Our digital team has a number of ways of keeping its tools sharp so we can continue to provide excellence in online communications to our clients – from website design and development to search engine optimization to social media strategy. In order to keep on our toes last week, we attended meshmarketing in Toronto to hear from some of the freshest and smartest in online privacy, Facebook marketing and community management, among other topics.

Our digital team is very busy and looking for some smart cookies to join the crew, so we thought, “A conference full of smarty pantses in the digital industry? Let’s break out the Office – we mean Recruiting – Ninja!”

Armed with High Road-branded ninja stars, the Recruiting Ninja was seen somersaulting around the halls of meshmarketing, stealthily setting his targets for Digital Ninja recruits. One even claimed it was the coolest pitch of the day. Thanks, Gary Edgar!

So, if you received a ninja star at meshmarketing, please get in touch! Check out our digital positions available, drop us a line at careers@highroad.com and join us at the agency Marketing Magazine nominated for Agency of the Year!

The mesh conference took place at the MaRS Collaboration Centre in Toronto this week and three of us from team High Road attended. For those of you unfamiliar with mesh, it was started by Mark Evans, Rob Hyndman, Mathew Ingram, Stuart MacDonald and Mike McDerment as an idea over drinks in 2006 and five years later, it’s still going strong and known as “Canada’s Web Conference” – a gathering of 500 people passionate about the web and how technology is changing our everyday lives.

The major themes this year were citizen journalism, online privacy and security; and the online communities. The overarching theme was the relationship between transparency and influence.

Media and society were the focus of day one which kicked off with Mathew Ingram’s informative keynote interview with Chris Thorpe, Developer Advocate for the Open Platform at The Guardian. If you have an iPad, be sure to download The Guardian Eyewitness app – which showcases daily photos of global events. It was developed in partnership with Canon in the UK (High Road works with Canon in Canada.)

Next up was a provocative keynote discussion between Rob Hyndman and Joseph Menn, author of “Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet,” and TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, live to tape panel discussion about the evolution and changing face of privacy in the digital age with Ann Cavoukian, Mathew Ingram, Joseph Menn, Alan Sawyer & David Fewer. You can watch the discussion online and see The Agenda’s interviews with Chris Thorpe, Joseph Menn and Avril Benoît, director of communications, Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Canada, who presented a case study on their use of social media.

Day two focused on business and marketing. Mike McDerment kicked off the first keynote interview of the day with PayPal’s CEO Scott Thompson talking about the future of online commerce followed by Stuart MacDonald’s keynote interview with Aravind Rajan, LinkedIN’s Vice President, International, who shared they’ll be opening their first Canadian office in the near future.

I had the honour of presenting one of the workshops in the afternoon called B2B Community Building. As part of my preparation, I interviewed a diverse group of community managers from Canadian-owned companies, who generously shared their insights. Much of the workshop involved an informative discussion with community managers and businesses at different stages in their own community building. Have a look at the slide presentation and share your comments or questions.