to Do Diversity” made me laugh.

Seems that the majority of the big marketing gurus in 60 odd companies surveyed by executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles believed that multicultural marketing was critical to their business but about 24 of them said they can’t quantify it. Come on! What a cop out!

The financial worth of multicultural segments is relatively easy to determine…at least here in Canada. According to Marketing Magazine, South Asians, Chinese, Italians and Portuguese account for more than $36 billion in annual expenditure, or 24 per cent of the total market dollars in the GTA. The South Asian market is worth $12.6 billion annually in Toronto alone.

But it’s not just about not knowing. I think it’s also about not caring. Getting the senior exec to buy-in and support multicultural or ethno-marketing was a significant roadblock for the marketing gurus. And who wants to fight that battle when it’s easier to stick with the status quo?

For the rest, go here, to Ethno-Marketing.

Laid Off After 20 Years

Canajun Finances sent an article that’s a part of a series of posts in the wake of getting laid off at Nortel.

Twenty years of my life summed up in a bank entry (a 5 digit bank entry so I am not really complaining about the sum itself), it just seems so final.

Over my twenty years at Nortel, I have met and worked with some of the most amazing people and seen technological changes that staggered me, when I think about how life was before these technological “miracles”. I have had four children, and many wonderful things have happened, and many sacrifices were made for work, and at the end of it, I have one line in a bank statement to sum it up?

Read more here at Twenty Years In One Line.

Market Your Customer

Our second marketing blog for today is Harmony Thiessen’s Think Tub Business Blog, part of her company, HG Consulting & Publishing.  She seems like a fun person – hopefully I’ll meet her one day, maybe at the bloggers meetup.  She’s qualified – her business strategy career and specialty in marketing and revenues began, she says, at the ripe age of 14, when she was a shift manager at Jack In The Box.  In the post that she’s offering us today she talks about marketing your customers.

Rather that run another TV ad about your great prices, or print ads in the local paper about your anniversary sale – talk about the people who make your business possible = your customers.

Twitter and LinkedIn

Remember the social media megaproject in the winter? I was the Twitter and LinkedIn lady.  Looks like Andrea Stenberg could have done the job, too.  She sent in an article about Twitter.  I also found her entry on a new feature at LinkedIn quite useful – I actually didn’t know about the feature (or maybe I didn’t pay attention when LinkedIn emailed me about it).

LinkedIn announced an amazing new feature on their site: you can now have discussions within.

It seems like a no-brainer to me, but for a long time LinkedIn groups didn’t have this feature. All you could really do with a group you were a member of is look at the profiles of the members and invite them to connect.

To be honest, until now I felt the LinkedIn groups were pretty pointless. LinkedIn is all about connecting with people you know, but you couldn’t get to know other members of a group until after they became a connection. It seemed to defeat the purpose of LinkedIn.

But with this added feature you can have conversations with people in your groups. You can ask questions, comment on what others have to say, have a debate. In other words, you can get to know people.

The full article about LinkedIn is here.

A Toronto Realtor On An Elevator

In September, we had Krupo, an accountant, here at Canada 9-5.  He was so kind to write about an “awesome blog written by a young Toronto realtor ” and offered this article on a new law that will alleviate anxieties around construction completions.  I personally enjoyed this post on elevators:

What I find really amusing is that people go to great lengths to avoid interacting in elevators, and use these time-tested techniques, yet when the doors open, they saunter out really slow as if to say, “Oh, is this my floor?  Right, okay.  I’m not in any hurry to get off, and I did NOT find that elevator ride awkward at all, in fact, I could do that all day.”

A Canadian Tax Blog

Dean Paley sent this article on Minimizing Capital Gains and Estate Planning.  I couldn’t get quite fired up about that topic but found this post here, RRSPs Versus Non-Registered Accounts, useful.  I think many of us just pay blindly into RRSPs, thinking they’re such a wonderful thing.  There are a number of scenarios where they are maybe not the best place for our money.

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That’s it for this time around.  As always, if you know of a Canadian blog that fits what we’re doing here (and we’re looking particularly for non-IT bloggers; IT blogs are already getting a lot of exposure) please let us know by using this submission form. We’re taking a bit of a break here; the next edition will be out on January 8, 2008.

A Winnipeg Music Blog
… with the great name Painting Over Silence. It tells you all about the Winnipeg music scene, which, like all music scenes, is mostly Indie. And thanks to Painting Over Silence, if you’re an Indie fan, you can now find out about your personality.

A couple days back an enlightening article appeared on the CBC that published the findings of a Scottish University’s study aimed at unearthing the link between musical taste and personality.

Musicians for the Environment
The Lake Ontario Waterkeepers, an environmental group, have a newsroom which contains one of the Great Lakes’ largest archives on environmental law and water quality issues. One of the articles aggregated there talks about Canadian musician Sarah Harmer, who co-founded PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land), an organization campaigning, according to Wikipedia,

to protect the Niagara Escarpment from a proposed gravel development which would see parts of the wilderness on the escarpment destroyed. To support the organization, she and her acoustic band embarked on a tour of the escarpment, hiking the Bruce Trail and performing at theatres and community halls in towns along the way. A documentary DVD of this tour was released in 2006 as Escarpment Blues.

A Courier in Vancouver
Bulletproof Courier is the brain – or helmet? – child of Greg Crosby, a citizen journalist documenting news and events in downtown Vancouver. Greg says he also enjoys producing catchy video reports of local events and venues he attends, often through the unique perspective of his helmet cam. I haven’t met Greg (yet – hopefully I will next week) but, well, I guess he is a bicycle courier, and I’m glad I finally found such a blog. Bicycle couriers – don’t you think they’re ideal people to have a blog? They see a lot, both on the streets, in the dark corridors of CorporateLand and in the deep, frustrated eyes of law office receptionists. Plus they have their own rather quirky perspective (or am I stereotyping, Greg). Anyway, to stay with the music theme – enjoy Greg’s video of the Star Wars theme on bagpipes.

Marketing
Staying with the creative theme, let’s move from music to creative marketing ideas. Ethnicomm, a marketing blog, has a post on 7 steps towards becoming more creative . I know, there are lots of blog posts out there but what I found interesting that in addition to the usual suspects (“go against the flow”, “be inspired”) there are also ones that I don’t come across that often, for example

Chatter incessantly.
The more you talk, the more you expose yourself to opportunities to have a conversation with someone. And if you tie this in to point #1 above [“go against the flow”], even better. Just be careful that you’re not always talking to yourself. The barista at your local Starbucks, the cab drive driving you to your innovation seminar, the math teacher at your child’s school, the annoyed and tired looking gentleman on that transatlantic flight can all help with your verbal rapid prototyping efforts.

(Uh – what are verbal rapid prototyping efforts?  Is that a new word creation?)

Interior design
Gaile Guevara has a blog that showcases modern furniture and other interior design articles (artifacts?), like the jelly chairs you can see gracing this post. There are a great many links on her blog, which I really like – what I’m missing, however, is a sense for what Gaile does. Does she have a store? Does she offer her services as an interior designer?

Author and Grow Rich! In 12 hours!
I guess we could still put this in the category of creativity although what Glenn Dietz from Sarnia, Ontario, is mostly about is – you guessed it: making money from books. Not just $27 ebooks but something that brings in $10,000. In this post here about – well I guess it’s about market feedback – if I get it right, he talks about flowcharting one’s thoughts. That sounds interesting. I hope he’ll write more about it.

Canucks Blog – Cory Schneider
I have to confess that I’m pretty much in the dark when it comes to hockey and our Vancouver team, the Canucks. (Although, staying with the topic du jour, I think that sports has quite a lot to do with creativity). Fortunately, that doesn’t prevent me from at least trying to get to know about their online activities; maybe I’ll even learn something? Let’s take Cory Schneider’s blog. I like how he just tells his story; it’s almost an old-fashioned type of blog, just a little diary – perfect for someone with fans who are eager to get a glimpse of the lives of a sports celebrity. In this entry, he talks about getting to know the team – and I even about music! His favourite band right now is 3 Days Grace (also a group I hadn’t known, so thanks for introducing me to them, Cory!)

Hardcore Accounting
Ok, finally here’s a blog that has nothing to do with creativity. (Or does it?) Through MBA Explorer I found out about Krupo’s A Counting School – Hardcore Chartered Accountancy
since 1494. I was curious about “1494” and after googling for a moment, was reminded that was the year when the Italian monk Luca Pacioli, “the Father of Accounting” published the first book written on double-entry accounting. The title of this exciting book is “Everything about Arithmetic, Geometry, and Proportions.” A 500-year bestseller. Hey, maybe we can get Glenn, our author specialist, to write something about it!)

At any rate, here is an interesting entry by Krupo, Trainwreck of economic logic. He compares professional services that cost money with those that make money. Krupo just alludes to these concepts, saying that he would not “fisk” the referenced article that spoke somewhat disparagingly of people who “only” cost money. Thus, Krupo introduced me to the term “fisking”. In all this time in the blogosphere I had never come across it but apparently it’s widely used, meaning “a point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story”. At any rate, I would have liked to hear more about this; I think it would make for an interesting conversation about all kinds of things, for example, the difference between long-term and short-term economic benefits, something of interest not just for accountants but ordinary folks, too.

That’s it for this edition!  As always, if you know of a Canadian blog that fits what we’re doing here (and we’re looking particularly for non-IT bloggers; IT blogs are already getting a lot of exposure) please let us know by using this submission form. The next edition will be out on October 18, 2008.

Sometimes I’m a little slow. For quite a while now, I’ve been wondering about ways to show meaningful links in my blogs to my StumbleUpon tags. Then this morning it hit me: why not just copy and paste the tag cloud right from StumbleUpon?

Duh!

I was so happy to see this very, very simple solution that I went ahead and made the tag cloud, above, in Wordle.

And here are the tags that lead directly to my various StumbleUpon categories.  (Btw, they’re just the major tags; if you want to see all of them, go here)

· activism

· arts

· asia

· blogs

· books

· buddhism

· business

· canada

· christianity

· cyberculture

· eating-disorders

· environment

· health

· history

· humor

· internet

· linguistics

· marketing

· mental-health

· music

· nature

· philosophy

· photography

· politics

· psychology

· religion

· science

· self-improvement

· social-media

· spirituality

· stumblers

· twitter

· vancouver

· women

· writing

A warm welcome to the August 2008 edition! As I look back, I see that we’ve been doing this for a whole year now. It’s one of our proudest accomplishments; there’s really no site that gathers these types of Canadian blogs all in one place.

Today we have a blog by a sales professional, a jazz music site, a blog written by the owner of an online dating community, a blog by a librarian and an online community site for seniors.

Sales: The Perfect Customer Service Experience

Let’s start with an excerpt from one of Shane Gibson’s Blogathon articles. Shane is a sales professional.  Other than these blog entries, he also has quite a collection of podcasts. Here he features a guest blogger, Neil Godin, sharing his thoughts on a perfect customer service experience. In my opinion, that’s a perfect example of using a blog – for telling a professional story:

The Situation
New York Times business writer Joe Nocera was at the receiving end of a mind blowing customer experience—and wrote to tell about it. Four days before Christmas, he realized that a $500 PlayStation gift for his son had not arrived. He tracked the shipment from Amazon and learned that it had been delivered and signed for—but not by him. Ouch!

The Idea
If you want customers to become your brand ambassadors, you’ve got to go “way” overboard on satisfaction. Amazon did. Satisfied that he did not receive the package, they sent a replacement immediately, and it arrived on Christmas Eve. Naturally, Nocera has been talking, and writing, about the experience ever since.

The Risk
The risk here is perceived, not real. Even if one or two customers went to great lengths to rip you off, you’d be ahead in terms of your investment in customer loyalty.

Jazz!

All About Jazz is an absolutely fabulous site which, I believe, originates in Canada; at any rate, it has an enormous amount of information on Canadian jazz. This intro to their site shows the fantastic rage of information to be had:

We strive to serve both the jazz newbie as well as the jazz aficionado. Listeners who are new to jazz may profit from visiting our Building a Jazz Library section; those with more of an established interest will find our extensive archives of reviews and interviews helpful. And everyone should get a chuckle out of our humor section.

The internet is a great place to find information, and we maintain stacks and stacks of it: about jazz festivals, radio stations, upcoming releases, and much more (just look under the “guides” section of the menu bar).

Throughout the site, we have emphasized an interactive approach. The jazz timeline and “This Day in Jazz History,” for example, allow readers to check out the major developments in a year, month & day of their choosing. We organize our reviews so that you can home in on a particular style that you prefer (or wish to investigate). We provide multiple forums for you to express and exchange opinions on all sorts of issues relating to the music and the musicians.

Finally, we make an ongoing effort to stay current. We constantly update our news section, and we offer cutting-edge interviews among over 40 featured columns. Each month we review 150-200 new and reissued CD’s, giving you advance notice so you’ll know where to look when you visit the record shop. For the latest happenings at the site, visit our monthly greeting page.

In addition to this, you can, of course, also listen to music. Today’s offering is Chasm’s Blue Bamboo, which you can listen to for free just by signing up with the site.

Online Dating

This innocent-looking blog, Paradigm Shift, is the blog by Marcus Frind, owner of Plenty of Fish, the largest dating site in the English speaking world and the largest community site in the US not owned by an American company. Most of his posts are about internet and social media news directly related to dating sites. At the beginning of the year, Marcus got philosophic and shared his technological predictions:

[In the next 100 years] In the scientific world I could see computers creating a virtual world for you that looks like a dream. Other people can then enter the dream and change things at will.

Think of hundreds of people working together to design something, but instead of using tools like Autocad its done with your mind connected to others as well as computers.

I wonder if i’ll live to see any of that… In the next 5 years I think the next major thing on the internet will be a site that helps convey emotions in some way.

Canuck Librarian

A site with a nice, fresh voice, like in this review here of Michael Pollan’s much discussed book In Defence Of Food:

I think this book is another case of common sense that just ain’t so common anymore. Like he writes, his book really boils down to seven words “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”. If you truly understand that then you probably don’t need to read his book. But if you’re like me you may be wondering what he means by those few words, and that is what he explains.

Communities: Seniors

Finally, over on the other side of the country, The Grey Zone, a site for seniors, is one of the two dozen community blogs at myConnect.ca, a community place hosted by The Halifax Herald. The blog is written by Alex Handyside CSA (that’s “Certified Senior Advisor” – just found out about that designation). He says that seniors

often feel that they no longer have a voice, or that their voice no longer counts as much as it once did. And that’s what this blog is for. To get the word out about elder issues, and to get the discussion flowing.

I liked the title of this post, We celebrate Elder Abuse Awareness Day?? No…we educate! I’ve often wondered about events like “Cancer Awareness Month” – what are you supposed to say, “Happy Cancer Awareness Month”? That sounds a little strange. But phrasing it in terms of education rather than celebration – yes, that makes sense to me.

Gathering all these blogs together is a lot of fun. It’s interesting to see how slowly, slowly, Canadians are starting to see blogging as a valuable an important part of their communications strategy.

As always, if you know of a Canadian blog that fits what we’re doing here (and we’re looking particularly for non-IT bloggers; IT blogs are already getting a lot of exposure) please let us know by using this submission form. The next edition will be out on September 18, 2008.

As of this writing, it appears that Canada 9-5 is still the only place where these blogs are showcased on a regular basis. That probably means that we are well on our way to fame …

Let’s see what we one the menu today.

Life balance for lawyers
Laurie Mapp, who runs Halo Secretarial Services somewhere in central Alberta, talks about work-life balance

I think balance is an elusive but achievable goal – it just takes having an open mind to doing things a different way. This is the part law firms struggle with I think – there is often a tendency to do things as they have always been done, since it has worked for so long. But there is a long list of ways to give your employees some flexibility while still achieving the firm’s goals and providing results for the client.

Corporate recruiters: Paying attention to details
Kate Baggott is a recruiter. Her article For the Price of a Cup of Coffee points out that even small details about how recruiters do business can turn an impressive candidate on or off. Read about how one company lost a potential hire over the price of a cup of coffee.

Vancouver online newspaper: Women in jail
The Vancouver Observer is a newspaper done in blog style. It has the feel of a community newspaper (reminds me a bit of the South Vancouver Revue, for which I used to write an environmental column way back when) and thus talks about every topic under the sun. I liked this little interview with Betty Krawzyck, a B.C. senior who had become famous for going to jail for her environmental activism. Here’s an excerpt where Betty talks about her new book:

I also try to illuminate the lives of women in jail. Most women are there because of conditions and abuse that we really cannot imagine – most of us that is. Poverty is the underlying condition that sends a woman into the penal system and of course, when one discusses poverty, one has to speak about the disproportionate number of First Nations women there are in prisons – on average at least 60% – and you have to discern why this occurs.

Green interior design
Next is an interior designer who writes about greening your home. It’s interesting that environmental consciousness has taken such a leap in the last few years; it all happened after Al Gore’s video. From what I hear, his home isn’t very green; I’m willing to bet Betty Krawcyck’s is, though! At any rate, here are some ideas from a list of 10. I think I’m going to go out and get myself an aloe plant, and am going to check into what exactly an organic bed is.

3. Change the light bulbs in your house to compact fluorescents, but as they require replacing, begin to use LED bulbs, which consume very little energy and do not contain mercury, so disposal is less of a concern.

7. Unplug all unnecessary electrical devices when not in use or not needed, including televisions, computers, microwaves, clocks, stereos and lighting. Electrical devices which are instant on use power all the time, even when turned off. For easy on/off operation plug as much as you can into a power bar and turn it off when not in use.

8. Use green plants to clean the indoor air. Aloe Vera, English ivy, corn plant, golden pothos, peace lily and weeping fig are all excellent choices to remove formaldehyde and benzene.

9. Buy an organic bed. A good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed that emits absolutely no toxins is paramount to green living. After all, it is where we spend most of our time at home.

Books on money
Let’s take a sharp right here and go to Canadian Capitalist, one of the top Canadian finance blogs according to The Globe and Mail. Here’s a list of the Capitalist’s top ten money books. These two look interesting to me:

Your Money & Your Brain by Jason Zweig. What happens inside our brains when we think about money? (Full Review)
Unconventional Success by David Swensen. A guide to constructing a portfolio for individual investors.

Communication – or, in this case: miscommunication
Heath Slawner has a blog about persuasion. I’d like to find out a bit more about Heath; it seems to me that someone who clearly uses his blog as a part of his business would do well to tell a bit about himself on his blog. I presume he’s a salesperson – maybe he’ll see this article and will enlighten us. Heath offers a post on the cost of misunderstanding

Have you ever wondered how much a misunderstanding costs? According to a recent report by UK-based consulting firm Cognisco , misunderstandings and miscommunication among workers are costing companies US$37-billion a year.

Masterminds
We’ve had Evan Carmichael from Toronto here before, in our February edition. He has a section on his blog that exclusively discusses Mastermind Groups. What are mastermind groups?

A mastermind group offers a combination of masterminding, peer brainstorming and support in a group setting. The beauty of mastermind groups is that participants raise the bar by challenging each other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each other with total honesty, respect and compassion. Mastermind group members act as catalysts for growth, devil’s advocates and supportive colleagues. This is the essence and value of mastermind groups.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Hueina Su, one of my blogging friends from Change Therapy, is writing a series of articles here. Having been part of similar success groups myself, this one really spoke to me, about the necessity for commitment in such groups

Some of the members started to miss quite a few meetings, due to other activities and commitments. Others started to question whether they are committed to our mastermind group and see it as a priority. Overall, we were unhappy that some members kept missing our meetings, and it’s a sign of lack of commitment and respect.

Scrape!
Let’s round this off with something amusing. Rob Cottingham from Social Signal, a blog for a Vancouver company that “builds online community with real life impact” (they started the credit union VanCity’s Change Everything site) just wrote a series of articles on blog scrapers. He set a funny little trap for them – well, you have to see for yourself.

That’s it for this time around. The next edition of Canada 9-5 will come out on August 8. If you have or know of a Canadian business or non-profit blog, submit it here so that we can include it!

Finance
The Four Pillars blog is one I found through my blogging friend Nancy. It has great down-to-earth financial advice, and even has a category called 9-5! (And I just found out that it made it into the Globe & Mail’s best Canadian financial blogs. Good on you, Mike!) A good analysis of where to concentrate one’s financial effort is here, in Labour vs. Investment Income.

Some PF bloggers spend tons of time analyzing stocks and devising sophisticated strategies that incorporate geopolitical issues and long term forecasts of economics trends. Then you read that their portfolio is worth $24,000. Any benefit from their work is going to be minimal, simply because they have so little to work with. If they were to go out and earn minimum wage from their time, they’d be far further ahead than trying to “juice” the returns on a small investment.

Ethical Manufacturing
You got to think of our children is the title of the latest post on Mountain Equipment Co-Op’s blog. I think this is a fabulous example of using blogs to stay in touch with customer community. To those of you outside of Canada, MEC is Canada’s leading retailer of outdoor clothing and equipment, providing quality products and services for self-propelled activities like hiking, climbing and skiing. MEC has more than 2.5 million members; they are part owners, with a real voice in how MEC is run. MEC is a force for positive social and environmental change. They are committed to sustainability, from reducing the ecological footprint of their business to providing support to Canadian conservation and outdoor recreation groups. True to its mission, MEC’s blog focuses on ethical sourcing of its material.

“You got to think of our children” is how Mr. Anbukani, the proprietor of our organic wovens factory in India, rationalized his dedication to his community and environment. Mr. Abukani is one of three brothers who own and operate a handful of factories in Southern India. Together, they manufacture apparel for MEC, premium European brands and the French military.

What sets the Anbukani clan apart from other factories I’ve visited is its commitment to the community and environment.

Books
Monique Trottier’s So Misguided is mostly about books – but about all kinds of other things, too: product reviews, “tap dancing, technology, and the other amusements of Monique Trottier.” That’s one of the things I like about blogging. You want to be somewhat focused but then – well, we’re human and we’re interested in all kinds of things, no?

I like this little post because it’s short and sweet – and yet it needs little more than a quick question – “what are you reading right now?” – to interest Monique’s readership.

Healing
Reiki In The News is a post by Astrid Lee, North Vancouver Reiki Master, who says

Reiki is a modality of energy healing that is nearly effortless and mindful. Reiki helps the recipient relax and balance, emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. My blog says it all, but now also the Vancouver press is getting tuned in: Mind Body Soul, Georgia Straight has featured my work. Hurray!

IT
In a highly competitive market, Jimson Lee, a Vancouver-based CRM Analyst blog reviews another BC based CRM on-demand software company, here at Simple Sales Tracking – Simplicity at its Core: Sales!

Management
Lastly, we have something by Phil For Humanity who I think is Canadian. He talks about different types of managers.

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That’s it for the May 2008 edition! Please submit your Canadian business blog here for the next edition on June 28. If you have or know of any interesting Canadian blogs that talk about work or business, send them in – you can use this form.

Blogging is still new for most business owners. The ones you see here are pioneers. And here they are:

Life and Business Coaching For Women
Self-Care Enchantments
Zoey Ryan is a “Coach . Catalyst. Shakti Sage” right here in Vancouver. She helps women become POW – Positively Outrageous Women. Her series of “Inrageous/Outrageous Self-Care Enchantments” include

1. “Let go; let yourself be absorbed by life itself”. Practice living in the moment and for this week, suspend planning, goal setting and striving and simply float on your inner tube down the “river of life”
And/or
2. “Un-do, break down, mix it up”. Do something totally uncharacteristic this week!
3. “Expect breakthroughs to look like breakdowns”!

Library Blog
A Librarian Talks About Twitter
On Twitter, Connie Crosby uses what she calls “guerilla librarianship” – she nudges people towards library services who might not otherwise think of them. She sometimes answers questions as if they were reference questions, and also promotes critical thinking about web sources–all the while pointing out in the public forum of Twitter how librarians can help.

Real Estate in BC
Healthy Cities
Vancouver realtor Matthew Collinge talks about an award that says Vancouver is Canada’s healthiest city:

To come up with their findings they looked at 16 different areas of health and “went beyond the typical mortality stats to measure the comprehensiveness of smoking bans, the availability of OB/GYNs and mammography, and other issues uniquely important to Canadian women.” We even did well for number of available doctors.

Vancouver News
Car Insurance Fraud
EZ Vancouver is the blog by Vancouver web developer Frederic Desjardines. He frolicks all over the place, with themes that include Vancouver news, technology, futurism, oddities, gadgets, privacy, Disney and politics. Talk about eclectic! Among Vancouver / BC news, he dishes up the story of our car insurance company scandal: Fraud: ICBC Managers keep good cars while selling you the crappy ones.

Canadian Beauty
MTV and Body Shop Pair Up For Aids
Canadian Beauty talks about beauty trends as they move from the runway to the street and vice versa.

MTV and The Body Shop have paired up yet again to create a product that’s original and the proceeds of which will benefit AIDS prevention. Remember last year? They made that perfume in a pink bottle; this year it’s a lip butter.

Marketing
Apple’s Design Principles
Canuckflack is a blog about marketing and public relations, but really doesn’t follow a lot of “inside baseball” themes. Instead, you’ll find thoughts, snippets and blurbs on PR, marketing, corporate communications, retail, promotion, crisis communications and media relations. Colin McKay works in communications for the Government of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Here, Colin praises Apple’s design principles:

Take a look Apple provides for developers working on the iPhone, like Principles and Guidelines for Creating Great iPhone Content:
As you design the flow of your content and its user interface, follow these guidelines to build in simplicity and ease of use:
· Make it obvious how to use your content.
· Avoid clutter, unused blank space, and busy backgrounds.
· Minimize required user input.
· Express essential information succinctly.
· Provide a fingertip-sized target area for all links and controls.
· Avoid unnecessary interactivity.

Sports
Using a blog to raise money
An interesting experiment: In Speedendurance.com Mission Statement, we find that a Vancouver, BC, based track team uses a blog to raise money for travel expenses towards Beijing 2008 and Vancouver-Whistler 2010.

The mission statement of Speedendurance.com is to provide athletes of all levels the information required to better themselves, legally and drug free. Ordinary folks trying to get in shape or lose a few pounds can also benefit from this site. Like a true Buddhist, we never turn anyone away from a lack of funds … All the information on this site is free of charge. In return, ads are in place to raise money.

Snow Angel Maker
Network Marketing
Yup, Rob Moshe bills himself, among others, as a snow angel maker. If you want to know what else he does, you’ll have to go here. In 8 Steps To Success In Network Marketing, he shares his thoughts on how to be successful in MLM despite all the many pitfalls – for example:

Ask a successful Direct Marketer how much of their down-line are family and closest friends, and you will find that none of the successful marketers have more than a handful if any. You will have to find prospects (read ‘people you don’t know’) or you wont build your business. I strongly recommend against annoying friends and family to get into any business, I am also against becoming a walking infomercial whenever someone comes within your two square feet. Think of the last five social gatherings you were at, other than network marketers, how many people tried to get you into their business? Unless you are a multimillionaire, I am going to guess none. Yes, you should have an Elevator Pitch, you should have the tools at hand to get a prospect interested in your business, but you should use it ONLY when you have a qualified prospect.

Self Improvement and Motivation
Frederic Premji offers Tips For Home Based Business Owners, for example this one that I know works really well:

No pajamas at this office! Even if you are working from home, dress the part of a business owner. Staying in your pajamas or dressing too casual will affect your behavior, trust me. It’s much more motivating to be dressed up well and feeling good. This is your business, your creation, so treat it with as much respect as possible. If you are dressed like success, your mind will follow soon enough.

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Okay folks, that’s it for this edition! Please submit your Canadian business blog here for the next edition on May 18. If you have or know of any interesting Canadian blogs that talk about work or business, send them in – you can use this form.

The February edition of Canada 9-5. Canada 9-5 presents the crème de la crème of Canadian business bloggers, people who use the power of blogging to showcase their professional and business expertise and to better get to know their customers and clients. We’re concentrating on non-IT bloggers; for IT people, blogging is second nature – it’s people whose business isn’t in IT already who, we think, need some help seeing the magic of blogging.

Today we have a virtual assistant, an expressive arts facilitator, a blog that helps with bankruptcy issues, a foodie blog, a small business blogger, and a personal coach right here from Vancouver.

Take it away!

Virtual Assistant Looks At Iceberg
I like the 30 Days of Resources project by Business Services Etc., a company of virtual assistants. In this project, BSETC features 30 products that will make the life of any business person easier. This one is about Icebrrg

Have you ever been wanting to add custom forms to your website or blog but weren’t sure where to find one or how to program them just so? Fear no more. I have found you a service that resonates well with me because (a) it’s easy and (b) it’s name reminds me of the snowy part of the planet I currently live on.

Introducing Icebrrg… The instant (and easy) form creator. It’s a wonderful little web-based program that you sign up for (they have a free account) and once registered, you just follow the prompts to create your web form. It also generates the HTML code for you to place on your blog or site.

I like it! I think I’ll try it out. This blog is a great example of showcasing expertise and paying it forward by providing the reader with valuable information.

Bankruptcy In Canada – What’s A Consumer Proposal?

Are you:
· Having trouble paying all your bills, even though you have a good job?
· Thinking about filing bankruptcy, but not really wanting to?
· Simply looking for more information about ways to deal with your debt?

That’s where a consumer proposal might be a good solution. What’s a consumer proposal? Bankruptcy Canada explains it in this three-part discussion. Part 1 is entitled How a consumer proposal might be right for you. There’s also a video you can watch.

A Foodie Blog – Buying Local
As an avid CBC radio listener, I’m quite familiar with Don Genova, a journalist and broadcaster who used to regale West Coast listeners with yummy tidbits of BC food stories. I remember once he listed all the goat cheeses to be had from Saltspring Island. So this here is his blog. (The things you can learn from a blog: Apparently, until the end of last year he was in Parma – yes, the home of Parmesan cheese – where he studied for a Masters of Food Culture at the University of Gastronomic Sciences. What an intriguing field of studies!)

The entry we’re sampling here is about buying local food

a visit to a Culinary Tourism Conference yielded some interesting info on companies and individuals trying to make it easier for consumers, chefs and other food service operators to get access to local produce and value-added products. … Most of these programs match you up with a farmer who will deliver a box of goods from their gardens throughout their growing season. … Don’t forget farmers markets. Some run year round, others will start in the spring.
You can listen to the 6 minute documentary by going to Don’s blog.

Dancing, Drumming and Children
Barbara Karmazyn’s site is a repository of information and images about the expressive arts. Dancing, drumming, storytelling, singing, crafts – all these are things Barbara brings to children, teachers, parents, seniors as she draws them together in magical circles of joy and creativity.

Barbara Karmazyn uses blogging mostly as a content management system; it looks more like a “normal” web site than a blog. Most of her material is on static pages, like this one about personal development playshops.

Small Business – Email and Customer Service
Selling to Small Business is a blog by Torontonian Evan Carmichael. This post here reminds us that we ignore email at our own peril. Love the title: Killing Your Brand Softly.

Personal Development – What Happens When we Get Sick?
One Man Can is the blog of a personal coach here in Vancouver. I like his open, honest voice; he’s not one of those coaches who continually tell people what to do. Example:

periods of stress that affect the physical body often lead to short bursts of illness. So, watching the signals from the body sooner can allow corrective action sooner. Myself, I like to think I’m invulnerable sometimes and let things get the better of me. Just took a temperature of 102…. oops.

Back to bed.

That’s from his post, Illness of the Body.

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And that’s it for this edition of Canada 9-5. If you have or know of any interesting Canadian blogs that talk about work or business, send them in – you can use this form.

The next edition will come out April 8, 2008.

Good night and good luck!

Canada 9-5 is something we’re very excited about. What we have on offer here is once again the crème de la crème of Canadian business bloggers, people who use the power of blogging to showcase their professional and business expertise and to better get to know their customers and clients. We’re concentrating on non-IT bloggers; for IT people, blogging is second nature – it’s people whose business isn’t in IT already who, we think, need some help seeing the magic of blogging.

We even have a badge for it now (yup, we’re working on our blogging goals). I’ll let Carol have the word here for a sec, explain why we thought it would be important to do this:

We are really keen to see Canada 9-5 get going strong this year, and we’ve been calling 2008: The Year of the Business Blog.

Here’s our badge – feel free to use it to link back to us.

So here is our line-up for this month:

Small Business Owners – How tough to you want to get?
Our first article is by someone we already met – welcome back, Vahid! To Succeed As a Business Owner, You Have to Be Tough is a post on his blog, Work at Home Business Solutions. It talks about the drawbacks of being tough – burnout, for example – and how to deal with it.

Divorce Help – All the way from the East Coast to BC
Divorce Online is a good resource for people all over Canada who have decided they need to part ways with their spouses but want to go for an uncontested divorce. What I like about this blog is that it looks at both Federal and the various Provincial laws. Lately, they’ve had a few posts on spousal support – this one, for example.

Coaching - The poetry of search engine statistics
Lee Down is a coach here in Vancouver. His background is actually quite similar to mine – a quirky mix of IT, spirituality, community development, writing and human services. This post here about the deeper usefulness of search engine statistics shows his personality in a wonderful way. That’s exactly what blogs do – they help your clients get to know you better.

Fashion - Stories from a “petite activist”
Cynthia C is a writer and petite activist from Toronto. She has recently published her first book, Aspirations, which can be found online (Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, Borders, etc) and in bookstores everywhere. I have to confess, I’ve never heard of petite activists before – but it makes perfect sense! I have two friends who are very short and always complain of how difficult it is to find pants (and reach cupboards and find your friends in a mass of people when everyone is at least a foot taller and and and …)

Really enjoyed this article – I always find little historical bits like this one here fascinating:

The inventor of petite sizes, Hannah Troy, died almost 15 years ago at the age of 93. Mrs. Troy thought up the petite size when she noticed that many women were pulling on shoulders and waists, making them fit their figures properly. And yes, like many of us petites who know from experience, Mrs. Troy knew that alterations can “spoil the design.”

Community banking - What’s a blog bar?
Gene Blishen runs a small credit union; his blog is a bit about that and a bit about all kinds of things. He’s a great example of what we talked about in an earlier article, Blogging for business – letting your hair down. In the article we’re showcasing, Gene talks about the idea of consumers letting their hair down: In blog bars, customers (or clients, or consumers, whatever you want to call them) can let you know online right away what they think. These “blog bars” are installed on location. A very interesting idea – we’re coming full-circle: from online to on-site.

This concludes this edition of Canada 9-5. The next edition will come out on February 28. Got any articles to submit? If it’s a Canadian blog that talks about work or business, bring it on – here’s the submission form.

Many of our neighbours to the South have latched onto the power of Web 2.0, a truly connected internet, but here in Canada, business and work related blogging is still something that happens very rarely. The blogs you find here are truly pioneers.

Construction Marketing
Construction Marketing Ideas is a blog that understands the power of blogging to disseminate ideas quickly and easily. It’s chock full of marketing tips that are useful not just for the construction industry but for all business owners.

Don’t you hate it when you get a marketing call and the person on the other end just reads from a script, no matter what you say? In an article on cold calling, there are some very useful suggestions for connecting with strangers in a respectful way:

For Successful Phone Calls:
* Plan, but don’t memorize, your calls. Think about what you’ll cover and how. Have a specific objective in mind like getting an appointment or determining the extent of any upcoming construction program.
* Don ‘t start with the trite “how are you?” Instead, say, Hello, my name is….”
* Concisely cover vital information in the first several seconds of the call. Explain who you are, who you believe the other person is, why you’re calling, how you heard about this project, what possibility you see for working together and how long this should take.
* Assess how the other person sounds. Ask if this is a convenient time. If not, suggest that you call back at a specific time. Showing respect for a prospect’s time builds your credibility.
* Establish what the other person knows about you. (“Perhaps you heard Bob talk about me, I’d like to tell you more”).
* Help people visualize you, (“I’m calling from Vancouver”).

Blogging
Lincoln McCardle has a neat idea – he thinks every blog should have a theme song. I find that intriguing. On the one hand, I have to admit it bugs me when I go to a site and it assaults with with some awful muzak – but if it’s good, like here, for example (great site if you like philosophy and Chopin), it’s a real joy.

Foodies
Notes from the Vegan Feast Kitchen is the kitchen journal of Bryanna Clark Grogan, a vegan food writer. It contains “ideas and recipes I am working on; culinary flights of fancy; opinions; passions; discoveries; and more.” In Cranberries, and a short rant she asks why people dish out huge amounts of money for exotic juices when they can have the same effects from home-grown fruit, like the cranberry.

Civic affairs – Vancouver: The mayor
This is the blog of Vancouver’s mayor Sam Sullivan, of all the blogs here definitely the most “corporate” one. This just shows the wide variety of uses a blog can be put to. Sam Sullivan’s blog has the format of what one might call an “interactive press release”. Discussion and deep interaction – a la Liz Strauss’ Open Mic for example – is probably not what is sought here. Rather, I would say that this blog is meant to spread information, to solidify the idea of Vancouver being leading edge, and to give citizens an opportunity to voice their opinions. The Millennium Line Survey is a good example of that.

Civic affairs – Montreal: The UN?
Spacing Montreal chronicles what happens in Montreal, for example, in this article about the possibility of the UN moving its headquarters:

Last week, La Presse reported quite breathlessly that the federal government, which owns the Port of Montreal and much of the land along its waterfront, has been lobbying the United Nations to move its headquarters from New York to Montreal. The rationale, apparently, is that the UN’s current headquarters, housed in an iconic complex built in 1949 along the East River, needs nearly $2 billion worth of renovations over the next couple of decades. It would cost a lot less to simply pack up and move to Montreal, where a state-of-the-art new headquarters would be waiting on the site of the Silo No. 5 and on adjacent piers.
You have to admit, as outlandish an idea as this may be, it would be pretty cool to have the United Nations in Montreal.

Civic affairs – British Columbia: A NAFTA superhighway conspiracy?
C.I. Bennett, erstwhile leader of the Green Party of British Columbia, has candid thoughts, green political ideas and new leadership thinking on his Victoria Bound | Green Political Ideas by C.I. Bennett. Here he presents rumours of a plan to build a superhighway:

You’ve heard the rumours for months. Most have chalked this up to a stupid conspiracy theory with no truth to it. Yet yesterday, 2351 people ‘dug’ this story on digg.com. A secret NAFTA Superhighway being built between the US and Canada.

That’s all, folks! Join us again next year, on January 18, for the next edition of Canada 9-5. Anything written by a Canadian blogger that’s work-related is fair game. Have a blog post you want to submit? Click here.