LannyCardow.com

As you can tell from my Twitter stream, I’ve been at the Ontario PC’s annual general meeting this weekend at the Ottawa Westin hotel. The organizers did a great job at putting on a big show, with lovely visuals and stunning AV setup.

I’m so happy to see my dear friend Hartley Lefton be acclaimed to the role of 4th VP. I made a video of his thank you speech that you can view here or at his facebook page.

It was also great to see some other new faces such as my friend and former campaign colleague Andrew Boddington acclaimed to the role of 1st VP, and I’m quite sure that the wonderful Megan Boyle will do a great job in the role of 9th VP.

Oh, and it seems we have another new PC Party logo. Check it out:

…and I won’t mention the obvious contrast to Obama.

The NTU has redesigned their website. I think it’s good one for them. They have a lot of written content (more than most 501s), and this layout makes it all accessible (even if it’s pretty basic, stylistically). Check it out if you have a chance.

I’ve used a Convio-based site before when I was at IPDI. Convio, for those who have never used it, is a CMS geared toward non-profits. Sites that use it usually come out a bit less flashy than some basic Wordpress-based sites out there, but when you have to manage a lot of information in different forms (blog posts, events, landing pages, petitions, etc), it’s far more capable. It does fundraising asks and e-commerce especially well, too. If you’re doing work for a larger organization, it’s worth consideration for your platform.

I tweeted about this press release from the Dept. of Finance last week, congratulating them for planning to Tweet on budget day. I notice [Flaherty press secretary] Annette Robertson’s name is on the release — as her former colleague I can tell you that she is a gifted and innovative communicator, and I’m not at all surprised that Finance is using this new medium as a result.

This Thursday, be sure to follow @financecanada (but not @financecda, which is an impostor account) starting at around 4pm EST.

Popular atheist author Richard Dawkins, unimpressed with the rudeness and bickering happening on his heavily-populated message boards, recently attempted to scale them back. Predictably, a full-scale online rebellion ensued, forcing Dawkins to defend himself with this note to his fans, customers, and commenters.

I feel for Dawkins – nobody should have to tasteless ad hominem attacks, especially on their own site.

While he is fortunate to have some his online community that is so boisterous and thriving (others only wish they had such problems) his difficulty managing their scope demonstrates the problem with trying to tightly control community forums – it’s almost impossible. Sometimes it’s just best to let discussions bloom naturally, even if they stray from your vision for them.

If content concerns and language were really a pressing problem and had to be addressed, perhaps
implementing some form of peer filtering or caretaking system would be best. At least in that case, your community is empowered with patrolling the site, and it’s not coming from “above”.

Dawkins’ predicament helps to illustrate why online community managers are a popular new career for so many people. While Dawkins’ case is a little bit different as he is not selling a product, community managers interact with customers and forum participants to ensure that the community has a human face, and ensure that concerns are being responded to … before eruptions like this occur.