Tod Maffin

Anyone know of a good integrated Mac productivity app?

I need an integrated productivity app (for the Mac) that will let me Get and respond to my (Gmail) email Drag emails to a Task list (with all my email chain included in it) Drag tasks to a Calendar to schedule time to do those tasks Check off those scheduled tasks when done. And ideally, it [...]

Why Corporate Twitter “Conversations” Are Lies

Okay, folks, it’s time to interject a little honesty into the social media dialogue. Despite grand platitudes of how Twitter is ’shepherding a new era of corporate transparency and a spirit of engaging with customers,’ the fact remains that even the best corporate examples of such engagement on Twitter remain trivial at best. Just because a [...]

Position Available: Daily Business-Blog Editor

My client is looking for an enthusiastic self-starter to join them for a year, writing short, 100-word posts their soon-to-launch business blog. This is a work-at-home (or coffee shop, or airport) position. This individual will write and post these three short posts each weekday. The posts will be summaries of web sites that already exist on [...]

Subway: Makers of Sandwiches and Deceptive, Misleading Ads

Alex Melikian/Margot Micallef SUBWAY B.C./Yukon Division 25 King Edwards St Ste 101 Coquitlam BC V3K 4S8 Dear M. Melikian and Ms. Micallef, Please see the graphic below. I believe it’s self-explanatory. The sandwich on the right is what your store at Broadway near Oak Street is promoting in its window and the menu-board sign. The sandwich on the right is what I [...]

VANOC: We own that sandwich you’re eating, too.

Vancouver 2010 Olympics Security: I Am Jack Bauer!

I’ve been chatting with the p.r. person at VANOC1, trying to line up a time for me to tour its Technical Operations Centre. Olympic organization names are all non-descript like that: The Centre for Media… Canada House… Emery’s House o’ Weed. It reminds me of the popular TV action-thriller 24, with its ominous “Division” — [...]

Tod to keynote F5 Expo

Tod Maffin and Malcom Gladwell have been selected as the two keynote speakers at the upcoming F5 Expo in Vancouver. Hear Tod’s story of how he went from being an always-on multi-millionaire dotcom executive to crashing into depression and addiction. A story of hope and recovery, with a lesson to everyone in the tech industry; [...]

Taking Crazy Back: The Action Manifesto

I am sick of endless government study. I mean that literally. I live with a disorder that we would know a lot more about if only government took it seriously and did more than study the problem. On the mental health scale, my disorder is mild. I can function, live a balanced life, and work efficiently [...]

News report about my “Leading the Facebook Generation” half-day seminar

Here’s how a local TV station covered my half-day workshop, Leading the Facebook Generation, in Medicine Hat last week. What the Meeting Planner Said “This event more than doubled any other event we have ever had so we were very pleased. The feedback from the evaluations provided was very positive… Everyone enjoyed Tod’s sense of humor and [...]

How to Tame Your Voicemail

I don’t know why, but I’ve never liked picking up my voicemails. My entire communications system revolves around my email, so I’ve never understood why voicemails don’t show up in my email box. A number of providers can do this for you — it’s likely that your phone company offers this kind of service, where people [...]

Why Automated Video Thumbnails (Frame-Grab) Suck

So Much for a Secure Airport Area!

Sometimes I really don’t understand airp0rt security. I’ve been having boarding passes sent to my iPhone for a few months now and generally love it. I tend to lose anything in my pockets. It struck me recently, that the screen you show to the security people when getting your carry-0n bags screened is pretty easily faked. [...]

Debunking the Myths of Earthquake Safety

I thought I knew the right thing to do in the event of an earthquake — dive under a car or desk, right? Apparently, no. Not according to an email making the rounds, ostensibly from the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI). Here in Vancouver, we live near a major [...]

CBC drops WMA streaming and moves to MP3. YAY!

Pleased to finally be able to report this. All of CBC Radio’s live streams (Radio One and Radio Two) are now being delivered as mp3 streams! The MotherCorp made the change from the older wma (windows media audio) codec for several reasons, not the least of which was that some listeners on Macs had trouble listening to the streams. With [...]

Boost open rates in your email newsletter

As you probably know, you can only tell if someone has opened your email if they are using HTML email and have images enabled. (Each email is sent with a uniquely identifying tiny, transparent image. But if images are disabled on the receipient’s side, you won’t be able to tell if someone opened the email.) So, [...]

Why owe Facebook $51,313 for advertising

A funny thing happened on my way to my email account this afternoon. I got this email from Facebook: Thank you for your Facebook Ads payment. The details of the charge are below. Please note that, due to processing delays by some credit card companies, this charge may not show up on your statement for a [...]

Download my iPhone App

In my ongoing quest to morph into Steve Jobs, I now have my own iPhone app. (It also works hella fine on iPod Touches.) It’s got my latest blog postings, tweets, and YouTube videos. You can even “favourite” items you’d like to read later. I’d have put more info into it, but, sadly, the iPhone’s tiny [...]

Facebook Fan Page or Profile?

I can’t figure this one out. I’ve got a Facebook profile with about 660 friends on it. Those friends are a mixture of “real” friends, people who’ve seen me give a presentation, heard me on the radio, or just randomly shown up. I’ve also got a Facebook fan page with a few dozen people on it. The [...]

Seats almost gone at next week “Blazingly Effective Email Marketing Seminar”

SOLD OUT Get alerted (one-time, no-spam) when I hold my Blazingly Effective Email Marketing workshop in your city. Email marketing is one of the most effective tools, with one of the highest returns on investment, yet so few companies do it right. (Or at all.) Let me show you the ins and outs of email marketing — [...]

Ever used a realtor? I could use your help

A lot of my business is in helping realtors grow their business using social media. As part of that, I’ve created a very short 60-second survey to find out people’s opinions about realtors. If you can spare a moment, I’d love it if you’d help out by answering the three quick questions on it. Click here [...]

Audio Interview: “Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”

If you’re a small business trying to find your way around social media, a very solid resource has hit the bookstores. Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook was written for marketers looking to find new effective ways to sell products and services through social media channels like blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Julie Szabo and [...]

Audio Interview: Building Influence, Improving Reputation, and Earning Trust Through Social Media

The new book Trust Agents has been generating a lot of buzz. Written by two social media veterans, they show readers how to tap into the power of social networks to build brands’ influence, reputation, and, of course, profits. [buy the book] I had the chance to interview co-author Julien Smith for about 20 minutes about [...]

“Blazingly Effective Email Marketing” intensive workshop: January 20

Of all the social media marketing strategies, email seems to be the easiest, right? After all, you use email every day. Not so fast. Email marketing is one of the most effective tools, with one of the highest returns on investment, yet so few companies do it right. (Or at all.) Let Tod Maffin show you the [...]

Email 2.0: We Need More

With everyone distracted by the various shiny tech objects out there (Twitter, Facebook, and so on), we’ve been neglecting our loyal — if a little rusty — friend: simple email. Email, as we know it today, was developed in the early 1980s, a derivative of code from ARPANET made ten years prior. It went through [...]

The Real Cost of Multitasking

The Real Cost of Multitasking Embracing Unitasking for Better Productivity and Happier Living Let’s just say this — there’s a very good chance you’re doing three things right now. Don’t think so? Think about it. You’re reading this, you may have some music or talk show on in the background, your eye darts over to your email, [...]

New Video: Tod giving Social Media Marketing presentation

Some letters to Jack Ruby

One of the more unique items in my large JFK Assassination Collection is every letter every written to Jack Ruby while in jail awaiting, and during, his trial. Here are a few, plus some envelopes. (The black mark is on every scan; obviously a secret plot by the CIA smudge on the scanner.) by Tod [...]

CBC News Network: What The (Small Group Of) People Say

I run the CBC group on Facebook and a couple of weeks ago, I ran a survey to see what people thought of the changes to CBC News Network (formerly CBC Newsworld). Lots of people thought the shows were being deliberately “down-programmed” to a younger audience. I’m not a stats expert by any stretch, so [...]

Your Home Is Leaking Power

I turned my DVD player on last week for the first time in about six months. Only I didn’t really turn it on; I woke it from standby. I knew these devices were consuming power while “on” (evidenced by the little stand-by light) but I never really knew how much. BC Hydro has published a nice [...]

Tod on Tape: A 13-Year-Old Broadcaster

Okay, this ain’t stayin’ up long… but here’s a 13-year-old me at my first radio gig, on UBC’s campus radio station CiTR. Press the blue Play icon below to listen. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] by Tod Maffin: Web Site | Blog | Speeches | Books | iPhone App | Contact Tod

The JFK Assassination: Me and John F. Kennedy

Forty-six years ago, today, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. That much is known. The rest, pretty much, is speculation. When I was 11, I found myself browsing through the used books section of the Value Village in New Westminster, B.C. My eyes stopped on a weathered copy of the Warren Commission findings — [...]

The First Slide in Your PowerPoint/Keynote Presentation

About four years ago while giving a keynote presentation about leading “the Facebook generation” in the workplace, disaster struck. I was about mid-way through the speech, talking about new models for employee benefit plans, when the following popped up on the screen — in front of 2,200 people: That might look like a three-inch wide JPG [...]

Banned by Facebook: An Exercise in Futility

Some months ago, I logged in to my Facebook profile to throw a few targeted ads up. I’d done Facebook advertising before and found it to be moderately successful — enough that I aimed to do a campaign every couple of months. Imagine my surprise when I logged in one morning to find this: For some unknown [...]

This is how Twitter will die. And, thus, live forever.

UPDATE: November 12, 2009 Has the Twitter brand death-spiral begun? ComScore today released numbers showing that visits to Twitter.com declined eight per cent. Why visit Twitter.com when its API lets anyone access tweets from anywhere? Has the death spiral begun? ——— Perhaps the most difficult part of forecasting technologies’ pace is discerning which technologies will be short-lived fads [...]

Are Google ‘Street View’ Drivers Drunk? ;-)

I’ve been poking through Google Street View, which was launched this morning in Canada, and keep finding examples where its photo-car seems to be driving in the oncoming lane. There are lots of instances of this, actually. Obviously they weren’t (let’s hope), but I can’t figure out why the photos would come out like this. The [...]

Friend Splitting: Doing Personal AND Business on Facebook

So you’ve got a Facebook account and added a couple of dozen friends. In time, you begin to add some business contacts as well. Since your business contacts can now see your profile, you’re faced with a dilemma. Do you stop posting any personal comments like jokes, updates about your family, etc.? Or do you post only [...]

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Podium

Just back from some engagements last week and thought I’d pass this funny little tale along. I’ve got a few A/V requirements when I present, notably that I like my notebook right at the lectern with me, and that I like the podium (stage/riser) to be free of anything else like chairs, tables, and so on. [...]

“Perfect storm” brewing within the workforce

VANCOUVER, Sept. 16 /CNW/ – Social media expert Tod Maffin says companies are about to face a mass exodus of employees due to a kind of perfect storm brewing within two key generations of employees. “With the Baby Boomers set to retire en masse, companies are going to have to find ways to replace them with [...]

Lumix GH1 Review

Panasonic was kind enough to let me play with one of their flashy new GH1 digital cameras for the last couple of weeks, and I was really quite impressed. The first thing that’ll surprise you is its size; the body is very compact. Definitely shorter than DSLRs. Technically speaking, the GH1 isn’t a digital SLR camera, [...]

Business, Benefits, and Bargaining: Five Gen-Y Case Studies

This Tuesday in my newsletter, I’ll publish my report on how smart companies are changing the way they do business to better reflect the way new workers think and work. You’ll be able to read five specific case studies who had great ideas that turned into higher retention and more satisfied workers. How a national accounting [...]

Video: Tod In Action

Get alerted whenever I’ll be speaking in your city

Sometimes people ask me to let them know when I’ll be speaking in their city. While I do try to remember these requests (and I’m usually pretty good at it), occasionally I’ll get a last-minute booking or will forget to remind folks. But I’ve found a better option. This form taps directly into my speaking calendar. [...]

Want to recruit and retain Gen-Y? Help them change the world.

In researching and preparing for my keynote presentation Leading the Facebook Generation: How to Manage, Inspire, and Retain the Generation-Y Millennials, I’ve come across so many horrible myths about Generation Y in the workplace. The three most common myths: “Generation Y employees will quit their job just to go snowboarding.” (More likely, they were being ignored or treated [...]

Now watch online! “Swarm Communications: Protecting Your Brand When Good Buzz Goes Bad”

Want to see the whole 90-minute keynote presentation? You are viewing a selected portion of a longer keynote presentation I give called “Tweet Warfare: Protecting Your Brand from Online Attacks.” (Clicking won’t stop the video; it will open a new page up.) This keynote is for any public relations or communications person in an organization or association, or [...]

Top Five Reasons Generation Y Workers Leave Their Employer

by Tod Maffin, Generation Y speaker (“The Facebook Generation”) Forget the recession — the biggest challenge companies will face in the next five years is yet to come: A mass exodus of employees from the workforce. Baby boomers have already begun retiring en masse and scant few organizations have any kind of succession plan in place [...]

Keeping a Connection to Gen-Y Learners After Graduation

by Tod Maffin, Generation Y keynote speaker I was having lunch the other day with a friend of mine who’s a young University instructor. It was near graduation and she looked a little down. “Why the long face?” I asked. “Well, each year I get to know my students quite well, so when they leave and [...]

Why “template responses” should be banned.

I sometimes wish customer support staff should simply not be able to use canned response templates. More times than not, I find support people don’t read your email at all — instead they seem to glance at it, find a few keywords, and match it to a canned response they have. Prepared. Here’s today’s exchange with [...]

Leading/Managing the Facebook Generation: How to Lead, Inspire, and Retain the Generation-Y Millennials

Managing the Facebook Generation How to Lead, Inspire, and Retain the Generation-Y Millennials In this follow-up to Tod’s massively popular presentation Recruiting the Facebook Generation, Tod will show your delegates the eight key ways your business must change if you want to engage and retain this new, young, and energetic workforce. From developing creative benefits packages to learning [...]

Leading/Managing the Facebook Generation

In this follow-up to Tod’s massively popular presentation Recruiting the Facebook Generation, Tod will show your delegates the eight key ways your business must change if you want to engage and retain this new, young, and energetic workforce. From developing creative benefits packages to learning an entirely new leadership model, the presentation walks you through, in [...]

With friends like FRIENDS, who needs enemies?

Whatever folks at the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting are smoking, I want some of it. This morning, they sent out a news release claiming to know of a “secret plan” to move the CBC’s flagship TV news program, The National, to 11:00 p.m. My own automated Twitter stream picked up the report and tweeted [...]

Lies that the “Please Hold” Voice Tells You

I make a lot of phone calls in the day. Note that I didn’t say I talked to a lot of people. Rather, and probably like you, I spend my day listening to a lot of corporate “please hold” messages. It’s gotten to the point that I can pretty much guess at exactly what they’re [...]

Why I Know A Lot About You, David.

Hi. You don’t know me, David, but I know you. We were both in Toronto last week –me for some CBC meetings, and you because you were being scouted for a sports team. I’ll get into how I know that in a bit. As I was rummaging around my documents folder at the hotel, I noticed another [...]

Behind the Scenes at CBC Vancouver’s new “integrated newsroom”

One of the projects CBC is undertaking across the country is a sweeping “integration” of its news-gathering resources. Rather than having separate newsrooms, assignment desks, and reporters for TV, radio, and web, CBC will now have a single source for its operations. CBC Vancouver just opened its integrated newsroom. Behind the Scenes at CBC Vancouver’s new [...]

Gmail: How to Gain Lots More Storage Space — For Free!

As you may know, Gmail gives its users a healthy amount of storage for their email and attachments. But if you use Gmail a lot, you may notice yourself running out of room. Or maybe you’ve coughed up extra money each year for more space. I have a way to give you much, much more storage [...]

What iPhone 3’s Voice Memos actually sound like (not bad!)

Sean Carruthers did a great review of the iPhone’s new Voice Memos application (comes with the iPhone 3.0 software update) the other day. One thing I haven’t been able to find any reviews of the actual audio quality, so I did my own test and I have to say… the quality is really much better than [...]

Tweet Warfare: Building, Protecting, and Managing Your Brand Online

It’s clear now — the new war for market domination is being fought 140 characters at a time. Social media futurist Tod Maffin shows your meeting attendees how to join the battle — dominate market space online, access more qualified leads, pinpoint-measure your marketing efforts, and immediately counter negative online attention. In his new fast-paced, entertaining [...]

The dilemma

So, the original idea behind this list was for CBC folks to find out what the status of their friends and colleagues across the country was, in the wake of the layoffs. The names came from the people themselves emailing me or from existing media reports, mostly in newspapers. It’s been an interesting response. Most people said [...]

Flip Mino HD and Flip HD: Review

Click to Play I’ve had a chance to play with the Flip Mino HD for about a week or two now and I’m overall really very impressed. In the end, I prefer my own video editing software than the packaged one, but that’s just personal preference. I really didn’t miss the lack of zoom or [...]

Toshiba Portege R600 Review

CBC cutbacks

CBC RADIO Cut: The Inside Track Out Front In the Key of Charles The Point The Signal (weekend edition) La Ronge SK bureau (one person) Thomson MB (one person) Reduced: Music recordings (by 50%) Live-to-air music recordings Radio drama The Current (by 10%) Radio 3 consolidated (single feed of satellite and online programming) Staffing in Windsor, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Quebec City, Moncton, Saint John, Sydney, Gander, Corner Brooks and Grand [...]

I decline peace of mind.

Where is the balance in undercover reporting?

There’s a great new article in the Ryerson Review of Journalism (one of Canada’s best magazines, imho) about the ethics of going undercover as a reporter. The article focuses on Jan Wong, a Globe and Main columnist known for stories that reveal the private lives of celebrities and ordinary citizens. Some time, more than they want. But [...]

Credit Union presentations

Tod Maffin has spoken to these and more credit unions and related organizations: IBM Credit Union, U.S. Capital One Credit Union Connect CU Association Capital One Credit Union Young Presidents’ Association Envision Financial Credit Union HSBC Credit Union Managers’ Association Credit Union Central of British Columbia B.C. Public Sector Bargaining Worklife B.C. Canadian Society of Association Executives Vancouver Board of Trade International Association of Business Communicators Credit Union Managers — [...]

Sample Pre-Event Promotional Video Greeting

Tod reviews the 3M MPro110 Mini Projector

The Clicks Behind Your Back: Social Networking in the Classroom

Passing notes and cheating on tests have gone high-tech. And unless you’re armed with the latest information about how your students are using social media, you may find yourself with a lot of catching up to do. In this provocative and entertaining keynote presentation, Tod Maffin explains how teachers and school administrators can harness the tools of [...]