Last night High Road hosted 25 of Toronto’s top bloggers in our first ever #HRCNight Blog Lovin’ session, which was a great success! The High Road crew got to meet and greet a number of awesome bloggers we’ve worked with in the past or have wanted to work with for a long time.

Since our relationships with clients, media and bloggers are so important to us, we wanted to kick start the conversation and get some feedback about bloggers’ likes/dislikes of working with PR agencies, and what we can do to make our working relationships more efficient and enjoyable for both parties.

This event was like no other – complete with the ever so popular Dancing Heads video booth, tasty treats, speciality “Roadie” cocktails served by two impressive HRC bartenders, we got a great opportunity to have an insightful open forum discussion with some of our favourites from the Toronto blogger community.

We’re already looking forward to the next one!

So I generally hate going to these things… a boring re-hash of the basics we’ve been talking about for years, out-of-date examples, etc. But I was pleasantly surprised at the pretty much awesome line up the Strategy Mag peeps were able to wrangle for this year’s AToMiC conference held yesterday at the Koolhaus in Toronto (good call timing it right before AdWeek in NYC).

From Alexander Manu’s interesting keynote on disruption, to “vision” guys like PHD’s Mark Holden, MS Advertising’s Jeremy Grubaugh & Saatchi & Saatchi’s Tim Leake, to corporate movers like Pepsi’s Frank Cooper III, to tech wiz’s like Toronto’s own InteraXon, everyone brought insight and an interesting viewpoint that built on the overall future-of-marketing conversation.

• It was a breath of fresh air to be somewhat confused by Manu’s complex theories first thing in the morning… but at least he was thinking about the why & how not just what & where. Not a lot of people go there!
• Pepsi’s Cooper was as smooth as I wish our Cdn politicians could be… he even evoked Jerry McGuire a couple of times, yikes. But he broke down success to a few simple rules that made sense: Humanity (people first), Imagination (change through creativity), and Truth (transparency & openness). Plus he gave a shout out to Drake, way to know your audience.
• Holden brought out gems like Graphene & went in-depth on how NUI (& Kinect in particular, near & dear to my heart, obvs) has the potential to change marketing.
• Grubaugh had some actually really good 1-, 2-, 3-screen ad examples & showed how storytellers can be thinking of incorporating new tech. I especially liked the mashup of Bing Maps, PhotoSynth & Deep Zoom… you could have a lot of fun w/ that!
• Leake I liked & agreed with his approach to more nimble marketing, but it was somewhat painful to watch coming from a PR background: “lean marketing” & “one-week challenges?” Grass is always greener dudes, you’re welcome to it.
• Really, there’s not much to say about InteraXon except go check that shit out! It’s pretty damn cool. (My fave tip from today also came from these guys: don’t even bother trying to flex the delta quadrant of your brain… duh.)

All in all, pretty entertaining & thought provoking. Even still, it was reassuring to hear we’re on the right track focusing on content & storytelling while also knowing the latest channels or opportunities and how to use them from a business perspective. Now I just need to get my own brain sensor…

2011 will go into the record books as the year of the tablet.

IDC predicted that 1.5 million tablets would be sold in Canada during 2011 and yet for a majority of owners, they are simply using these devices for the basics: web surfing, watching movies and (of course) playing Angry Birds. Luckily, there are other Canadians using tablet PCs as productivity tools, personalizing the experience to their industry and enjoying new levels of full-featured mobility.

The Fujitsu Slate Summit highlighted two such examples and gave media and influencers in Toronto and Montreal a firsthand look at the ways in which tablet technology is being rolled out across Canadian industry. Steve Rush from St. Andrew’s College discussed his school’s enthusiasm for Fujitsu tablets, both at a student and a faculty level, dazzling attendees with seamlessly demos of Microsoft OneNote and customized course materials. Dr. Michel Hébert also appeared, talking about how the speed, portability and performance of Fujitsu tablets has been integral in the launch of Kinlogix, an innovative electronic patient record system.

Attendees such as CTV News, the Globe and Mail, Metro and L’Actualité took in the hour-long panel discussion and then enjoyed some 1-on-1 time with the new Fujitsu STYLISTIC Q550 slate PC (and some 1-on-1 time with the panel members themselves), diving deeper into this incredible device and learning the ways in which Fujitsu is becoming a brand of choice for advance tablet users across Canada.