There’s a lot of cool stuff on the Internet. In any given day, the things I see amaze, astound, fascinate, and blow my mind, often all at once. I laugh hysterically, cry uncontrollably, and have just about every emotion in between. Today, I want to share with you some of the people I’ve seen doing really cool things online.

You know, we can read books, attend webinars, and consume blog after blog with people telling us how to tweet this or market that. But I learn the most from watching what others do. I’m hoping that by passing on some of these links you can learn from them too.

With Glowing Hearts – The Movie

I’m lucky being in the business I’m in, because I get to work with all kinds of smart and talented people. One of my favourite people to work with is Vancouver-based film director Andrew Lavigne. What’s Andy doing on the Internet that’s cool? He’s making a movie about it.

This ain’t no “The Social Network“. Nope, it takes a look at social media in a whole new light. With Glowing Hearts is a documentary about social media creating social change. Here’s a snippet from the synopsis:

History has shown that poor and marginalized communities stand to gain the most from leaps forward in the democratization of information, so the excitement in areas like Vancouver’s maligned Downtown Eastside about the possibilities of Web 2.0 and beyond is palpable.

This is a story about putting technology in the hands of homeless, poor and marginalized people and letting them tell their story through their own eyes. They have given these people a new way of sharing with the world, by given them access to tools like cell phones,  cameras, video streaming, and the Internet – things that many of us take f

or granted.

The result is compelling, and anyone who is involved in media or content creation needs to see it. The film is currently seeking a distributor, but it is available for screenings and you can pre-order DVD and Digital copies. You can also support the film with a small donation and actually get a producer credit! Go check out the web site at http://wghthemovie.ca for trailers and more information.

OttawaTonite.com

It was born out of frustration with the lack of arts and entertainment information in our community. It grew into a central hub where artists, performers, and those who are passionate about the arts could share informa

tion and experiences. Ottawa Tonite, founded and lead by local arts passionista Cheryl Gain, is much more than a listings site – with over 30 contributors from all walks of the arts and entertainment world, it gives you a back stage pass to what really makes artists tick, and what compels people to enjoy their work.

It’s a marvelous example of a thriving, hyper-local online community. And although the co

ntent of the site really does focus on the Ottawa area, there’s something for anyone who is passionate about the arts.

The Big Bang Theory

It’s no secret that I am a HUGE fan of the TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. In a sea of badly written, corny, wastes of perfectly good video tape, this show stands out – it’s clever, witty, brilliantly written, and you can’t help but fall in love with the characters.

What is even more interesting about the show is, some of its stars and behind-the-sc

enes people have active Twitter accounts. And cooler than that, these celebrity tweeters actually appear to have fairly interesting lives!

Cast members Simon Helberg (Howard), Kaley Cuoco (Penny), and Kunal Nayyar (Raj) all regularly tweet. Sometimes their tweets are just plain funny. Other times they are posting photos – often behind the scenes of the show or their press tours, and yes, sometimes what they had for lunch. They also talk about their table reads, rehearsals, and the taping of the show on Tuesday nights, interspersed with very un-annoying pitches to watch the show.

Behind the scenes BBT tweeters include several writers, and Executive Producer Bill Prady. Bill is magnificent on Twitter. He talks about what’s happening with the show, and regularly answers questions from fans. One night a few weeks back he did one of the best 15 minute rapid-fire Q and A sessions I’ve ever seen on Twitter. He easily answered 200 questions (complete with RTs) and actually seemed to be having fun doing it. Take that, Kevin Smith.

I co-produce a TV show, so I’m taking really good notes on what The Big Bang Theory is doing to promote itself using social media. First, the cast and crew are all interesting in their own right. Second, they all care about the show, and want to share with the audience what it’s like to be part of it. They do this in a very unobtrusive way. Their content is not in any way contrived, and they all seem to be doing it because they want to, not because it’s their job. They are proving to the world in no uncertain terms that you don’t have to be a theoretical physicist to understand how Twitter works.

Here’s a list of all the cast and crew on Twitter if you want to give them a follow.

There are people all around you doing cool stuff with this technology – you only have to open your eyes to it. These people have a tremendous amount to teach us – so watch, listen, and learn!

Who do you learn from? Share their story and link below!

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I’m sitting here this morning, going through my usual morning routine. Check email, reply to a few. Log onto Twitter, say good morning to people, see what’s going on. Check Facebook, reply to messages, comment on a few posts. Move over to my Google Reader, read a few of my faves, make note of some things to read later. This process leaves me energized and feeling connected with others, gives me some new information to take forward into my day, and also has the practical benefit of catching me up on my correspondence.

But what if all of this ended tomorrow? As unlikely as it is, imagine for a few minutes that you wake up tomorrow and there’s no Internet. No email, no blogs, no Twitter, no Facebook. No Google Chat, cloud computing or podcasts. It’s all gone.

Let’s pretend that this isn’t a catastrophe, that nobody is panicked about it. Let’s pretend that life goes on (because it does).

What would we take away from the online experience we’ve had?

We’d be better listeners. You know that experience when you’re at a loud party, and there’s so much noise in the background that it’s hard carry on a conversation? Social media is like that. We are bombarded with information on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis. 90% of it is noise. Other people having conversations that you’re not involved in. Links to stuff that you don’t really care about (but that others are passionate about).

Have you noticed at the noisy party, that the conversations you do have require a great deal of concentration and focus? You listen more intently. You work to filter out the background noise.

The social Web has taught us how to filter, how to zero in on those conversations that mean something to us. It’s taught us how to study what people are talking about so we can understand our customers better, and create better, more human-focused businesses. The social Web has made many of us much, much better listeners.

How do you think our newfound filtering abilities would work in a world without the Web? Well, I think we’d all be paying more attention to the things we care about. We’d stop focusing on things that weren’t our concern (like gossip, and negative people). Our noise filters are finely honed instruments now. Try listening outside the Web with the same filter in place. You’ll start to hear the conversations you need to hear, and find the opportunities you need to find.

We’d appreciate each other more. I’ve had many a conversation with non-Web inclined people about having online friends. There are plenty of people around who don’t believe that you can have a “true” friendship with someone you’ve never met in person, or have only met a few times.

Jon Swanson and I were friends for a year before we ever met in person. About 15 minutes before we met for the first time, I called him on the phone to get directions. Up until that moment, when he picked up the phone and said “hello”, our friendship had been entirely based in text on a screen. A few minutes later, we found ourselves sitting across from each other at lunch, and it was like we’d been having lunch together for years. The in-person conversation picked up right where it left off on the screen. And after meeting that day, the conversation moved seamlessly back to the computer screen. Online friendship is a funny thing – it makes no difference how you connect. It’s only important that you connect.

If the Web ended tomorrow, I think it’s safe to say that certain connections would fade away. But that happens anyway – people move in and out of our view all the time. Sometimes you have friends that you talk to all the time, and sometimes you drift apart. That ebb and flow exists whether we’re online or not.

But in a Web-less world, the real relationships would endure. I think the Web has taught us how to be better friends with people. It’s widened the scope of our world. We have now had the opportunity to see life through so many others’ eyes. Jon and I have quite different lives. It’s highly unlikely we’d have ever met if it wasn’t for the Web and connecting through a mutual friend. Even at that, we met on Twitter, so it was sort of left up to chance.

I think the Web has made us more curious about other people, and less afraid to reach out. Seeing what’s going on in other peoples’ lives makes us more caring, compassionate, and helpful.

If it ended tomorrow, I have no doubt that the relationships would endure. Maybe we’d go back to using the phone more. Maybe we’d write letters and post cards again. Maybe we’d have more reason to go visiting. But somehow, we’d find ways to keep the meaningful connections alive.

We’d promote our businesses better. I was having a conversation the other day with a client about promoting their business. Of course, we were talking about online tools, and the potential to use the Web to make real, human connections with their customers. There was excitement in the air as my client realized the possibilities that exist for really connecting with people in this way.

Marketing is no longer about shouting at people about your business. It’s not only about ads in the newspaper or press releases or billboards on the side of the highway. The two-way Web has caused a massive culture shift. Businesses are regularly talking with people now, and vice versa. It’s a magnificent thing. It’s a process that I think a lot of businesses, once they get into it, find very comfortable. Smart businesses have learned that conversation marketing works, and works well.

If the Web ended tomorrow, would this new way of conversing with our customers persist? Or would we fall back into our old habits?

I suspect that we’d find ways to keep the conversation going, don’t you?

If it all ended tomorrow….

The tools will be gone, but the shift will have already taken place.

The conversation lives on.

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I have a confession to make.

I, Suze, don’t watch TV anymore. In fact, I’m pretty much turned off of just about every show out there. It’s an interesting irony, really. After all, I produce TV. Right now I co-produce a series that airs on our local cable station. We have a bunch of other shows in various stages of development and pre-production. I contribute directly to the industry, but I don’t really participate as a viewer.

Here I am, on a Friday night, flipping endlessly through the hundreds of channels that I have available to me on my digital box. And aside from one or two interesting documentaries, a few movies, the odd cooking and home reno show and, well, our show, of course :-) …I can’t get over how little actual, good content there is on mainstream television anymore.

Now, before I continue, I must admit that I have never been a dramatic series watcher. Aside from the occasional episode of Law and Order or CSI, I really have never been able to commit to watching a series week after week. I do appreciate that there are some good series out there – Lost, Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy to name a few – but if you look at the current lineups of the major networks, even those types of shows are becoming the minority.

It seems to me that the major networks and U.S. specialty networks are obsessed with drama. And I don’t mean “E.R” kind of drama. I mean the staged, exaggerated, over-the-top “reality-based” Drama Queen type of drama that makes up a good majority of mainstream television these days.

I love video. I always have. It has the power to impress, to entertain, to really move people to change for the better. But these “reality” shows are an insult to the medium and frankly, an insult to my intelligence. These programs seek only to bring out the worst qualities in people – they are stories about greed, revenge, deception and negativity. Why anybody finds this sort of show entertaining is really beyond me.

The more time goes on, it seems, the more shows like this are becoming the mainstream. Obviously, somebody is watching them. Why they are so popular puzzles me greatly. As much as I love the medium of television, I’m losing faith in it, fast. More often than not these days, I am turning off the TV and turning on my laptop.

The Internet is so ripe with awesome content, it makes me want to burst. I can watch shows about any topic imaginable, produced by people who have skill and talent and heart and passion. I can do it on my own schedule, from my bed, my livingroom, my coffee shop or my backyard. Through the Web, I have regained the capacity to be impressed, entertained and moved by video.

And that’s where I start to see hope for the future.

What do you think? Where does TV sit in your life these days?

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I discovered Feedly this morning and in just a couple of minutes it changed the way I interact online.

One of the things that drives me bananas about many social media apps these days is the lengthy process I need to go through just to get it to understand who I am and what I care about. Feedly eliminates this pain entirely. I simply went to the site, installed the Add-on to my Firefox 3 browser, and when the browser restarted, I saw a view of all of my blog feeds (grabbed from my Google Reader), neatly organized into tabs corresponding to the categories I set. It asked me to log in to Twitter and boom! My feeds were there, as were links to all of the people I follow on Twitter who also have a Feedly account.

The best thing about Feedly is that I immediately saw the value in the tool. Many tools claim to be the most useful thing in the universe, but after weeks of exploring I still don’t see their real usefulness. BrightKite and Sprigley are two examples that come to mind. Not that they are bad ideas – they are both actually pretty good ideas. But their their real value is not apparent up front.  Nobody has time to dig around for the usefulness of a tool. Show me value right away.

With Feedly, I immediately saw all of my information on the screen. I saw how I can read through my posts and annotate, favourite, save for later, or even say “no thanks” to a post I don’t want to read. My favourite feature is being able to Tweet someone’s blog post FROM THE ACTUAL POST. I click the “Tweet” link and a box appears with the title of the post and the link (already conveniently in TinyURL format). I click send and it’s posted to my Twitter feed instantly. WOW.

This is the social media app I’ve been waiting for. Give me everything I need in one place, make it fast, make it pretty and let ME control what I see and how I interact with it.

Congratulations, Feedly. You totally get it.

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There’s an interesting debate going on this morning over at FriendFeed. It appears that Robert Scoble has blocked one of his followers (I’m not going to name names, if you want to find out who it is, I invite you to seek it out yourself. Go ahead. Google to your heart’s content. I’ll wait).

You back? OK. Well it appears that some feelings have been hurt as a result of this “cyber-shunning”. Scoble is being called elitist.

Oh, come on, people.

If the biggest part of your day is hoping that some “A-list blogger” (a term, incidentally, coined by the media and fans, not the bloggers themselves) is going to give you the time of day by @replying you on Twitter or responding to your FriendFeed comment, then I’m afraid you’ve got this social media thing all wrong.

The popular bloggers (Vaynerchuk, Scoble, Brogan, Belmont, Laporte, and so on) give of themselves daily to inform, entertain and enlighten their audience. You may like them, you may not, you may be indifferent, but the fact is, they are people too and as much as their fans love to get their continuous undying attention, there are only so many hours in a day. I have personally engaged some of these folks in conversation on more than one occasion and I find them to be extremely approachable, friendly, and helpful – as long as I am respectful don’t over stay my welcome, and make a valuable contribution to the conversation, then I, in turn get to stay at the party.

Social media is about sharing, I agree. But ultimately, everyone has control over who they share their information with. I block people on Twitter and FriendFeed all the time, for various reasons. Maybe our interests aren’t compatible. Maybe they are spammers. Maybe they are offensive to me. Or perhaps I just don’t like their approach. At the end of the day, its up to me who I choose to engage with. And if I don’t engage with you – don’t take it personally.

We all have the right to shape our own social media experience. Nobody, including those with many fans and followers, is under ANY obligation to be “friends” with everyone. So Robert Scoble doesn’t want to be your friend? So be it. You can still read his blog, and comment, and participate on that level.

You don’t have to be invited to the A-list parties to have a good time in this space. In fact, you may have a better time forming your own communities, having your own conversations. Becoming your own “A-list” blogger. You may even get some fans. At the end of the day – respect others, and you will gain their respect. Be an active participant, but contribute value. The community will thank you for it.

Photo credit: Lightfoot from MorgueFile.

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